PL Hangover: Will Ibrahimovic Prove a Cantona-Like Catalyst at Man United?

For a man in possession of the finest comic timing and deadpan delivery in football, it's fair to say Zlatan Ibrahimovic subscribes to the adage that many a true word is spoken in jest.

Which is why when over the summer Eric Cantona said with tongue firmly in cheek that the Manchester United new boy could be a prince of the city but never its king, Ibrahimovic will almost certainly have taken it as a challenge. 

He's not quite earned the God-like status he predicted would be his before too long in Manchester, though if he keeps up a scoring rate that was extended to 10 in nine games with a match-winning double at West Bromwich Albion on Saturday, he could be spoken of in the same divine terms afforded to the Frenchman by the time he bids farewell to Old Trafford.

It's now three wins in seven days for a rejuvenated United. They have not lost since a wretched performance at Fenerbahce on November 3. Momentum is growing. 

No player has taken greater responsibility than Ibrahimovic, who has managed 11 goals more than any of his team-mates. They're not a one-man band, but if he takes to the field on Boxing Day against Sunderland with a drum on his back, harmonica in mouth and guitar in hand don't be surprised if he murders "This is the One."

Since a performance at Everton on December 4 that drew criticism despite a goal as he repeatedly dropped deep to leave United lacking a focal point, Ibrahimovic appears to have accepted his job is to lead the line and score goals. Both the player and United have been all the better for it. Wayne Rooney may be nominally holding on to the captain's armband, but few would dispute who the leader of this side really is.

In a perverse way, the assault he committed at the weekend almost felt as significant as the goals. As West Brom defender Craig Dawson lay prostrate it was difficult to tell whether it was the force of impact or sheer incredulity at Ibrahimovic's act of wanton violence that had taken his breath away.

A more stage-school referee than Anthony Taylor would have relished brandishing a red card in the direction of the Manchester United striker, after he had leapt into a first-half challenge with his shoulder later than the average Royal Mail delivery at this time of year. Though neither particularly malicious nor malevolent, it would be hard to argue it wasn't deliberate.

It was the type of challenge neutrals argue United players have been getting away with for years; it was the type of challenge United players haven't been making for years.

Stu Forster/Getty Images

As pale and wan as an undercooked chicken in the post-Sir Alex Ferguson slump, for three seasons it has been feared Trading Standards could demand the removal of the devil from the club's badge. With a sepia filter now applied to the Scot's years, it's easy to forget his teams could bully opposition and hector referees with the best of them.

With Ibrahimovic in their ranks, United may finally be ready to make a pact with Lucifer again. On cue, as though present at a singalong musical, a lively away end at the Hawthorns gave a festive rendition of "Five Cantonas" shortly after Ibrahimovic doubled United's lead. It would have been just as fitting had they done it after he had poleaxed Dawson.  

Given Manchester United agreeing to sign Cantona from Leeds United in November 1992 proved to be the most seismic piece of business conducted in the history of the Premier League—if not English football—it will no doubt seem preposterously premature to draw parallels with the acquisition of Ibrahimovic at a time when the club trail league leaders Chelsea by 13 points.

For starters, they played in Manchester at such disparate points in their careers. Cantona was five years younger than Ibrahimovic is now when he retired. The Frenchman was a recognised talent but had more baggage than Michael Palin.

Football in the early 1990s was unrecognisable to as it is today. Just 13 non-British players figured on the opening day of the 1992/93 Premier League season. If English football is still considered blinkered now, back then it carried a white stick. Cantona opened its eyes to the world. 

Yet in many respects what Ibrahimovic brings to the party is not dissimilar to what Cantona did 24 years ago. Both men draw people to them like a moth to a flame. Both are charismatic, even if Cantona did more talking with his eyes than he did his mouth. As his team-mates would testify, a glacier stare was all it took. Ibrahimovic does not suffer fools gladly either.

"If ever there was one player, anywhere in the world, that was made for Manchester United, it was Cantona," Ferguson said of the Frenchman, per MailOnline.

"He swaggered in, stuck his chest out, raised his head and surveyed everything as though he were asking: 'I'm Cantona. How big are you? Are you big enough for me?'"

