Player of the season nominees - Zlatan Ibrahimovic

With the season having ended, Sportskeeda decided to let its viewers rate the 30 best players of the season.

We will be shortlisting 30 of the best performers this term, and let you pick your winner.

What do you think? Have your say at the end of the article.

When Zlatan Ibrahimovic was a child, he was often shunted between the houses of his divorced parents, often crashing at his father’s place when his mother had people over only to come back a few months later. While that merry-go-round-like movement has now undergone a metamorphosis, which sees him move from club to club every few years, the end results often have a greater measure of happiness than they would as a kid.

As a child, Ibrahimovic’s parents struggled to make ends meet in Sweden. Now in his thirties, his move to Paris Saint-Germain has ensured that his bank balance is far healthier than what it would have been, had he stayed on at Barcelona or AC Milan.

As it is with all new players (even the legendary Zlatan is no exception to this), it took him some time to settle in Paris following his much-publicised move to the French capital, which involved him grinning broadly in front of the Eiffel Tower holding up PSG’s traditional midnight-blue top.

That bedding-in period alongside the rest of PSG’s nouveaux arrivés saw Lyon climb to the summit of the Ligue 1 table, but once the Parisians got into their stride, there were few who could stop them, which meant Ibrahimovic would lift a trophy in his fourth different nation with his seventh different club.

The partnership

You can’t fault football fans throughout the world watching French football in anticipation over what would develop between Ibrahimovic, Ezequiel Lavezzi, Javier Pastore, Marco Verratti and Jeremy Menez. The addition of David Beckham to that mélange in January meant there were more partnership permutations and combinations to keep fans guessing.

They were not to be kept waiting for long. France was treated to the wonders of Ibracadabra as he scored 35 goals in 46 matches and assisted a further nine, which meant he either found the back of the net or helped find it nearly every game.

His contributions in a Parisian shirt were the best returns he’d received. The only other time he scored 35 goals was during his previous season, which was spent in AC Milan. He was (rather obviously) named the League’s Player of the Year at the end of the season, aged all of 31 years.

The complete forward

The presence of Ibrahimovic in a team always guarantees goals and opposition defences found him impossible to handle. Sumptuous goals from set-pieces and the vision, pace and power he possessed meant playing against him was a very unenviable task. The best showreel to encapsulate that would be in his all-action performance which came for his country against England, where he scored all four goals including a dazzlingly spectacular volley for goal number four in a 4-2 win in Stockholm’s brand new Friends Arena.

That sort of performance was delivered week in, week out by the Swede in the colours of PSG.

Few will argue with me when I say that Ibrahimovic is a striker par excellence in the world of football. Fans would have surely loved to see them paired alongside Robin van Persie at Manchester United or Luis Suarez at Liverpool and would have definitely been quaking in some trepidation over the thought of him joining the striking ranks at Manchester City.

But it isn’t just goals which define Ibra’s importance to les Parisiens. He was brought on as a substitute only once during his first season in France and was never taken off the pitch. He started 33 league games and would have surely featured in more had he not received a red card on the fourth of April against St. Etienne.

Play at PSG is centered around Ibrahimovic, as it is at any club featuring him and that is one of the reasons he did not fit in at Barcelona. In the French capital however, as long as he continues to deliver the goods, the club will be happy to make him the centre of attention.

As long as there is the right support around him, Ibra will continue to excel at what he does best: scoring goals.

His impact

His impact is clear for everyone to see.

PSG won the league title with two games to spare and excelled in the UEFA Champions League. They were beaten only once in the competition (away at Porto in the group stages) and were very unlucky to go out to eventual semi-finalists Barcelona on away goals. The result meant that PSG matched Barcelona evenly over their two legs, playing out a 2-2 draw in Paris before holding the defending champions to a 1-1 draw at the Camp Nou.

A season littered with exemplary performances

There is no one match to highlight Zlatan’s performances because he does so at the highest level all the time.

But there are few games that will surely stand out while chronicling his season. The first would be on the 18th of September, 2012 when he became the first player to score for six different sides in the Champions League (against Dynamo Kiev). On the 8th of October, he became only the third player to play in El Clasico, the Milan derby and the Classique between PSG and Marseille.

The highlight of his season would surely come against Barcelona, levelling against the Blaugrana in the 79th minute once Lionel Messi had opened the scoring in the first half, giving PSG hope and proving that Barcelona’s players were indeed human.

On the 11th of December, he scored his first-ever hat-trick in Ligue 1 in a 4-0 romp against Valenciennes.

These performances only add to one that left purists of the game gasping. You get no prizes for guessing which game I refer to here, because you know very well that I am talking about that night in Stockholm against England, with whom the Scandinavian nation have developed a rivalry in recent years.

That only once again shows how consistent Ibrahimovic has been over the past twelve months or so.

What next?

Ibrahimovic has already pledged his future to Paris Saint-Germain, but the truth is that wherever he goes, he will be successful, simply because that is just the sort of player he is. Now that he has sampled life in France, Italy and Spain, he might choose to ply his trade in Germany next year or hop across the Channel to England.

He has shown throughout his career that the only loyalty he shows (on the field) is to wherever his next pay cheque comes from and that will probably continue to be the defining characteristic of his career. Because at the end, there are three words that best sum up what Zlatan Ibrahimovic has achieved, the reputation he has built for himself and how unique he is to the footballing world:

I am Zlatan.