Zlatan Ibrahimovic: a player like no other to grace the Premier League
A child of refugees, a bad boy at school and a literary sensation with a totemic ego, the supremely confident Swedish superstar takes to the pitch for Manchester United today
On his transfer from the French champions Paris St Germain to Manchester United in June, Zlatan Ibrahimović summed up his time in the French capital with typical understated modesty: “I arrived a king and I left a legend,” he said. As he described in his wonderfully unguarded autobiography I Am Zlatan Ibrahimović, the Swedish footballer grew up idolising Muhammad Ali; like Ali, he has not only always been his own greatest promoter, but he also loves nothing more than to back his talk with results. Now 34, Ibrahimović led the French club to its fourth consecutive league championship last year, scoring 38 league goals. He also created a lexicon all his own.
A primer published in France, Ainsi parler Zlatan!, (Let’s speak Zlatan!) celebrated the nuances of that idiom, mostly practised in after-match interviews. A Devil’s Dictionary of all things Ibrahimović, it offered an A-Z of the striker’s world, from “Air Zlatan”: “Zlatan does not fly first class or business class, only Zlatan class” to the verb “Zlataner”: “to crush, pulverise and dismember an opponent” (a definition now in the Swedish version of the OED).
It comes as no surprise in this sense that José Mourinho, the new Manchester United manager, made Ibrahimović his first signing: they speak exactly the same language, a calculated mix of swagger, outrage and wind-up. Who else but Ibrahimović can you hear saying, for example: “If I’m not egoistic I will be a simple player and I don’t see myself as a simple player” or: “Sometimes I can’t help but laugh at how perfect I am.”
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Mourinho and Zlatan also have unfinished business. The pair shared perhaps the most satisfying year in their respective journeys around the elite football clubs of Europe in 2009, when they were together for 12 months at the Italian giant Inter Milan. Inter won the league title that year with plenty to spare and Zlatan, at the peak of his powers, finished top scorer in the
in dramatic fashion with a trademark back-heeled goal in the final minutes of the season.
He had waited all that year, he recalled, to get some public reaction from the stony-faced “special one” on the touchline and in that final act he was rewarded: Mourinho leapt up and down like a starstruck schoolboy. The pair shared a respect that bordered on get-a-room bromance: “I would kill for Mourinho,” Zlatan said more than once in his memoir (and you half-believed him), while the Portuguese reciprocated with “a player who gave me as much as Ibra will always be in my heart”.
He chose to begin his autobiography not with any scene of triumph, but with the inside story of a feud
That trust comes from a recognition of the common root of their motivation. Though both men have been vividly successful, winning has always appeared secondary to the primary goal of the settling of scores and slights, of making all the world at every moment give them due respect. Ibrahimović has played for many of the greatest football clubs in Europe – Ajax, Barcelona, the two Milan clubs, Juventus – with an athletic power and explosive grace that have often seemed otherworldly. He has won 10 league titles in the past 11 years, dominating teams with his force of personality, his 6ft 5in frame, and many moments of improvisational genius. It is telling, though, that he chose to begin his autobiography not with any of those scenes of triumph, but with the inside story of a feud that never appears to be far from his thinking.
That feud was with Pep Guardiola, then manager of Barcelona, and widely considered the most inspired and exacting coach of his generation. Guardiola bought Ibrahimović to Barcelona for €70m from Mourinho’s Inter and then appeared determined to make him something he was never going to be: a team player in the style and in the service of Lionel Messi. Their fall-out began with a car. Ibrahimović turned up for training in his Ferrari. Guardiola told him that was not the Barcelona way – players were expected to drive the club’s more humble sponsored Audis on club business. Ibrahimović felt he was being emasculated and a stand-off followed that resulted in the Swede being frozen out by his coach.
Despite some stellar performances in another title-winning season, Ibrahimović couldn’t bear that “Zlatan was not Zlatan”. He was eventually forced out of Barcelona, but not before he had parked his £400,000 supercar outside the manager’s office and squared up to Guardiola, suggesting he was a “spineless coward”, a “man with no balls!” and much worse.
