If he scores twice against Middlesbrough on New Year’s Eve, Zlatan Ibrahimovic will have hit more goals than anyone across Europe’s top leagues during 2016.
Lionel Messi tops the charts on 51, but with Barcelona enjoying their winter break, Manchester United’s No 9 has a free run at clinching the honour.
Boxing Day’s strike in the victory over Sunderland was 35-year-old Ibrahimovic’s 12th in the league this season and his 17th in all competitions for his new club. United are already 10 points better off for his crucial goals this season.
To have started 17 Premier League matches so far at his age is, as manager Jose Mourinho has said, ‘phenomenal’. And the secrets of Ibrahimovic’s success – plus his extraordinary stamina – can be revealed.
It is down to stretching, martial arts, zero alcohol and plenty of reggae music.
Ibrahimovic is a physical phenomenon and Mourinho is managing him excellently – chiefly offering the veteran more time off during international breaks.
A one-year contract extension for next season is a formality.
Staff at the club’s Carrington training ground were amazed when Ibrahimovic broke the United records for the power he produced during exercises in the gym last summer.
He works overtime with personal physiotherapist Dario Fort, who moved with the striker to Paris Saint-Germain, having struck up a bond with him at AC Milan.
Ibrahimovic has always said he wanted a doctor or physio as his best friend and he has that now in a physician who is paid by United but does not sit on Mourinho’s bench.
Dr Steve McNally and physio Neil Hough are the match day medics tending to United injuries, but Fort is in the background.
It was Fort who helped whip Ibrahimovic into shape before this debut campaign in English football. They worked on a specific daily fitness regime in the weeks leading up to pre-season to ensure he was ready for the demands of the Premier League.
Ibrahimovic has made a concerted effort for the last five years to prepare more stringently. The warm-ups are no longer ‘boring’. Instead he treats them as the most important aspect of his quest for perfection featuring a set of stretching exercises.
A black belt in taekwondo, Ibrahimovic relishes martial arts and the most important part of his week is the recuperation – or in his world, regeneration.
Whether it is weights or the treadmill while listening to reggae music to calm the mind, all the extra work is done to prolong a career spanning 20 years and more than 750 professional games. He is a shining example to United’s younger players.
‘In every aspect he is professional,’ said Mourinho last week. ‘Even in something that is difficult today – he is great on his family life and on keeping his family life positive and private.
‘He is professional with his lifestyle, too. He is a great example in everything, and when you have him and Michael Carrick at 35, the kids could not have better examples.’
After initially staying at the Radisson Blu in Manchester, Ibrahimovic and his partner Helena Seger and children Max and Vincent are understood to have found a more permanent home.
When Wayne Rooney took a largely English contingent of team-mates on a two-night bonding trip to London before Christmas, Ibrahimovic was one of the foreign players who turned down the delights of Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park to spend time with his family.
Nights out are rare for Ibrahimovic, who says in his autobiography I Am Zlatan that he ‘hasn’t been drunk too many times’.
‘(There was) just one episode where I passed out in the bathtub after the first Scudetto with Juventus,’ he writes. ‘That was David Trezeguet, that snake, who egged me on to drink shots.’
Mourinho said: ‘I knew the character – because at his age I think it’s character – the personality, the passion that plays, the quality is there,’ said the United boss.
‘I knew he could do what he is doing here, lots of passion. I told him England is not the best place for holidays – when a rich guy with a phenomenal career wants holidays he doesn’t come to England.
You come to England if you want to be in the most difficult league in the world, to prove yourself.
‘So his decision to come was based on that. It’s not just about goals. It’s about his goals, his leadership, his motivation, I’m really happy.’
Michael Owen claimed recently that Ibrahimovic is just a short-term signing. He is, but so what? United have their own Mr Incredible leading by example. — Daily Mail
