His personality was part of his greatness.
In the end it always comes out as it is. Not even a whirlwind of emotions and tears affect Ibrahimovic and make him remove the mask from Zlatan. San Siro is packed. He wears a black shirt, an elegant tamarro look that happens to fit him perfectly. He has the microphone in hand for the last farewell of his career. He can’t hold back the emotional tears, like many in the stands can’t hold back.
Enya comes out of the speakers in the stadium with her idyllic music. As soon as they go out, Ibra begins to speak: “I can’t breathe, but it’s okay”. He starts with the speech he had studied but immediately comes out of the side to return to himself as soon as he hears the whistles of the Hellas Verona fans coming from the away sector: “Whistle, whistle. This is the moment of your year, that you see me”.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic to Verona fans booing him:
“Keep booing. This is the biggest moment in your year seeing me”.
Classic Zlatan 😂😂 pic.twitter.com/09F9hgXxjc
— WGM ⁶👑 (@WhatGattusoMad) June 4, 2023
San Siro gets gassed, rejoices as if a number of his did on the pitch. It really was, his last show, his last dig, his last play, albeit without a ball. The last time he wore that cocky, inflated balloon mask. As mentioned, he didn’t give up wearing it even there. And at this point it must be said that it was not a mask at all. That Zlatan is this, spontaneous to the limits of arrogance, for better or for worse. This is why his farewell was so intense and admired, even by those who have always considered him unpleasant. Another Messi or Ronaldo could come out sooner or later. But, I feel like saying, there will never be anyone like Zlatan.
I can’t say how much his numbers count but it’s right to put them since we’re talking about a retired footballer. Ibrahimović, between club, senior national team and youth national teams, has collected 999 games scoring 580 goals, more than one every two games. The club with which he has scored the most is PSG, with 156. There he seemed omnipotent, to the point that there was more talk of his character than of how decisive he had been for that club that wanted to become a giant. He has always been talked about both as a footballer and as a character, even when he was off the field injured, even when he was on the other side of the world choosing to taste the MLS experience and life in Los Angeles with the Galaxy.
Even when she went to Sanremo to be a guest, with her arrogant entrances accompanied by Balkan music and not so hilarious jokes about Amadeus and Achille Lauro. The thing that has set her career apart is that she has never ceased to amaze. She had said that you would be retiring soon, that she didn’t want to experience a decline. She didn’t go that way but it’s hard to talk about decline in her last years of career. This is because Zlatan has adapted. To modern football, to his physique, to the fact that his young companions could undermine him from the hierarchies. Even to his role on the pitch, changing it. From an offensive terminal with flair he has become an offensive playmaker, able to attract pressure, free up space for his teammates and be able to serve them with simple or complicated passes.
When he returned to Milan it was legitimate that there was some doubt. He was the champion at sunset who joined a shattered and disheartened team. What could he do, with his age and his injuries? Could he really make a difference or was he just there to sell shirts? Could he really have an impact on the pitch to the point of helping Milan to be something more than a narrow qualification in the Europa League? It seemed improbable, but instead he amazed for the last time.
There have been games in which he looked like a light pole, but if you look closely at his work on the pitch, he has always been precious, albeit impromptu at times. A player still able to give high football moments, like the heel strike with which he sent Castillejo in goal against Benevento. Or the goal against Fiorentina, too good to be canceled by his involuntary hand touch. Or the punishment against Roma. Moments that recalled that Ibra was one of the few able to make a difference at a high level on the pitch in Serie A at almost 40 years old. His leadership and dedication on the pitch helped Pioli and his teammates to convince themselves that they had what it takes to compete in Serie A in his brief final cycle as a Milan player.
The greatness of the last Ibrahimovic was to know how to adapt. It is ironic that Ibra himself had always been accused of this during his career. The one who always changed team because he was spoiled and exuberant. The one capable of playing for both Juve, Inter and Milan, making himself both loved and hated by those fans. The one who had gone to PSG to get money in a less competitive league. The one who announced his own transfer to United, choosing a simple one-year contract. The first great champion since David Beckham to go to MLS. And instead, right at the end of his career, he made sacrifices compared to his other colleagues in order to remain at a high level and where he wanted, at Milan. The club where he felt most at home.
He himself had admitted that he didn’t want the transfer to PSG, finding himself forced by the Milan management to leave to remove his heavy salary from the budget. That story must not have gone down on him and he pledged to return to San Siro at the first opportunity, making a smart move both for himself and for the club. He has rewritten his own image, proving to be intelligent and not a braggart.