How many of the club's current crop in times of sombre self-reflection over the past three seasons might have asked themselves: "Am I big enough for Manchester United? Am I really good enough?" Half, maybe two-thirds? 

Not Ibrahimovic. He pitched up in the north-west of England having won the league in 13 of his 15 seasons spent playing abroad. Even in his advanced years he knows the club is lucky to have him rather than the other way around, and that makes a huge difference in how he carries himself. It's infectious. 

To watch how he converses with his team-mates in post-match interviews, it's clear the younger lads in particular see him as a demigod. Timothy Fosu-Mensah was pictured holding a copy of his team-mate's autobiography, I am Zlatan Ibrahimovic, as he boarded a plane for United's Europa League game against FC Zorya Luhansk in Ukraine. 

It's something Roy Keane picked up on over the summer, per ESPN: "Of course he's a good fit for United, he's a good player. Is he like Eric Cantona? They're big characters, clearly, whatever you say about Cantona he was a popular lad, and I get the impression Zlatan is the same."

The capture of Cantona is perennially described as providing the missing piece of Ferguson's jigsaw at Manchester United, but what is often forgotten is that the team were in horrendously poor form at the time having never recovered from gifting the title to Leeds United the previous season. 

Just two wins had been procured in the 13 matches prior to Cantona's arrival, with United languishing in eighth place having scored just nine goals over the same period.

The details of how the move materialised have taken on apocryphal properties over time, though the most well-told version has Ferguson and then-United chairman Martin Edwards together at the time when Leeds managing director Bill Fotherby put in a call to the latter that would change the course of English football for the nigh on 25 years and counting.

Fotherby was enquiring whether United might be open to selling the ridiculously consistent full-back Denis Irwin. Edwards rejected the idea out of hand, but his counterpart's chutzpah proved contagious. He purportedly asked Fotherby if he would consider selling striker Lee Chapman. When he was given little encouragement, on Ferguson's say-so, sights were trained on Cantona.

He was a cult hero at Elland Road having played his part—again not as great as is widely remembered—in the final furlong of Leeds' title win the previous campaign. The Elland Road club's somewhat draconian manager at the time, Howard Wilkinson, was less enamoured with a player who had scored three goals in 15 appearances. Not a man naturally drawn to charismatic mavericks, he quickly agreed to the sale.

The professional Yorkshireman will have taken one look at Cantona's ripped jeans and leather jacket on touching down from France and broken out in a cold sweat. He probably wouldn't have loved Ibrahimovic's ponytail either.

"Howard Wilkinson was an absolute perfectionist. He wanted his players to be disciplined and adhere to a certain team pattern. Eric just didn't fit it,” Fotherby told Press Association Sport (h/t The Independent). 

"Alex Ferguson gave him a free role and probably wasn't quite as strict with Eric as Howard would have been."

Edwards knocked Fotherby's asking price down from £1.6 million to somewhere between £1 million and £1.2 million. Within 24 hours, he was a Manchester United player.

Alan Shearer, Brian Deane, David Hirst and Mick Harford were thought to be the alternatives considered.

Shearer would have been fascinating, but if this was a Sliding Doors moment and the acquisition of Cantona was the equivalent of Gwyneth Paltrow going on to enjoy a happy life with John Hannah, signing any of the others would have seen her trip from the platform on to the track at the most importune time. 

United went on to win their first title for 26 years. In five years, Cantona won the Premier League four times. He almost certainly would have had a full complement of five were it not for an eight-month ban he incurred for having a difference of opinion with Crystal Palace supporter Matthew Simmons at Selhurst Park in 1995, culminating in Cantona literally putting a well-known anti-racism slogan into practice.

Ferguson admits in the immediate aftermath of signing Cantona that he wondered if he had done the right thing, with France's enfant terrible having announced his retirement just a year earlier at the age of 25 after a series of disciplinary spats with the French Football Federation. Michel Platini talked him into ending his exile.

It came as both a surprise and blessed relief then when Cantona proved himself to be an immaculate trainer. Ferguson concedes in his autobiography, Managing My Life, that he learned a lot from the player. That one of the world's most decorated managers was clearly incredibly fond of a player who ultimately quit in his pomp, to the Scot's immense disappointment, says much about Cantona's appeal. 

