Following his 87th minute winner for Manchester United in Sunday’s 3-2 League Cup final win over Southampton, Zlatan Ibrahimovic has now won a trophy with every club he has played for.

Even at the age of 35, when everyone thought he was finished, he is still topping scorer’s lists with 26 goals in all competitions this season, more than anyone else in England.

That alone should demonstrate just how world class a player he is. However, you can’t help but feel he could have been even bigger if only he had toed the line.

Despite appearing to have single-handedly bossed every league he’s played in with goals and titles; in his list of 32 career honours he doesn’t have a Uefa Champions League title or even a Europa League win.

If he had just bit his lip at the right times he would have played in England when he was younger and in his prime, and stayed in Spain longer, and won more titles in the two biggest leagues in the world.

Instead, he’s done it — and don’t get me wrong he’s done it very well — in slightly lower leagues like Holland with Ajax, Italy with Juventus, Inter and AC Milan, and France with Paris Saint Germain.

The chance to have a trial at Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal at the age of 17, was met with that infamous quote: ‘Zlatan doesn’t do auditions’, and when he finally made it to the big time with Barcelona, he had that monumental bust up with Pep Guardiola.

In one infamous Barca game he even had the lowest run rate of all the players on the pitch — including goalkeeper Victor Valdes, which showed perhaps his heart wasn’t always in it.

He ended up leaving both Inter and Barcelona just before they went on to win Champions League titles, as he either chased bigger contracts or just fell out with authority.

It’s for this reason that he’s never won a Ballon D’Or or been spoken of in the same breath as Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, but it’s for us to decide whether that is an injustice or deserved.

If he had just kept his head down, would he have been out of place in the white of Real Madrid in their prime? Or did he hedge his bets and aim slightly lower both, to have his own way, and look better in a lower division?

I for one think the latter is harsh and he could have won a lot more and made a greater impact at a bigger club if only he had toned it down a bit.

That said, it’s this edge in confrontation that got him this far in the first place, and it’s that, which got him out of his rough housing estate in Malmo and gave him fuel as an impoverished son of Bosnian immigrants growing up in well-to-do Sweden to prove people wrong.

I guess you can’t separate that ingrained nature that drives someone from who they are once they’ve arrived. And it’s this flawed genius that makes Zlatan greater than Messi and Ronaldo, because he’s instantly more human and relatable in his imperfections.