That anger still apparently burns. Ibrahimović refuses to utter Guardiola’s name, preferring to call him, in a moniker dripping with contempt, “the philosopher”. Much of his autobiography seems to be directed at his former coach, not least the line: “If Mourinho lights up a room, Guardiola pulls the blinds.” With his – and Mourinho’s – nemesis now installed as manager of Manchester City, how could Zlatan resist the opportunity for one last shoot-out?
Proving his doubters wrong runs deep with Ibrahimović. He grew up in a council flat in the poorest suburb of the Swedish city of Malmö, the son of refugees from the Yugoslavian wars. His father, a Muslim, had been ethnically cleansed from his massacred village in Bosnia; his mother was a Croatian Catholic. Theirs had been a volatile marriage of convenience that ended when Zlatan was two. His childhood saw him shuttled between her violent rages and his binge drinking. Zlatan was first aware of himself as “a small boy with a big nose and a lisp”. He gained some status among his peers as a streetfighter and a bicycle thief before he found his mercurial feet as a footballer. His school head was recently asked to recall him: “I’ve been at this school 33 years,” she said, “and Zlatan is easily in the top five of most unruly pupils we’ve ever had. He was the number one bad boy, a prototype of a child that ends up in serious trouble.” He tends to agree. When he has been asked what he would have done had he not been earning £250,000 a week, his first thought is “criminal”.
His escape from that fate is a compelling story of personal transformation. He did not make it into the city centre of Malmö until he was 17. When he did get a place in his local professional club’s youth team, the other parents got up a petition to have him excluded after he butted a team-mate. “No big clubs came knocking at the door,” he said. “It was more like: who let the brown kid in?” After a spectacular debut season in Malmö’s first team, he was invited to have a trial with Arsenal but refused Arsène Wenger’s request to play in a practice game: “Zlatan doesn’t do auditions,” he told Wenger, at 19, already thinking of himself in the third person.
He wears some of the traces of his passion and anger on his torso, every square inch inked like an old school desk
His subsequent grand tour of Europe has been a unpredictable mix of joy and rancour. There have been moments of genuine wonder; doubted for many years in Britain, Ibrahimović silenced critics by scoring all four goals as Sweden beat England in 2012, the last, an overhead kick from 40 yards, being among the most outlandish goals ever.
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Ibrahimović is well aware of his box-office value. He has never forgotten feeling fleeced in his first contract with Ajax. “Money has never been important to me,” he claims.“But to be seen as the falafel boy you can cheat and make money out of – that made me furious.”
He wears some of the traces of his passion and anger on his torso, every square inch inked like an old school desk. He claims to have been calmed by his Swedish wife, Helena, and their two sons, but the change is a relative one. Defeat still leaves him violent and raging. Gladiator is his favourite film. He likes the line: “My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius... And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.”
There is, in this context, a fateful quality to Ibrahimović staging his final drama at Manchester United, as the club tries to reignite the warrior spirit of the Ferguson years.
No player more resembles Eric Cantona, the piratical talisman of Fergie’s teams. The Frenchman welcomed Ibrahimović to his old club with the caveat that there “could only be one king of Manchester” – Cantona himself. Ibrahimović predictably raised the stakes in reply: “I will be God of Manchester.” It remains to be seen how much divine inspiration Zlatan can muster as he approaches 35.
But when he walks out at Wembley in a United shirt for the first time for this afternoon’s Community Shield, another definition from Let’s Speak Zlatan! will be in evidence in everything he does: “Doubt – an unknown sentiment”.
THE IBRAHIMOVIC FILE
Born Malmö, Sweden, 1981. His parents – a Bosnian caretaker and a Croatian cleaner – separated when he was two. He grew up in Rosengård, an immigrant neighbourhood, spending most of his time with his father. Zlatan was given a pair of football boots age six before signing his first contract with Malmö in 1996. He later made his name at Ajax, before moving on to the likes of Juventus, Inter Milan, Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain. Now married with two sons. Recently signed for Manchester United for a reported £200,000 a week.
Best of times Winning 13 league titles across four countries over the past 15 years.
