Zlatan Ibrahimovic's misery continues as Swedish fans turn their back on all-time record goalscorer

Rumours of the striker's impending return to international duty have not gone down well in his native Sweden, where a majority of fans want him to stay away from the team

Sweden's fans are not keen on a return (Getty)

It has not been a good two weeks for Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Just a week after being abandoned by his club, Manchester United, Swedish fans have turned their back on the veteran striker too.

Ibrahimovic is his country’s all-time leading goalscorer with 62 goals in 116 international appearances and has won the prestigious Guldbollen award for the Swedish footballer of the year a record 11 times.

The 35-year-old captained his team from 2010 until Euro 2016, when he announced that he would be retiring from international football.

However, the forward stoked up talk of an impending return to national team duty when he posted a cryptic video on Instagram showing himself wearing football boots with the Swedish flag emblazoned upon them.

The video made headline news in Ibrahimovic’s home country – but a poll in the national newspaper Aftonbladet has revealed that a large majority of supporters do not want to see Ibrahimovic in a Sweden shirt again.

65% of the 100,000 people to respond to the poll said they would not be in favour of seeing Ibrahimovic return to the national team.

Zlatan is Sweden's all-time leading goalscorer (Getty)

But there are some arguing Ibrahimovic’s case, including his former coach Lars Lagerback, who is now in charge of Norway.

“If Zlatan was at the level he was at before he was injured then Sweden would have been even better now,” Lagerback said at a news conference on Sunday. “Zlatan is a unique player. If you have a player like that it give you an enormous advantage, as long as there isn't a fixation.”

Lagerback would like to see the striker return to the fold (Getty)

Sweden were underwhelming at Euro 2016 even with Ibrahimovic’s help, drawing with the Republic of Ireland before suffering successive 1-0 losses to Italy and Belgium.

But without their all-time leading goalscorer they have performed well in qualifying for the 2018 World Cup and currently lead Group A, ahead of both France and the Netherlands.