Malmö (dpa) – Where the country’s most famous footballer once played with his friends, two boys run after a leather ball. A hollow “clong” sounds as the younger one slips the ball into the iron gate.
The echo still reverberates between the apartment blocks as the two of them run on the gray pavement in the direction of the other gate – back and forth, back and forth. Similar to what Zlatan Ibrahimovic once did himself in Malmö’s problematic Rosengård district, on this little corner of almost holy Swedish earth.
Ibrahimovic – undoubtedly Rosengård’s most famous child – is now 40 years old. Many titles, more than 500 competitive goals and almost as many sensational slogans later, his name doesn’t echo from the football field between all the ocher-yellow residential complexes that afternoon. The two boys are calling out the names Mbappé and Ronaldo today, and on the playground next to it, a little boy is wearing an Argentine Messi jersey.
“Here is my heart”
But to this day “Ibra” is inextricably linked with the district. “Here is my heart. Here is my story. Here is my game. Take it further,” reads a plaque on Zlatan Court, as the square he inaugurated on Cronmans-Weg is officially called.
Before that, Ibrahimovic’s huge feet are immortalized in a star-shaped concrete imprint – the feet that carried the striker into the big, wide world of football. Ibrahimovic grew up at Malmö FF just a few kilometers from Rosengård, bigger at Ajax Amsterdam and finally a two-footed superstar who scored goals from the most impossible situations with a lot of obstinacy, the technique of a street footballer and sometimes acrobatically in kung fu style. As a club player, he won titles in five European countries, at the time at Inter Milan he was considered the best-paid kicker in the world.
That went hand in hand with a lot of testosterone. “Zlatan is only human. Just like a great white shark is just a fish,” he said in 2014 about himself. It’s just one of countless sayings that have accompanied his career. Juventus, Inter, FC Barcelona, AC Milan, Paris Saint-Germain, Manchester United: Ibrahimovic has played in four of the five major football leagues for some of the largest clubs in the world. Only the Bundesliga is missing in that respect.
Like a youngster in San Siro
After two years for the LA Galaxy in the USA, he returned to San Siro at the beginning of 2020: For AC Milan he has been snapping like a youngster again for several weeks after long injury problems. It was annoying that a knee injury stopped him after returning to the national team shortly before the European Football Championship. But Sweden’s record goalscorer and twelve-time footballer of the year does not want to stop. “I want to go to the World Cup in Qatar,” he said recently in an interview with the newspaper “Corriere della Sera”. With the Swedes he is fighting for the World Cup ticket in the playoffs in March 2022.
The relationship to his homeland is as controversial as some things about Ibrahimovic. “I’m not a typical Swede, but I put Sweden on the map,” he said once. Sometimes he accused his compatriots of racism between the lines, sometimes he was bursting with pride in wearing the blue and yellow national jersey. “First of all, he’s a pretty good football player, the best we’ve had in Sweden,” said national coach Janne Andersson, rather soberly, when he brought Ibrahimovic back into the team at the end of March.
“Zlatanera” makes it into the dictionary
The verb “zlatanera” made it into the Swedish dictionary and describes when something is completely dominated. In Malmö they built him a statue – which was then regularly demolished and smeared after Ibrahimovic joined the Stockholm club Hammarby as a shareholder.
“You can get a boy out of Rosengård, but not Rosengård from a boy” – this Ibrahimovic quote is emblazoned near the Zlatan Court on a bridge right by the Rosengård train station. In fact, Ibrahimovic made it to the big figurehead of the crime-ridden district, as a determined boy he first dribbled through the supermarket shelves in his home country and later through the top leagues in Europe.
One unsuccessful station was the one at FC Barcelona. Especially with coach Pep Guardiola, the Swede did not get along. Ibrahimovic, the son of a native Bosnian and a native Croat, finally became happier in Italy. “Milan never had a king, they have a GOD,” he affirmed on social networks. He recently indicated the hope of staying in Milan for the rest of his life.
Lately God was with the Pope. Grinning broadly, the Swede was photographed with Pope Francis. Does he believe in God himself? “No. I only believe in myself,” he told the “Corriere della Sera”. Despite his tremendous self-confidence, even an Ibrahimovic is not immune to worries. “I don’t know what to expect after football. I’m not ready for this new chapter in my life,” he said on the Italian TV show “Che tempo che fa”. And pushed after: “And I’m a little afraid of that.”
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