Zlatan – the indomitable ‘lion’

Ian Herbert deconstructs Ibrahimovic’s remarkable interview to get inside the United star’s head

THE Zlatan delivery is so inscrutably deadpan that you are left searching the contours of the man’s face for the remotest trace of a grin that never comes.

Would it be going downhill if you left United, he is asked, amid a gloriously memorable nine-minute encounter in the depths of Wembley stadium late on Sunday. “For me or the club?” he replies.

In that moment, you know how his team-mates feel. Though the Swede’s presence has made him the one the younger players look up to – in precisely the same way that Eric Cantona was for the young Beckham, Scholes, Giggs and the Nevilles – the unreadable Ibrahimov- ic humour is perhaps most distinctive characteristic of all.

The extended wind-up of a team-mate by him will begin in the Carrington dressing-room, and everyone will be waiting for the smile that puts the player out of his misery. The way this binds the squad is apparently monumental.

But behind the comic timing, an indignation resides which seems to be no laughing matter. It materialises when this correspondent puts it to him that this chapter in his 17-year career might be the most satisfying of all, given that he has proved himself in perhaps the toughest football environment of them all.

“I was not worried about age because I know what I am able to do,” he replies. “It is because I am here in England. After all these years (of people saying) ‘he didn’t come and show himself here’ but I came. And I came when people thought it was impossible for me to do what I am able to do.”

He returns to this theme so often, in fact, that you think: ‘Who are these ‘people’? Look as hard as you like and you will find none. Very few declared that Ibrahimovic was not cut out for England, though very few said he was, either – and that is the significant point.

His arrival drew attention for the pay packet – £250,000 a week for a 34-year-old – rather than any kind of anticipation that he would be to Mourinho’s first season what Robin van Persie was to Alex Ferguson’s last.

The doubts about Ibrahimovic and England always cropped up when he was facing English teams in the Champions League. By the time he faced Manchester City for Paris St Germain last year, he’d scored just five goals in 20 appearances against English opposition.

There was the astonishing 15-minute hat-trick against Roy Hodgson’s England in 2012, despatched at a time when the visiting fans in Stockholm had just started singing “You’re just a sh*t Andy Carroll” but the sense pervaded of a flat-track bully. Many of English doubters were in attendance when Portugal defeated Sweden in their World Cup qualifier in 2013 saw Ibrahimovic score twice but still find himself eclipsed by Cristiano Ronaldo. The point he has to prove makes this English swansong deliciously addictive to him, though he does not disclose that when he holds court, of course. “I never talk so much with journalists. I never stopped so long even for the French people,” he says during the Wembley interview which includes the comical experience of trying to pin him down on why he feels he is a lion. The fact he agrees to talk so much is the significant part. Almost to a man, Jose Mourinho’s newly-minted League Cup winners marched out Wembley without even mustering the good grace to say ‘no thanks’ when asked if they would stop for interview.

Marcus Rashford, aged 19, was just too cool for school. Ibrahimovic saved the day, as he so very often does. He described himself as “old school” and that seems to go for a recognition that those who write about players might warrant a second’s eye contact.

The Swede said everything – and yet, nothing. Will he sign a one-year contract extension? “We’ll see.”

He knows that the music can stop as quickly as it starts. There was a period in October when the goals dried up for six games and he undertook extra work with his personal physio, Dario Fort. But he is enjoying the appreciation of his merits more than he says.

It is hard to bet against him being Player of the Year for this season, let alone him being around for the next one. (© Independent News Service)