ZLATAN:VIEIRA TRIGGERED MY PREM PASSION
Swedish superstar Ibrahimovic recalls how training with Gunners legend convinced him to try his luck in England at Old Trafford
ZLATAN IBRAHIMOVIC has revealed how Arsenal legend Patrick Vieira helped “trigger” his desire to play in England.
Ibrahimovic first came across Vieira during a pre-season tournament when he was at Ajax and the Frenchman was with the Gunners.
They then became team-mates at Juventus for the 2005/06 season, where Vieira’s influence and knowledge of the daily high standards and mentality required to become a world-class star really started to rub off on Ibrahimovic.
Vieira was also one of the players who later warned the Swede, a serial trophy winner in Holland, Italy, Spain and France, that he would be risking his entire legacy by moving to England at the tail end of his career.
But that simply fuelled the Swedish superstar’s determination to prove the doubters wrong which, in his own inimitable style, he is adamant he did at Manchester United by making “the Premier League look old”.
Ibrahimovic scored 29 goals in 53 games for United, who he joined in July 2016. In his first season he won the Community Shield, EFL Cup and Europa League, but suffered a horror knee injury towards the end of it from which he struggled to recover. He left for LA Galaxy last March.
Speaking about the role Gunners legend Vieira played in his career on the BBC’s Football Daily, Ibrahimovic said: “When I met Patrick for the first time it was in Juventus and I knew who he was. I remember we played against Arsenal when I was in Ajax.
“There was this Amsterdam Arena tournament and I remember when we were sitting on the bench, the whole Ajax team, Patrick Vieira was the only player from Arsenal to give their hand to every player when he went past them.
“The other ones pass, hello, hello, nothing. But he gave his hand to every player and already I said to myself, ‘Wow, this is something else. This is different’.
“Then I played against him and as a player everybody knows him.
“He is the hard guy. He is box-tobox, quality, good mentality and, when he came to Juventus, he had a big influence on my game. To train good every day.
“The way you train is the way you play and he was on me every time.
“When you yell at somebody, put pressure on somebody, normally the pressure doesn’t come back because of different personalities, different characters.
“But from him it came back twice and I was not used to that, so he was on me all the time. When I thought I did good he said I did bad. And he was always on me and he triggered my mentality by not being satisfied. You have to do much more because it is not enough. And he knows what he is talking about.
“He won the trophies he won and played with fantastic world-class players. And so my moment when I should have gone to England, I was talking to different players that I know well and trust to give me an honest opinion.
“And from all of them, everybody said, ‘Don’t do it. It’s not good for your career because you put one year – because the United contract was one year plus another – and you put your whole career at risk because of one season.
“If you don’t do a good season people will say the rest of what you did before is useless because you didn’t make it in England. Especially from the England side. They will say, ‘Yes, you did it there, but you didn’t do it here.’
“But that triggered me because that is the challenge I want. So I went against everybody that said to me no and decided this is exactly what I wanted to do.
“I come to their garden and I will show myself in their garden. I was 35 when everybody thought that I was too old. But I came and made the Premier League look old.
“That is the nice thing. It took me three months to convince everybody who I was. That is the challenge I like and I never turned down a challenge.
“The only thing I have to say is the Premier League should be happy I didn’t come 10 years before I did because it would be a different story. You can read the book with all my numbers. Those numbers would have been in the Premier League. No difference. Wherever I went I brought those numbers.
“I came to the right club in England. United was the club, the shirt I was supposed to shine in, and I did it.”