In historical paper A View From the Island, A. M. Polyakov wrote at 6th page:
In the abelian case, these dislocations turned to be just the world lines of magnetic monopoles and I predicted the phase transition leading to confinement (in 3 + 1 case).
What did he mean? Does it mean, that exist phase on abelian theory (pure theory or theory with matter?), where elementary excitations are gluebal-like objects? What is mechanism lying behind this phenomena?