Worst of times His infamous falling out with Barcelona coach, Pep Guardiola, during his brief spell at the club. Zlatan felt at odds with his coach’s philosophy, describing him as a “brick wall”.
What he says “One thing is for sure, a World Cup without me is nothing to watch.”
What others say “He wants to win all the time and simply doesn’t let others make mistakes. He insults his team-mates a lot.” Marco Materazzi, who played with him at Inter between 2006 and 2009.
A primer published in France, Ainsi parler Zlatan!, (Let’s speak Zlatan!) celebrated the nuances of that idiom, mostly practised in after-match interviews. A Devil’s Dictionary of all things Ibrahimović, it offered an A-Z of the striker’s world, from “Air Zlatan”: “Zlatan does not fly first class or business class, only Zlatan class” to the verb “Zlataner”: “to crush, pulverise and dismember an opponent” (a definition now in the Swedish version of the OED).
It comes as no surprise in this sense that José Mourinho, the new Manchester United manager, made Ibrahimović his first signing: they speak exactly the same language, a calculated mix of swagger, outrage and wind-up. Who else but Ibrahimović can you hear saying, for example: “If I’m not egoistic I will be a simple player and I don’t see myself as a simple player” or: “Sometimes I can’t help but laugh at how perfect I am.”
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Mourinho and Zlatan also have unfinished business. The pair shared perhaps the most satisfying year in their respective journeys around the elite football clubs of Europe in 2009, when they were together for 12 months at the Italian giant Inter Milan. Inter won the league title that year with plenty to spare and Zlatan, at the peak of his powers, finished top scorer in the
in dramatic fashion with a trademark back-heeled goal in the final minutes of the season.
He had waited all that year, he recalled, to get some public reaction from the stony-faced “special one” on the touchline and in that final act he was rewarded: Mourinho leapt up and down like a starstruck schoolboy. The pair shared a respect that bordered on get-a-room bromance: “I would kill for Mourinho,” Zlatan said more than once in his memoir (and you half-believed him), while the Portuguese reciprocated with “a player who gave me as much as Ibra will always be in my heart”.
He chose to begin his autobiography not with any scene of triumph, but with the inside story of a feud
That trust comes from a recognition of the common root of their motivation. Though both men have been vividly successful, winning has always appeared secondary to the primary goal of the settling of scores and slights, of making all the world at every moment give them due respect. Ibrahimović has played for many of the greatest football clubs in Europe – Ajax, Barcelona, the two Milan clubs, Juventus – with an athletic power and explosive grace that have often seemed otherworldly. He has won 10 league titles in the past 11 years, dominating teams with his force of personality, his 6ft 5in frame, and many moments of improvisational genius. It is telling, though, that he chose to begin his autobiography not with any of those scenes of triumph, but with the inside story of a feud that never appears to be far from his thinking.
That feud was with Pep Guardiola, then manager of Barcelona, and widely considered the most inspired and exacting coach of his generation. Guardiola bought Ibrahimović to Barcelona for €70m from Mourinho’s Inter and then appeared determined to make him something he was never going to be: a team player in the style and in the service of Lionel Messi. Their fall-out began with a car. Ibrahimović turned up for training in his Ferrari. Guardiola told him that was not the Barcelona way – players were expected to drive the club’s more humble sponsored Audis on club business. Ibrahimović felt he was being emasculated and a stand-off followed that resulted in the Swede being frozen out by his coach.
Despite some stellar performances in another title-winning season, Ibrahimović couldn’t bear that “Zlatan was not Zlatan”. He was eventually forced out of Barcelona, but not before he had parked his £400,000 supercar outside the manager’s office and squared up to Guardiola, suggesting he was a “spineless coward”, a “man with no balls!” and much worse.
That anger still apparently burns. Ibrahimović refuses to utter Guardiola’s name, preferring to call him, in a moniker dripping with contempt, “the philosopher”. Much of his autobiography seems to be directed at his former coach, not least the line: “If Mourinho lights up a room, Guardiola pulls the blinds.” With his – and Mourinho’s – nemesis now installed as manager of Manchester City, how could Zlatan resist the opportunity for one last shoot-out?
