Jose Mourinho has said that he needs to change his team’s instincts if he is to succeed where Louis van Gaal failed at Manchester United. It is safe to assume that does not apply to all his players.
Mourinho will not try to change Zlatan Ibrahimovic. He will not try to mess with the formula. He will merely try to provide a platform on which his new centre forward can flourish and if he can manage that, Ibrahimovic may well repay him in spades.
Already, only 90 minutes into his year at Old Trafford, Ibrahimovic has won his team a game. In doing that, he won them a trophy.
It’s not a bad start for a player who we sense will either succeed or fail at United, with nothing in between, and the manner of the Swede’s winning goal will have heartened all those who had to sit through Van Gaal’s mundanity for two years. It was everything you want from a No 9, really. A towering leap from a standing start, it was too much for Leicester captain Wes Morgan, a defender who proved too obdurate for most centre forwards last season.
And then there was the header, perfectly weighted to reach the far post, perfectly directed to beat Kasper Schmeichel’s grasp and nudge the upright on its way in.
Yes, Ibrahimovic was offside. He was standing fractionally the wrong side of Morgan when Antonio Valencia delivered a cross from the right side. Leicester will be irritated by that and rightly so.
But United will not overlook what this goal means. Once more they have a real No 9, and if he stays fit, focused and motivated, who knows what difference that may make to them in Mourinho’s first season at Old Trafford.
There were seven minutes to go when Ibrahimovic struck. When it comes to scoring goals, timing is everything, in more ways than one.
Leicester contributed a spirited performance here in a game they clearly wanted to win. They came again after United’s winner but time was not their friend.
Overall, Claudio Ranieri’s team will be disappointed to lose a game they didn’t deserve to but they can at least reflect on playing their part on an afternoon that was as competitive as it was entertaining.
Perhaps it was the back-stories of both teams that made this such a watchable game. Leicester had not been to Wembley for years while United were looking to re-establish a place among the country’s elite.
Whatever the reason, this was an afternoon of committed play, an afternoon that suggested Leicester will not simply go away this season and one that suggested United have bought well in bringing in the young central defender Eric Bailly from Villarreal.
Mourinho has said the 22-year-old will need time to settle. But he was exceptional at times here, enjoying his duel with Jamie Vardy. It seems the England striker will begin the new season as he ended the last, full of hard running and goals.
Leicester really were lively here for spells. Ranieri has understandably decided not to change a successful formula and as such his team were devilish on the counter, with new signing Ahmed Musa cut from a similar cloth to Vardy.
If anything, it was Leicester’s defending that failed them.
Morgan might have done more to stop Ibrahimovic late on and arguably should have halted Jesse Lingard in the build-up to the young forward’s brilliant first-half goal.
Leicester, meanwhile, should have been ahead by the time Lingard struck in the 32nd minute. Bailly had stopped England striker Vardy in his tracks once or twice but Shinji Okazaki had been unlucky, seeing one shot deflected inches wide and a header from a corner come back off the bar.
Those margins are fine but they count and when Lingard exploded towards goal just after the half-hour he showed the requisite precision to score.
Andy King could do little as Lingard sped away from him and Robert Huth was similarly blameless. Morgan, though, totally mistimed his tackle and after he dived over the ball the 23-year-old player was able to run into open space and open his body to beat Schmeichel with his right instep. It was a thrilling strike to light up the game — and the manner in which Leicester responded was just as impressive.
Ranieri’s team couldn’t hurt United before half-time but the Italian made changes at the break and Musa’s introduction was important.
Only seven minutes of the second half had gone when the Nigerian drove hard down the left and though Marouane Fellaini did well to dispossess him, he then under-hit his pass back towards Spanish goalkeeper David de Gea. Vardy, not surprisingly, was on to the ball in a flash and nudged it past De Gea before reversing it back across goal with his left foot and into the net.
For both sets of supporters, the feeling of deja-vu must have been hard to escape. Fellaini was the fall guy, as he was so often last season, while Vardy lived up to his status as the champions’ hero.
We had all been here before and for a while it seemed as though the momentum shift would be telling as Leicester drove at a United team with pace from all angles.
United wobbled. Bailly was booked for a shove on Vardy, and Mourinho’s back line struggled to cope with an attack that now featured Vardy, Musa and another flyer, the ex-Birmingham winger Demarai Gray.
Leicester could have won it as a long throw caused panic and Musa stooped to head over from six yards. But United served warning of their enduring threat as Ibrahimovic nudged a loose ball towards goal after a corner, requiring Danny Drinkwater to hack from the line.
Soon after, he was to get his goal and Mourinho celebrated like it meant something. It did, too.
Afterwards, the goalscorer spoke of his 31st trophy. Mourinho will like the fact that he is keeping count and you can bet the United manager is doing likewise.
It’s instinct.
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