It’s impossible for me to follow any rules when it comes to Zlatan. Even just writing his name, I think I’m really trying to show the reader that just by reading, they’re feeling what everyone who’s heard Zlatan himself say has heard his name in that thick, distinctive Zeta at the beginning.

So the first person is forgiven. In the end, even for the nonconformity of the matter – and not under the right conditions – it is justified for a man who has completely built his personality, football and not only by talking about his party, always in the third person.

So I can’t be objective towards Zlatan. I don’t want to be objective. I can’t and don’t want to be a journalist. I can’t put him in boxes. Who does this for the sake of their belief? Because that’s me, just one of the believers. Who see no mistake. Or that what they see only serves to humanize the concept of Zlatan.

That means yes. It’s not just a name. It will not remain just a name over the centuries. It is obviously rendered verbally, but the whole it encompasses and describes is so comprehensive that it requires explanation and definition. Zlatan, the one with the heavy Zeta accent, is the only transcendent name – just a name – in the history of the sport.

The Alani who grew up in the Rosengard ghetto, the first Islamic neighborhood that was a grandiose project of the Swedish government in the 60s, ended up instead in a ghetto that marginalized all the races of the planet and all the world who completely different from Swedish society to gather within its walls.

It would not survive without the road. Born to divorced parents, he shared his parents’ home without accepting anything normal in their environment. only the street There the experiences he already carried and the unconventional attitudes he had inherited were released.

Good luck with football. Most of his friends – yes, he had them as a child… – are either dead or living in other walls. Not that he didn’t go that route.

Of course he did. For example, there was a time when he went to Malmo for training on a bike he had stolen the night before.

And it wasn’t a crime. DNA was, nature.

But this was channeled into football’s special talent. With all accessories. No coach, not even in his youth (and not only that), liked him. Because no one could give him orders. Many, if not all, tried to be like that, to act as… coaches and mold him.

Yes, nice try.

One who sobered him up after a blunder in Balkans, the first team of his youth (a total nod to his origins), left him on the bench. In the first half his team lost 0:4. Necessity became honorable and so Zlatan entered the field in the second round. The final result was 8-5. For the Balkans. All eight goals were scored by Zlatan. in a half.

He didn’t see anyone. But he quickly realized that the only field where he could fearlessly, without consequences and at no cost, express his character, his origins, his quirks, all his “goodies”, which already stigmatized him anyway, was precisely the field , with a ball at (his) feet.

And from then on everyone should loathe him. He used to string older children with ten kroner – he didn’t have any money, but he always made sure he found them… – as bait, just to force them, to tickle them, just to try and take the ball away from him feet.

The broken legs and the… invitation

Almost thirty years later, when he retired, he showed a moment of justifiable weakness at the age of 42 by earthly standards, an age beyond the reach of any professional activity in any sport.

But immediately, even through a microphone, he reminded her how arbitrary she was, using a knife to curtail dissidents’ rights. In that particular moment, they were Verona fans who were at the San Siro for the Milan game and happened to witness Zlatan’s departure from football.

They didn’t appreciate the uniqueness of the moment and enjoyed it. The answer is stunning in the truest sense of the word: “Shoot, swoosh! It’s the best time of the season for you to see me.”

At the beginning at Ajax he had suffered. He thought countless times about giving up and returning to Sweden. It was a huge investment by “Aianda” at the time, but it didn’t work out. Progress was slow, but when he did, he never looked back as he recognized not only the demands but also the power of communication.

He once injured teammate and Ajax captain Raphael van der Vaart in a friendly match between Sweden and the Netherlands. On her return to Holland she accused him of expediency. He tried to explain – a rarity for Zlatan – but hit a wall.

The then Ajax coach Ronald Koeman had to intervene. He called her into his office to find her. Van der Vaart continued. “He did it on purpose.” She got up, walked to the other end of the table, stood over him and said in the same tone she used to address everyone in the Rosengard ghetto: “Next time you throw that at me, I’ll break both of your legs. And then yes, it will be on purpose.”

