"Zlatan Ibrahimovic said I have a terrible moustache" - Anderlecht midfielder

“Zlatan said I have a terrible moustache. I asked him to look at his nose” – Sacha Kljestan

Anderlecht player Sacha Kljestan told a Belgian newspaper that he had been surprised by some of the comments made by Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

“After a perfectly normal challenge, Ibra turned to me and provoked me, making a joke about my moustache, saying: ‘That really is terrible,’” a smiling Kljestan told Het Nieuwsblad. “I responded by saying that he should think about his nose.” Luka Milivojevic added that Ibrahimovic had tried to catch him in an off-the-ball incident. “He tried to get me when the ball was long gone. Clearly he was not happy to have missed the ball.”

Olivier Deschacht added: “I didn’t want to make him angry so that he would score four goals again [which the Swede did in the game against Anderlecht two weeks ago]. I have too much respect for him.”

This isn’t the first time Zlatan has passed remarks about his opponents. Last October, he was branded “arrogant, dirty and childish” by a player for the Faroe Islands. Zlatan had called them “a bunch of fishermen”.

The Faroe Islands captain, Frodi Benjaminsen, told the Swedish paper Expressen: “He is just so ignorant, someone who just talks a lot, and I don’t like him.

“He is so arrogant. Talks about other players, talks about himself, what he does and how he plays. He also plays dirty, and that is the main reason [I don't like him]. But we didn’t fight – he is not worth it.”

Benjaminsen also talked to local paper Dimmalaetting after the game, describing what had happened between the pair. “He elbowed me just before the interval, and when we left the pitch for half-time I asked him what he was doing,” he said.

“Just when we got inside he grabbed hold of me … He was belittling our team and me. What he said was not nice. He talked about where he is playing and how much he is earning. It was so childish.”