Confidence personified: Desire to become a legend drives Paul Pogba

So that’s what a €120-million footballer looks like.

Fans of Manchester United and Real Madrid have been waiting all summer for Paul Pogba to show them why their clubs are weighing up world record transfer bids to acquire him.

He had produced little to convince them during a lacklustre Euro 2016 opener against Romania, but thereafter gave glimpses of his talent. After coming on as a substitute against Albania, it was Pogba whose 50-yard cross-field ball released Andre-Pierre Gignac to set up Dimitri Payet for France’s second goal. He followed up with a marauding performance against Switzerland, then got his own name on the scoresheet against Iceland.

Not until the semi-final win over Germany, though, did Pogba truly put himself in the spotlight. That cruel but brilliant right-foot waggle that he used to tease Shkodran Mustafi, before beating the defender and whipping over the cross from which Antoine Griezmann doubled France’s lead, will go down as one of the signature moments of this tournament.

Pogba might not have written his name into the footballing lexicon, like Antonin Panenka did with his chipped penalty against West Germany at Euro 76, but if France goes on to win this year’s tournament, then you can be certain that we will be revisiting it at least once every four years for decades to come.

On the surface, that might seem trivial. Teams don’t spend nine-figure sums just to get a player whose moves will look good on YouTube. Nor, though, do they ignore such matters completely.

Turn your mind back to the summer of 2003. Manchester United thought that it had done well in persuading Real Madrid to pay €35-million for David Beckham - a player whose talent never fully matched his global reputation.

And yet, over in Spain, Madrid’s sporting director, Jorge Valdano could scarcely believe his luck. "These days, football clubs are marketing brands, not teams," he reflected. "It is no longer a case of doing well on the pitch; the more merchandise you sell, the better."

Those words reflect the cold reality of club football in the 21st century. Valdano overstated his case - doing well on the pitch remains a top priority for most teams, and tends to improve merchandise sales in any case - but 13 years later Madrid is certainly not the only one who assesses the commercial potential of each transfer target before deciding how much money to can spend.

Nobody who has watched Pogba on a regular basis these past few seasons could doubt his talent. He is still a little callow, yes, and on his off-days prone to disappear from view. But he is also a genuinely exceptional athlete with rare vision, a startling range of passing and a powerful shot to boot. He is already the best box-to- box midfielder in the world and, at 23, is still improving.

Those are the qualities that make him brilliant, but they do not independently make him worth €120 million. That number can be justified only in terms of what he brings to any club that would own him. Trophies are a part of that picture, but so too are shirt sales and endorsements. Having the charisma and presence to do what Pogba did to Mustafi helps on both fronts.

We are getting ahead of ourselves, however. According to Juventus, nobody has yet made a formal approach for Pogba, and the Bianconeri have been clear in stating that they are not keen to sell. No amount of money will peel the Frenchman from their grasp unless he first instructs them that he wants to leave.

Such thoughts appear to be a long way from Pogba’s mind at present. In an interview with a Swiss TV station after the Germany win, he and Patrice Evra joked together that they had already achieved their main target for Euro 2016 by reaching the final - a success which grants them an extra week of holiday before they must show up for Juve’s preseason training camp.

More satisfying for Pogba will be the knowledge that he made good on a promise. Speaking to the newspaper Le Monde before this tournament, he had stated that France’s ambition was to win the whole thing. When his interviewer asked whether he was telling the host nation’s fans that he’d see them at the final, Pogba replied that he was.

"I am setting an appointment with the French public for 10 July," he said. "More than that, I want to make them jump for joy, I want to lift the cup."

Pogba has been called arrogant many times over in his young career. Sir Alex Ferguson accused him of disrespect when he left Manchester United to join Juventus in 2012, and others have seemed similarly keen to take the player down a peg or two. He was criticised in his own country’s press for having the audacity to state that he wanted to become a legend and win the Ballon d’Or.

"When I say that I want to be a legend, that’s not 'I am going to be a legend,'" he was compelled to clarify in Le Monde. "It’s my dream, I am going to work to become a legend. That, there, is my dream. It’s like you journalists, you want to be the best journalists. If you say 'I want to be the best journalist,' you will do everything to become it.

"That’s not arrogant, that’s ambition. I have the desire to be the best, to score, to win titles, to be the most I can be."

He has not fully achieved that this summer. Perhaps, years from now, we might even conclude that he was never worth €120 million. But if Pogba can pick his way through a packed Portuguese midfield and help France to victory on Sunday, then none of that will matter at all.