Zlatan Ibrahimovic has eyes on elusive European prize as AC Milan take on Manchester United in Europa League

Veteran Swede takes on his former club in week when he has returned to the international scene with Sweden

Zlatan Ibrahimovic celebrates scoring AC Milan's first goal in their 4-0 Serie A thrashing of Crotone at the San Siro on February 7. Reuters

Zlatan Ibrahimovic after scoring his - and AC Milan's - second goal. AFP

AC Milan's Ante Rebic makes it 3-0 at the San Siro. EPA

Milan's Ante Rebic celebrates scoring their third goal with Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Reuters

Zlatan Ibrahimovic scores Milan's first goal past Crotone goalkeeper Alex Cordaz. Getty

AC Milan manager Stefano Pioli. EPA

AC Milan's Zlatan Ibrahimovic heads at goal. AFP

Milan's Zlatan Ibrahimovic makes it 2-0. EPA

Milan's Zlatan Ibrahimovic celebrates scoring their second goal with teammates. Reuters

Zlatan Ibrahimovic scores Milan's second goal. Reuters

Zlatan Ibrahimovic celebrates after scoring Milan's second goal. Getty

AC Milan's Zlatan Ibrahimovic opens the scoring. AFP

All of a sudden, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, the giant who recognises no symptom of age, has two more shots at lifting one of the European trophies that has stubbornly eluded him throughout a remarkable career.

Starting tonight, he can drag the Europa League closer to his orbit, as his AC Milan take on Manchester United for a place in the last eight.

Being Zlatan, he also believes that a Sweden with him back at centre-forward might go all the way at the summer’s European Championship.

Even by the soap-opera standards of Ibrahimovic's storied career, this has been a dramatic week. It saw the announcement that discreet talks with the manager of Sweden, Janne Andersson, over the past four months have led to agreement that the country's greatest-ever goalscorer would reverse his international retirement, more than five years after he closed his account with Sweden at 116 caps and 62 goals.

He will be 40 in October, but the stunning success of his return to elite club football, at Milan, made a compelling case for Andersson. Nobody in Italy’s top division is scoring goals at Ibrahimovic’s rate, his 14 so far this season coming at an average of one every 79 minutes.

The Sweden manager, who has been criticised by Ibrahimovic in the past, also praised the benefit of the superstar’s experience and confidence around the national squad, echoing what Milan coach Stefano Pioli has been saying about the brash, brilliant, and unabashedly boastful Ibrahimovic.

“God is back,” the player posted, as his selection for Andersson’s squad for next week’s internationals was made public, along with confirmation that, if fit, he will take part in the postponed Euro 2020 tournament.

The self-styled deity is back for Milan, too, from a thigh problem that has kept him out of action since the end of last month, just in time for another emotionally charged comeback. Milan this evening host United in the second leg of a knife-edge last-16 tie.

United are the club at which Ibrahimovic picked up the one European prize on his glittering resume, although the circumstances were such that it felt like a footnote. He had suffered a cruciate ligament injury before the 2016-2017 Europa League semi-finals, and missed the last quarter of that season.

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United 1 Milan 1: player ratings from first leg

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It had, in any case, been regarded as his swansong to elite football, a brief, late-career sampling of the Premier League. Ibrahimovic did play again for United after recovering from surgery, but only sporadically, hampered by further injuries. He left in March 2018 for Los Angeles, and the MLS, aged 36.

Little did anybody suspect the move was not a signpost towards easing up, of a man gently setting out the retirement furniture. After two years at LA Galaxy, he returned to a Milan in crisis.

It had been almost a decade since he had won Serie A with them, part of his astonishing sequence of domestic titles, when he finished top of every different league he played in for 12 of 13 consecutive seasons, starting with Ajax in 2004, passing through Juventus and Inter Milan, then a year with Barcelona in Spain, onto Milan and four seasons at Paris Saint-Germain.

United, the next stop, would not deliver a Premier League title, but they did at least bring him back a parcel containing that Europa League gold medal while he was recuperating.

It still irked him that he had never been on site to lift a European trophy, not least because Inter won the Champions League the season after he left for Barcelona and then Barca, where he was influential but not always happy, won it the season after he departed Catalonia.

'Ibra' has a great deal invested in this evening's joust for a place in the Europa League quarter-finals, with Milan and United tied at 1-1 and entitled to believe whoever wins will be the competition's favourites.

“Zlatan has been out of action for a while but I’ve called him up for the game because I think he’s ready,” said Pioli. “His coming back is important for us, although obviously he might not have 90 minutes in his legs.”

Pioli had anticipated that Ibrahimovic would be drawn to playing in a last major tournament with Sweden this summer, and that Andersson could hardly ignore the transformative impact Ibrahimovic has had at Milan.

The club were in the bottom half of Serie A when he returned to Italy 14 months ago; a year on, they were top. “He has improved the team in terms of personality,” said Pioli, “and on the field he remains a great champion.”