Proving his doubters wrong runs deep with Ibrahimović. He grew up in a council flat in the poorest suburb of the Swedish city of Malmö, the son of refugees from the Yugoslavian wars. His father, a Muslim, had been ethnically cleansed from his massacred village in Bosnia; his mother was a Croatian Catholic. Theirs had been a volatile marriage of convenience that ended when Zlatan was two. His childhood saw him shuttled between her violent rages and his binge drinking. Zlatan was first aware of himself as “a small boy with a big nose and a lisp”. He gained some status among his peers as a streetfighter and a bicycle thief before he found his mercurial feet as a footballer. His school head was recently asked to recall him: “I’ve been at this school 33 years,” she said, “and Zlatan is easily in the top five of most unruly pupils we’ve ever had. He was the number one bad boy, a prototype of a child that ends up in serious trouble.” He tends to agree. When he has been asked what he would have done had he not been earning £250,000 a week, his first thought is “criminal”.
His escape from that fate is a compelling story of personal transformation. He did not make it into the city centre of Malmö until he was 17. When he did get a place in his local professional club’s youth team, the other parents got up a petition to have him excluded after he butted a team-mate. “No big clubs came knocking at the door,” he said. “It was more like: who let the brown kid in?” After a spectacular debut season in Malmö’s first team, he was invited to have a trial with Arsenal but refused Arsène Wenger’s request to play in a practice game: “Zlatan doesn’t do auditions,” he told Wenger, at 19, already thinking of himself in the third person.
He wears some of the traces of his passion and anger on his torso, every square inch inked like an old school desk
His subsequent grand tour of Europe has been a unpredictable mix of joy and rancour. There have been moments of genuine wonder; doubted for many years in Britain, Ibrahimović silenced critics by scoring all four goals as Sweden beat England in 2012, the last, an overhead kick from 40 yards, being among the most outlandish goals ever.
Advertisement
Ibrahimović is well aware of his box-office value. He has never forgotten feeling fleeced in his first contract with Ajax. “Money has never been important to me,” he claims.“But to be seen as the falafel boy you can cheat and make money out of – that made me furious.”
He wears some of the traces of his passion and anger on his torso, every square inch inked like an old school desk. He claims to have been calmed by his Swedish wife, Helena, and their two sons, but the change is a relative one. Defeat still leaves him violent and raging. Gladiator is his favourite film. He likes the line: “My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius... And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.”
There is, in this context, a fateful quality to Ibrahimović staging his final drama at Manchester United, as the club tries to reignite the warrior spirit of the Ferguson years.
No player more resembles Eric Cantona, the piratical talisman of Fergie’s teams. The Frenchman welcomed Ibrahimović to his old club with the caveat that there “could only be one king of Manchester” – Cantona himself. Ibrahimović predictably raised the stakes in reply: “I will be God of Manchester.” It remains to be seen how much divine inspiration Zlatan can muster as he approaches 35.
But when he walks out at Wembley in a United shirt for the first time for this afternoon’s Community Shield, another definition from Let’s Speak Zlatan! will be in evidence in everything he does: “Doubt – an unknown sentiment”.
THE IBRAHIMOVIC FILE
Born Malmö, Sweden, 1981. His parents – a Bosnian caretaker and a Croatian cleaner – separated when he was two. He grew up in Rosengård, an immigrant neighbourhood, spending most of his time with his father. Zlatan was given a pair of football boots age six before signing his first contract with Malmö in 1996. He later made his name at Ajax, before moving on to the likes of Juventus, Inter Milan, Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain. Now married with two sons. Recently signed for Manchester United for a reported £200,000 a week.
Best of times Winning 13 league titles across four countries over the past 15 years.
Worst of times His infamous falling out with Barcelona coach, Pep Guardiola, during his brief spell at the club. Zlatan felt at odds with his coach’s philosophy, describing him as a “brick wall”.
What he says “One thing is for sure, a World Cup without me is nothing to watch.”
What others say “He wants to win all the time and simply doesn’t let others make mistakes. He insults his team-mates a lot.” Marco Materazzi, who played with him at Inter between 2006 and 2009.
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