Yes before, however, he just seemed like a braggart. That type of player who annoys you when he scores, irritates you by making you say “You’re so strong, why are you acting like an inflated balloon?”. It happened to me for the first time during Italy-Sweden at Euro 2004, when the heel goal more absurd than I still remember. On the confused action and the ball in the area he managed to anticipate Buffon with a back-heel that only he could think of, sending the ball right into the space between the crossbar and the head of Vieri, the man on that post. Ibra had exasperated me throughout the game. “How can they say this is cool?” I said “It’s just big, all smoke, no fire”. With that play, the one that introduced Ibra to the Italians who still didn’t know how much he would have an impact on Serie A over the next 20 years, I began to surrender to his talent. He scored many more goals that made me say the same sentence. I gave up definitively after a free-kick kicked like a missile against Fiorentina, when he was wearing the Inter shirt. There I thought “Okay, if you do these things you can behave however you want”. And that was just the beginning.
Then came a series of plays that are still clear in my memory today. The volley goal from 35 meters against Lecce. The crazy bicycle kick from 30 meters against England. The various stones from outside the area that he signed with the PSG shirt. The upsets with Sweden. Plays that overshadowed the times when he couldn’t control himself on the pitch and teased his opponents, risking expulsion. Many times they waited for him, many times he just asked for it. Other moments in which he returns to being obnoxious. Like every time he made ugly referees, opponents and journalists. What would you like to say: “but what was the need?”. And it was precisely those situations that confronted us with Ibra as he totally is. Now that years have passed there are no more doubts. Those aren’t boron masks, they’re just as much shots of talent as his goals, dribbling or passing. It was his way of playing, of having fun, of being unique.
Many have tried to pin this trait on him as the reason why Ibrahimovic has never won the Champions League. The truth is that he was unlucky. How much bad luck must you have to go to Barcelona the very year in which, in the semifinals, Mourinho brings out his masterclass? What if you then go to Milan and immediately afterwards Barcelona win the Champions League again? It was bad luck, or rather episodes. And football is an episodic sport, and at that juncture the episodes spoke badly for Ibra. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t a decisive player, not at the level of others.
Even without major international trophies, excluding the Europa League won while injured, Ibrahimovic remains one of the 3 most influential players of the last twenty years. He hasn’t stopped being so either after his cruciate injury in Manchester. They called him finished; after all, with that physique it was difficult not to get hurt again, not to adapt one’s strength and game to a weaker knee than before. But he amazed everyone again. With his return to Milan, he set himself a goal: to prove that Zlatan was still Zlatan.
Few players have put themselves on the line like this in the end of their careers. Even fewer have also had his determination to help the collective so much. Upon his return to Milan, now at the gates of forty, he scored 10 goals and 5 assists in 18 games. The following season he scored 15 in 19 games. As long as the physique supported him, he was a factor both performing on the field and helping his teammates, passing on his hunger to them. And when Milan didn’t win, he always showed his face, but without suggesting that he was rowing alone.
Ronaldo, with a different state of form, has never thought this in recent years of Juventus and Manchester United but of himself, treating his teams as tools to celebrate his greatness. Before Zlatan, probably the only offensive player with a positive influence at nearly 40 was Ryan Giggs, but perhaps not so noticeably. Like Ibra, we can say, nobody was there. And the fruits of his work have brought Milan an unexpected and beautiful Scudetto.
This end of his career told us that the title Daniele Manusia had chosen for the book about him: “Zlatan Ibrahimovic, an unrepeatable thing”. Yes, it was truly something unrepeatable: we won’t see anyone like him. Maybe we’ll see a talent as big as his on a physique as huge as his. Haaland, perhaps, today is the thing that comes closest to us in terms of determination and physical domination over his opponents, but perhaps he will never have his own charisma or his own sense of power. But no one will ever have his skills as a popular leader again, whether on the pitch or in front of the microphones.
No one will have that much influence over the fate of their team over a full season at forty. Ibra has squeezed all his talent and his charisma to the last drop, earning the moved greeting of San Siro and welding his narrative to that of Milan, breaking the now stale one of the mercenary who accompanied him throughout his career. life. We’ve been lucky to enjoy it, to the point where perhaps we can even set aside all the aspects of his character that made him unlikable. Because yes, Ibra is obnoxious, arrogant, aggressive. But who isn’t attracted to those who use their aggression with this determination? Who wouldn’t want, at least a little, to be like this? This is why in the end we all loved, or envied, Zlatan Ibrahimovic a little.