Zlatan Ibrahimovic Would secure Manchester United exit - Jose Mourinho promise

While Mourinho insists that Ibrahimovic has not asked to leave United, he did not seem opposed to losing the veteran forward and says he will ‘help’ the Swede secure a move if that is what he desires.

Reports emerged in the United States linking the injured 36-year-old with a switch to Major League Soccer, with Alexis Sanchez’s move to Old Trafford pushing him further down the pecking order.

Asked about the rumours, Mourinho said: ‘He talks nothing about it. The first time I read something about that was from you, you media.

‘I read in some website, and I listened in some television channel. He never mentioned that to me. So I don’t know.’

Probed on whether Ibrahimovic might be allowed to leave, Mourinho continued: ‘Zlatan is in the last year of contract.

‘If – I’m saying if if if because you told me – I repeat he said nothing about it to me, but if if if that is true and Zlatan wants a future in another club, in another country, then we are here to help, and to create conditions for that to happen, not to make his life difficult.

High altitude work

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‘But I repeat the only thing that Zlatan told me, or the last thing he told me, is that he wants to recover totally and feel ready to help the team.

That’s the last thing I heard from him.’ Ibrahimovic aggravated his knee at the end of December, and Mourinho says he is closing in on a return: ‘He’s working hard to be fit. I’m not saying injured.

I think he’s in a moment of trying to feel really ready for the demands of Premier League football.’