He was responding to Giorgio Chiellini’s fierce, energetic push as he left Juventus for Inter. The Italian marked him with unbearable energy in the first meeting, obviously looking for a brawl or a one-on-one mental and physical dominance. by one of them dragging him – literally – into the dressing room after the game. Chiellini.

From the moment he set foot in Barcelona it was clear to him that there, at the Camp Nou, he would not be treated like Zlatan. Nobody at Peps Barcelona was bigger than the club. And he recognized it even before the greeting, as he sat in the allocated seat in the training center parking lot, just a few meters from all the vendettas of Barcelona.

When journalist Laura Lago asked him about his sexual preferences after his now legendary photographic snap with his – as it was captured – tender snap with Gerard Pique entering Masia on camera, Zlatan did not leave the question unanswered. Without getting out of the car and after initially sitting behind the wheel and signing autographs, he rolled down the window and gestured for her to come closer.

“Come to my house and find out what I like. And bring your sister with you.”

Juice and Kevin

And in Manchester he was outraged early on. Every day he had to show an ID when passing through the gates of the training center. One, two, three, he couldn’t take it. Not the process, but its futility and at one of the controls he turned to the responsible person:

“Look my friend, I’ve been here for a month, I’m the best soccer player in the world. If you don’t know me and you still don’t know who I am, then you do it. Wrong thing.”

It was never checked again.

A pound? What difference can a pound make to a million contract? question of principle. And not only his absence, which was pointed out in a receipt for Zlatan’s monthly salary from United, but also the telephone search he himself made of the club’s chief executive, claiming that it was not included in his salary.

The reply he received was that charges had been brought against him for drinking a juice from the minibar at a hotel where the Red Devils had spent their away game nights. Of course, he didn’t forget it when he left and remembered that incident to brand Kojam United as a club with a small mentality.

Apparently it’s difficult to settle for anything less than… the Eiffel Tower, where not only was he introduced when he moved to Paris, but the atheophobe foresaw that he and nothing else would be there during his stay in the French capital her attraction. And of course not only Paris.

When he left the Los Angeles Galaxy, he spoke to his teammates at halftime in a game, citing “Kevin” as an example of mentality and achievement. He kept saying it until someone dared to ask the question.

“Who is Kevin?”.

Kevin, look, he wasn’t on the team.

Undaunted, Zlatan turned and pointed to the person he meant. “Him. Kevin.” His name was Perry. He didn’t dare correct it. For Zlatan, Kevin stayed in LA for the rest of his time.

An incident described in different versions, but always more or less in the same context, as recurring in almost all of the Swede’s dressing rooms. Chance will tell you later.

Nothing is, nothing was. How can it be? He shaped, changed and defined the sport. On every level, in everything. Humbly – and not putting up with it – he was the third pole of the Messi Ronaldo dipole.

Not humble, but more. Something that cannot be measured in titles and is not mitigated by the fact that he has not celebrated a Champions League.

So what;

When he turned 35, he suffered three serious injuries that would have crushed even a 20-year-old. He returned to the fields after everyone else, just because he was told, because he had read and heard, that it was over.

Just as others would have told him it would end. Slowly, he allowed his body—a body built for an MMA athlete, but with the plasticity and grace of a ballerina—to force him into conventionalities. No way.

He played as much and as he wanted. It was just what he liked. He did what and when he wanted.

Arriving in LA, he asked to speak at his first meeting with his new Galaxy teammates.

He stepped into the center of a circle and asked:

“Do you believe in God?”.

To their surprise, the awe of the Omigiri was broken by two or three muffled and muffled acknowledgments from the depths of the circle.

He didn’t need anything else.

He opened his huge hands, lifted his head, shrugged, struck a pose as if ready to prove the answer to come, and might even rise off the ground to persuade.

But in the end, just blurting out was enough.

“Then you believe in me.”

You can listen to the Zlatan Tribute Episode in the El Sombrero by Stoiximan Podcast Series here: