Ibrahimovic fuels Inter's charge

(CNN) -- It's been a while since Inter Milan could claim to be the dominant force in Italian football or even in their home city, yet as Serie A moves from early season antipasti to the mid-season main course, it is the blue half of Milan that has most to cheer.

Still unbeaten in their hunt for a third straight Italian title, Inter currently sit three points clear of the chasing pack following a 2-1 win over Atalanta at the weekend.

Meanwhile, Roberto Mancini's side were on cruise control in the Champions League on Tuesday as they sealed their place in the knockout phase with a comfortable 3-0 win over Fenerbahce.

One of the main reasons for the Nerazzurri's success so far this season has been the goalscoring form of Zlatan Ibrahimovic. With five goals in the Champion League and seven in Serie A already, the Swedish striker has rediscovered the form he showed for Juventus in his first season in Italy in 2004-05 -- and for which Inter splashed out $36 million last year.

Rested for the weekend trip to Atalanta, Ibrahimovic was on target once again on Tuesday in a man of the match-winning performance against Fenerbahce. It is perhaps a measure of his current high standing at the San Siro that he has become Mancini's unquestioned first choice striker ahead of Hernan Crespo, Julio Cruz and Adriano.

And if rumors of a new contract are to be trusted, Inter believe the best is still to come from the 26-year-old, with the Gazzetta dello Sport reporting that the club were ready to tie him to a new deal until 2012 worth $15 million a year.

Combining natural athleticism and ability with the predatory instincts of a pure striker, Ibrahimovic is similar in style to Andriy Shevchenko, Serie A's last truly great foreign goalscorer.

But Inter assistant coach Sinisa Mihajlovic, a defender who played against most of Serie A's best forwards of the last decade, believes Ibrahimovic could yet become as great a player as another AC Milan legend, Marco Van Basten.

"Van Basten was a bit better than Ibrahimovic but that's only because Zlatan is a lot younger than him," says Mihajlovic.

"He's impossible to mark and he knows how to do everything. He's also a bit crazy, and I mean this in a positive sense. He can become the best of them all."

Having established himself in Serie A, the next challenge for Ibrahimovic is to deliver on his potential at international and European level.

A temperamental character, prone to falling out of favor with coaches, Ibrahimovic has not made the impact he should have done for Sweden, failing to score an international goal in two years and regularly dropping in and out of the side -- though most Swedish fans would forgive that if he comes good at Euro 2008.

Meanwhile, Ibrahimovic and his Inter teammates have set their sights on the Champions League, a competition in which the club has long underachieved and been outshone by their city rivals.

"Last year we didn't do so well in this competition because we had a lot of new players in the side and also we were concentrating on winning the league," Ibrahimovic says.

"You cannot always choose what to win and of course we want to win the Scudetto again but now we feel that we have what it takes to do well in the Champions League." E-mail to a friend