UNITED SPECIAL Red leader to become the lion king
‘LIONS don’t recover like humans’ is one of Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s favourite mottos and Jose Mourinho could have a lion in winter if United’s new number 10 recovers in time.
When Paul Pogba was asked in Georgetown last month if he was relishing filling Ibrahimovic’s void he was not about to barge the man he dubbed ‘Thor’ aside like the Hulk did. “He’s still a big leader because he’s still in the team,” Pogba replied.
Ibrahimovic is so revered among his team-mates one youngster has nicknamed a United employee ‘Zlatan’ due to their similar hairstyles.
“We were focused on the goals our striker was scoring and when he was not scoring the team was a little bit in trouble to win matches,” Mourinho said at Carrington earlier this month.
Mourinho has largely absolved Ibrahimovic of any blame from United’s sixth-place finish last season even though they have not majorly missed him since his injury.
Outside of the stratosphere Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi occupy, Ibrahimovic is the player of the century and that pedigree still provided 28 goals last season, including Wembley winners on his debut and in the EFL Cup final.
For all Ibrahimovic’s spurned opportunities, he won United trophies, turned 35 two months into the campaign and oozed the arrogance of Eric Cantona with the biggame prowess of Mark Hughes.
It is logical Mourinho wanted him back. United’s attack is short of an awe-inspiring forward and the presence Ibrahimovic brought to the dressing room lifted team-mates flattened by Louis van Gaal’s robotic regime.
Mourinho is also concerned about a possible over-reliance on Romelu Lukaku – and United’s second-highest league scorer last term was Marcus Rashford with five.
Still, Rashford spearheaded United stirringly with Ibrahimovic on the bench against Chelsea, the outstanding display of Mourinho’s epoch so far, and the teenager carried an impotent Ibrahimovic on the night the Swede landed agonisingly against Anderlecht. Lukaku is younger, more mobile and faster than Ibrahimovic and has the potential to outscore his Mino Raiola stablemate.
Re-signing Ibrahimovic poses other dilemmas. Ibrahimovic is unlikely to be content with playing second fiddle to a striker who scored his first career goal back when he was keeping Lionel Messi on the flank.
Ibrahimovic and Lukaku is like having two Hummers. Mourinho occasionally plays two strikers but even with the recent 3-5-2 trials Lukaku was complemented by an auxiliary option in Henrikh Mkhitaryan, and the prospect of Lukaku and Ibrahimovic could compromise United’s fluidity and make them one-dimensional. With two 6ft forwards, United would need a reliable crosser and they do not have one. Coincidentally, Ibrahimovic’s second spell has parallels with his old foil Henrik Larsson’s loan at United 11 seasons ago. Larsson had been the most prolific goalscorer in Britain since the turn of the century and was pivotal in Barcelona’s 2006 Champions League final comeback victory over Arsenal, so the three-month loan from Helsingborgs was hailed as a coup. Like Ibrahimovic, Larsson scored on his United debut but he managed three in 13. United’s style regressed to the pragmatism of the previous campaign’s first six months while the victories became narrower (six of Larsson’s 10 starts were won by a goal) and more unconvincing. Only Cristiano Ronaldo was developing into a worldclass matchwinner. The biggest drawback about Larsson’s elevation to first-teamer was it broke up the Wayne Rooney-Louis Saha coalition. “Every time I was