As football legend Zlatan Ibrahimovic made his tearful retirement speech inside Italy’s iconic San Siro stadium yesterday, a chorus of taunting boos and jeers suddenly erupted from the opposition fans.
The 41-year-old Swedish superstar abruptly stopped his emotional heartfelt address to his beloved AC Milan supporters, turned, and pointed derisively towards the Verona fans.
‘Keep booing,’ he mocked. ‘This is the biggest moment in your year, seeing me.’
The Milan fans roared, the Verona fans were silenced, and he turned away to continue with his goodbye message.
It was all classic Zlatan; only he could be loudly booed while announcing he was retiring, and only he would respond in the hilariously taunting way that he did.
Make no mistake, Ibrahimovic is one of the greatest footballers in history.
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He won 34 trophies including 14 League titles and scored 573 goals in 988 games, with well over 200 assists.
This sensational record puts him right up there with the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.
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But there was so much more to Zlatan than just scoring goals.
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The guy has the biggest ego ever seen in any sport – and the bar for that accolade is very high – and he’s been a supremely entertaining quote machine who like his equally self-effacing sporting hero Muhammad Ali, liked to talk the talk as much as walk the walk.
For instance, Zlatan doesn’t just think he’s God-like, he believes he’s actually God.
Asked whether Sweden would beat Portugal in a 2014 World Cup play-off, he told a journalist: ‘Only God knows.’
‘It’s hard to ask him,’ replied the journalist.
‘You’re talking to him now,’ said Zlatan.
This is a guy who makes even me look crippled by low esteem issues.
‘I can’t help but laugh at how perfect I am,’ he once declared.
But that jaw-droppingly arrogant self-belief was born out of a very tough poverty-stricken upbringing on a rough housing estate in Malmo, Sweden.
His cleaner mother, Jurka used to brutally beat him over the head with a wooden spoon until sometimes it broke – then order him to go and buy a new one.
When his parents divorced, Zlatan ended up spending half his time with his abusive mum, and half with his father Sefik, a Bosnian Muslim caretaker who drank heavily in torment at the unfurling Yugoslav war.
Zlatan, a consequentially damaged and socially awkward young man who spoke with a lisp, hated his big nose, and was permanently hungry, turned to stealing and vandalism and admits he would probably have become a criminal if it wasn’t for football.
But his natural ability to kick a ball, brilliantly as it quickly turned out, turned out to be his salvation.
Zlatan honed his skills, and ferocity, in tough street matches, and as his talent grew so did his size until he ended up a 6ft 5in 15st monster who terrorised defenders all over the world.
'You can take the boy out of the ghetto,’ he said, ‘but you can't take the ghetto out of the boy.'
He was physically imperious, a giant of a footballing deity walking among mere mortals, but he was notably patient and courteous to everyone, young and old
Zlatan viewed football as he viewed life: ‘It’s a fight.’
And he knew how to fight, becoming a taekwondo blackbelt.
He also knew what made him so good.
'I need to be angry to play well,’ he admitted. ‘I need to shout and make some noise.'
That he certainly did, breaking almost as many opponents’ bones as he broke records in two decades of rage-fuelled kicks, slaps, headbutts, and sneaky punches.
Zlatan’s tongue was as savage as his feet.
He once called Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola ‘a coward with no balls’, told Romelu Lukaku to ‘go do your voodoo sh*t, you little donkey’ (for which he received a 10-match ban) and branded fellow bad-boy Joey Barton an ‘English p*ssy.’
Away from football, he was just as reckless, boasting of out-speeding police in his Ferrari or Porsche while ‘driving like a madman’ and reaching 202mph on one occasion.
But beneath the fire and fury was a more sensitive soul.
‘Complex is the best word to describe Zlatan,’ said David Lagercrantz, the Swedish author who co-wrote the star’s autobiography I am Zlatan.
‘On the one hand he’s a strong, warrior type who knew he had to be very tough to survive. So, he takes on fights all the time because he’s always had to. But another part of him is vulnerable.
‘He’s a guy wounded by his upbringing, who uses all that to create strength for himself. In his position, 99 guys out of 100 would have gone under, but he used his anger to make himself better.’
It certainly did.
Ibrahimovic once scored all four of Sweden's goals in a 4-2 victory over England, and his last goal, a 35-yard bicycle kick, was described by the late great commentator legend John Motson as the best he ever saw.
But I don’t think it’s even the best Zlatan scored.
There’s a YouTube clip of a goal he scored for Dutch team Ajax against NAC Breda that is so breathtakingly, dazzlingly magnificent in its panache, verve, and audacity, it almost defies belief. He basically tortures half the rival team with his genius before he scores.
The only place Zlatan isn’t No1 in his own eyes is at home.
His wife Helena Seger, a beautiful blonde economics graduate from a smart middle-class background who is 11 years his senior and mother of their two sons, Maximilian and Vincent, was a successful former children's TV presenter when they met outside a bureau de change at Malmo train station.
She thought Zlatan, then just 20, was a rude, crude, cocky yob.
But they soon fell in love, and she is credited with taming the beast.
Or almost.
‘She understands my character and accepts that I am a bit crazy. I was surrounded by chaos when we met. I was out of control. I am calmer today.’
When asked what he’d bought her for a Valentine’s Day gift, he replied: ‘What do you mean, ‘present?’ She got Zlatan.’
I’ve only met him once, in Los Angeles four years ago when he was playing for LA Galaxy in the MLS League and scored both goals in the home side’s win.
Afterwards, to appease my eldest son Spencer who loves him and had come to the game with me, we waited 90 minutes for Zlatan to emerge from his media duties and walk down a line of starry-eyed people wanting to pay homage.
He was physically imperious, a giant of a footballing deity walking among mere mortals, but he was notably patient and courteous to everyone, young and old.
He had no idea who I was, but I congratulated him on his performance, he thanked me politely, we posed for a selfie, and then he walked on.
And I realised that, as with my friend Cristiano Ronaldo, there were two Zlatans: the swaggering cocky iconic beast of a football genius, and the far humbler person away from the pitch and TV cameras.
He was the main inspiration for Ted Lasso’s Series 3 star signing Zava, the ‘best player on the planet’ who’s a very nice guy away from his chest-beating press conferences.
And as with Cristiano, it comes down to this: if I needed a team to win a match to save my life, Zlatan Ibrahimovic would one of my first choices.
He’d snarl, he’d taunt, he’d fight, he’d argue with the referee, he’d gesticulate abusively to the opposition fans, but he’d also score, and win the game.
Because that’s what Zlatan’s done throughout his life and career.
‘I’m very competitive,’ he once said, ‘so the more extreme and the more challenging, the better. I never turn down a challenge. My continued desire to play comes from that inability to ever give up.’
Now, that desire has finally succumbed to Father Time, but don’t expect Zlatan Ibrahimovic to go quietly into the sunset.
Whatever he does next though, his legacy is assured.
‘Where I come from,’ he said, ‘people were always judging me and telling me, “No, that’s not possible”. I want to show kids growing up like I did that anything’s possible. I’m the living proof that you can succeed.’
He is.
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Thanks for all the entertainment, Zlatan.
You’ve not quite been the greatest ever footballer – that’s Cristiano – but you’ve been the game’s greatest character.
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