Ferguson wrote: "Many people have justifiably acclaimed Cantona as a catalyst who had a crucial impact on our success while he was with the club, but nothing he did in matches meant more than the way he opened my eyes to the indispensability of practice. Practice makes players."

Cantona's almost religious reverence for training is shared by Ibrahimovic, as relayed by Ander Herrera, per the Daily Mirror:

"

He's unbelievable. He doesn't lose one training session. He trains every day at his best trying to get everyone at their highest level.

He is very, very aggressive and demanding but in a good way because every day he wants to win every training session and he wants everyone with him to win to keep working so we are very lucky to have Zlatan with us.

"

It's a measure of his stamina that in United's past two away games at Zorya Luhansk and Crystal Palace, he has scored goals in the 88th minute. He has played over 1,440 minutes and is looking sharper with each game. Football's Benjamin Button could be wearing nappies by the end of the season. 

Ibrahimovic isn't in England for a holiday having featured in 25 of the club's 27 games, but he's clearly relaxed and enjoying himself. He arrived in the knowledge that, were it not for the preternatural Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, he'd probably be regarded the greatest player of his generation, with over 400 goals in his locker spread over five European leagues—encompassing successful stints in Sweden, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain and France. He can now add England to that list.

His 50 goals last season for Paris Saint-Germain led to predictable little Englander accusations he was shooting fish in a barrel in France. Even withstanding a run of just a solitary goal in 11 games earlier in the season, it turns out procuring a Premier League goal is about as tough as landing a battered cod in a chip shop. 

Gary Neville said of his former team-mate, Cantona, per Sky Sports: "That temper is part of the legend. People loved him because he did, and said, things they would love to have got away with."

At the start of the month, after being accused of deliberating kicking Everton defender Seamus Coleman in the head, Ibrahimovic's retort was not exactly Henry Kissinger-esque. 

"Trust me, if I want to kick someone in the head, I know how to kick someone in the head and make him fall asleep. That is the only thing I have to say," he said, via the Telegraph.

It probably drew an indulgent smile from the Football Association's disciplinary panel. Imagine if Troy Deeney or Jamie Vardy had said the same thing.

At the Hawthorns on Saturday, he put in a complete centre-forward's performance. Everything played up to him stuck, his link-up play was immaculate and he topped it off with a pair of goals.

His fifth-minute opener could have been pulled from a time capsule. From inception to birth it took just 13 seconds, a counter-attack of stunning simplicity that was pieced together like a modernist building in eschewing any additional frippery. Its architect could have been Ferguson. A motorway goal in an age obsessed with those of the scenic variety, three long passes followed the most obvious route from A to B.

Paul Pogba started it when he raked a ball from left to right to Antonio Valencia. All afternoon Jesse Lingard accentuated his point of difference to a benched Juan Mata by persistently running in behind West Brom and never did he do it better than when sucking his man towards the ball, before spinning him on halfway.

Valencia dropped in a pass that couldn't have been more precise had a drone delivered it. A first-time cross hit on the half volley by Lingard was equally as controlled in its execution. A stooping Ibrahimovic, who had subtly pulled Dawson to make a yard for himself in the buildup, gave it the finish it richly deserved. 

It was remarkably his 152nd goal in 170 games since the start of the 2011-12 season. In the calendar year, he has scored 48 goals. Only Ronaldo and Messi have managed more.

His second goal took him to 16 in all competitions. He's now just one off equalling Anthony Martial's total of 17 last season, which was enough for the Frenchman to top United's scoring charts. Rooney top-scored the previous two seasons before that, with 14 and 19 goals in all competitions respectively. No United player has hit 20 Premier League goals since 2012/13, when Robin van Persie notched 26, 30 in total, to ensure Ferguson signed off his tenure with an 11th title. 

Jose Mourinho said Ibrahimovic's numbers would be phenomenal for a 25-year-old. It seemed a pertinent point for him to make given the Swede's age seems to be mentioned in every dispatch on his season, whether positive or negative.

For the minute, it's all positive. Just ask Zlatan.

"The older I get, the better I get, like red wine," he said post-match, per the Guardian. "You like red wine? I am a perfect example of that.

"I'm settling in and I feel happy, I feel good. Even if I'm 35, in my mind I'm 20. I think I could play at 50."

If he manages that, Manchester may have a new king after all. 

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