Zlatan Ibrahimovic emerges as fresh face of rebranded Paris Saint-Germain
Everything Swede touches turns to gold with French champions aiming for greater glory
It was business as usual for Zlatan Ibrahimovic as he scored both goals against Guingamp to win France's season-opening Champions Trophy for Paris Saint-Germain in Beijing last weekend.
One long-range thunderbolt and then a penalty had the Ligue 1 title-holders on the way to a 2-0 victory inside just 20 minutes, and gave the rest of France a glimpse of what could come in the season ahead.
In a poll in the popular sports daily this week, 81 per cent of those asked believed PSG would win a third successive championship and 65 per cent said that the Swedish striker would be the top scorer for the third year running.
When I came to Paris, I said that I wanted to make history. I am starting my third season here and we have won five trophies
Other world-class talents, such as Edinson Cavani, Radamel Falcao and James Rodriguez, have come, and in the latter's case, gone from France in the past two years, but none can rival Ibrahimovic's personality.
His presence may spell trouble to PSG's rivals, but his importance to the overall image of a French game, which struggles to generate the same level of interest as its English, Spanish or German counterparts cannot be underestimated.
With 1.84 million, Ibrahimovic has more Twitter followers than any French club, PSG included, and PSG's Twitter homepage has a picture of the Swede celebrating a goal.
He has already rewritten records since arriving in France from AC Milan in 2012 and he is on course to keep on doing so in the campaign ahead.
In 2012-13, he became the first player to score 30 goals in a French top-flight season since Jean-Pierre Papin for Marseille in 1990 and he followed that with 26 goals in the last campaign, 10 more than any other player.
