As the post-Sir Alex Ferguson years have marched on, I’ve frequently come back to something Zlatan Ibrahimovic said when he recalled watching United earlier in his career.
“There were always these red shirts,” he recounted. “I thought to myself: I can carry that shirt very well because it’s not too heavy for me.”
The inference stuck: the weight of representing United can be unbearable. So that became something to focus on, to always look for which individuals seemed encumbered by pressure and expectation. What matters more, in retrospect, was the other aspect of Zlatan’s point and assessing who was able to carry the shirt well.