Crystal Palace vs Manchester United: Jose Mourinho sets big challenge for 'phenomenal' Zlatan Ibrahimovic

Ibrahimovic could have gone to China or the Middle East, where the wages are high and the work less demanding, but Mourinho persuaded the 35-year-old to take up one last challenge

Zlatan Ibrahimovic has now scored 14 goals this season (Getty)

Jose Mourinho revealed he pricked the pride of Zlatan Ibrahimovic to persuade him to come to England. The Swedish striker scored a late winner for Manchester United at Selhurst Park, his sixth in as many matches and 14th this season.

Ibrahimovic, a serial title-winner across the Continent, could have gone to China or the Middle East, where the wages are high and the work less demanding, but Mourinho persuaded the 35-year-old to take up one last challenge.

“He is a rich guy with a phenomenal career, why come here? I said to him, ‘England is not somewhere you go for a holiday. Come to England to do it in the most difficult league in the world, to prove yourself here’. He is a character, he has passion and quality.”

Ibrahimovic also had a hand in United’s first goal, scored by Paul Pogba, literally. Describing how he tried to steer a deep free-kick towards his team-mate he said: “I could see Paul was free, the ball a little bit hit my hand.”

There were poor decisions aplenty by the officials, but Mourinho was in a conciliatory mood. “[Craig Pawson] is one of the good young refs, I like his work. If he made mistakes, unlucky, but young refs need our support, like Bobby Madley. Manchester United-Tottenham [on Sunday] was a big game for him. We need to support young refs.”

Whether Mourinho will be as magnanimous after a defeat remains to be seen. He was in no mood to discuss another potential red card tackle by Marcos Rojo, this time on Wilfried Zaha, but made his point clear by referring to recent tackles in which his own players were on the receiving end.

“Rojo plays phenomenal. He is a clean player, aggressive, emotional - that is in his nature - he is Argentinian, but clean. I did not comment on [Danny] Rose and [Henrikh] Mkhitaryan, or on David Luiz and [Marouane] Felliani. I am not going to comment on this one.”

Alan Pardew was less reticent. “From the sidelines it looked pretty bad, we’ve been to all these meetings where it is a red card,” he said of Rojo’s two-footed challenge. On Pogba’s goal [which looked offside as well as a handball] he added: “They players deserved to go in at half-time 0-0. We could see it was offside from where we were. The linesman should have seen it.”

Pardew added: “I feel for the players, they gave everything. They deserve a break and they are not getting one. They were undone by two very good players.”

Mourinho concluded: “We deserved it. We were the best team. we were super dominant in the last 20 minutes. We go for it with risk and quality. We showed character. Some of the boys were really tired, they had 24 hours more rest than us and we went to Ukraine last week. The boys did phenomenal.”