Zlatan Ibrahimovic is not your typical MLS player. And not just because he's an international superstar who entered Saturday with three times as many goals as he's had starts since joining the Galaxy last month.
What really makes Ibrahimovic stand out is the fact he's a 36-year-old Swede whose best playing days are in the past, not the future. That's an anomaly in a league that has shed its reputation as a retirement home for aging Europeans and remade itself as a launching pad for young and relatively unknown South Americans.
This winter 33 players from nine South American countries joined MLS, seven of them teenagers.