Perhaps he only chose the word because he was echoing his interviewer’s language. It felt significant nonetheless. Was there, Zlatan Ibrahimovic was asked after winning the League Cup, something special happening at Manchester United? “I came,” he replied. “That’s special.”
It is 13 years since Jose Mourinho touched down in England, pronounced himself “a special one” and was promptly branded “the Special One”. These days the United manager tones down parts of his rhetoric. He is no longer the arrogant arrival. He spent the build-up to Sunday’s final insisting the trophy was needed for the club, not himself.
Instead a torch has been passed to Ibrahimovic. He produces the extravagant boasts. He finds new ways to talk about his favourite subject: himself. He comes out with a stream of eminently quotable remarks, largely about himself. Like Mourinho, there is the sense that his greatest creation is his persona, that his egotism is exaggerated for the outside world and that his comments are designed for effect.
But what an effect. Ibrahimovic won the League Cup final with two goals. He also won it with force of personality. Valiantly as Southampton competed, well as they played, there just seemed an inevitability about Ibrahimovic’s decider. He dragged United to glory. It was a triumph of willpower.
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Players and fans alike have someone to believe in. It is all the more significant as, for much of the time since Alex Ferguson’s retirement and in United’s sudden regression, they have seemed stripped of belief. David Moyes was too timid, too overawed by his surroundings. Louis van Gaal believed in himself, but his tactics were so stultifying that it was increasingly hard for anyone else to do so.
Ibrahimovic injected arrogance, and that is a compliment. The best United teams have often had a swagger. They tend to have individuals who project an aura of superiority. In that respect, Ibrahimovic is the heir to Robin van Persie, Cristiano Ronaldo, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Roy Keane and, most obviously, Eric Cantona.
There is something about the United supporters’ psyche that, while they relate to players with no airs and graces, men like Paul Scholes who brought a blunt northern realism, they also appreciate an attention-seeker. Providing, of course, that they have the substance to support their idiosyncratic style.
And, beyond doubt, Ibrahimovic does. He has a relentlessness. At 35, he has already played 38 games this season. He became the oldest player to score in a League Cup final since George Eastham in 1972 and in a campaign when many other thirty-somethings – John Terry, Branislav Ivanovic, Wayne Rooney, Gareth Barry, Phil Jagielka – are being phased out, he could defy the trend by being named Footballer of the Year.
He is the great exception, a footballer Mourinho feels is better now than when he managed the striker at Inter Milan eight years ago. If the thought was that the Portuguese may shape United in his own image, perhaps Ibrahimovic has done that instead.
Mourinho reflected recently that, after a troubled few years, United had too few players with a history of success. He mentioned Antonio Valencia, but the right-back is quiet. He named Michael Carrick, but the vice-captain began on the bench at Wembley. He cited Wayne Rooney, but the captain was an unused substitute.
And while acknowledging his considerable medal collection was assembled elsewhere, he referenced Ibrahimovic. Rooney lifted the League Cup at Wembley, while Carrick and Chris Smalling have worn the captain’s armband of late, but United feel Ibrahimovic’s team.
Certainly the dominant axis is his on- and off-field relationship with Paul Pogba, a pair of physically powerful, utterly immodest winners. A few minutes after the final whistle went at Wembley, a reporter asked Ibrahimovic if his time at United had gone better than he expected. “This is what I predicted,” came the inevitable retort. Meekness is for others. Ibrahimovic believes in himself. United believe in him too. He is their Special One.
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