For Manchester United to be linked to a big name striker is nothing new as it is well-documented Zlatan Ibrahimovic will almost certainly only be playing for the Red-Devils for this current season. All things point towards the Swedish legend departing for either China’s Super League or MLS in North America next summer. The interesting part about the latest player to be linked with a move to join Jose Mourinho at Old Trafford is that he is a former team-mate of Ibrahimovic’s.
The player we are referring to is of course Paris Saint Germain’s Uruguay international striker Edinson Cavani. Cavani has only 18 months left on his current contract and he is 29 years old which means that if he is going to make another move to a big club he is likely going to do it soon. Ibra and Cavani played together for the past 3 seasons in Ligue 1 until the Swede left this past summer to reunite with Jose. Of course there were some issues at PSG as Cavani prefers to play in the middle and was forced to play in wide positions to accommodate Ibrahimovic. Regardless of the issues they clearly were not that serious as both players were highly productive together and led the team to great success – Cavani scored 25 goals, 31 goals and 25 goals while Ibrahimovic scored 41 goals, 30 goals and 50 goals in the 3 seasons they played togethe which brought many domestic trophies to PSG. So it would be safe to say that Zlatan knows Edinson rather well and can provide Jose Mourinho with all the information about the player he could want to know. If Jose is indeed interested in signing Cavani as The Express report Zlatan will be able to give the United boss the best possible scouting report. You would imagine Ibra will also be able to further assist the two parties by introducing them and would likely be able to “grease the wheels” (as it were) to help get a possible deal done.
The price tag for Edinson Cavani is likely to be north of the €64.5 million PSG paid Napoli for him in the summer of 2013 so buying him would take a serious proposal. Whether Jose decides to go for another experienced centre-forward to replace Zlatan Ibrahimovic remains to be seen but the manager could clearly do a lot worse than signing the Uruguayan who looks to be at the peak of his powers right now – since Ibrahimovic left PSG, Cavani has moved to the centre-forward position and has responded by banging in 20 goals in 20 games so far this season. If Cavani fails to agree a new deal with PSG in the next while then he could well be looking to make one more big move in his career and maybe United and the Premier League will sound good to him if his former team-mate gives him a positive report.