Zlatan Ibrahimovic retires

World football said goodbye to one of the brightest and most extraordinary players of recent decades. At the age of 41, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, a Swedish forward who scored almost six hundred goals, announced his retirement, some in such unusual and beautiful ways that no one else seems capable of, and, despite his bad temper, managed to fall in love with himself tens, maybe hundreds of millions of fans.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic announced his retirement after the final match in the Italian championship of Milan, the club for which he had played for the last three and a half years. The Milanese beat Verona in it – 3: 1 – and Ibrahimovic, who did not get into the squad, appeared on the field of the San Siro stadium only to, dressed in black, as if in mourning, to pass under the standing ovation of the stands through the live arranged for him by the partners ” corridor of honor”, ​​and then talk about his decision at a press conference. On it, he appeared to be perfectly familiar to everyone Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who, not at all embarrassed, says that, waking up in the morning, he saw rain pouring outside the window like a bucket and thought: “Even God is sad.” He was all in this phrase – an athlete with an exorbitantly inflated ego, which, not only he never wanted to hide, but which he openly enjoyed, knowing that exceptional natural charisma, mixed with exceptional natural talent, would compensate, correct everything.

The talent was, of course, a special property. Usually the greatness of a player is measured by the titles won. Over a long professional career that started back in the last century, Zlatan Ibrahimovic had a lot of them – 34.

But among them there are no main ones – titles won in top tournaments for national teams or in the Champions League. And this despite the fact that Ibrahimovic played for Ajax, Juventus, Inter, Milan, Barcelona, ​​PSG, Manchester United. And among them there is not a single “Golden Ball”, that is, formal recognition as the first football player in the world, although Ibrahimovic was included in the extended list of contenders for the award 11 times. He came closest to her in 2013, when he took fourth place in the voting. But if the International Football Federation (FIFA) suddenly decided to hold a vote and determine the strongest of those who never got the Golden Ball, Ibrahimovic – at least if not beyond the past quarter of a century – would only compete with David Beckham. As, by the way, in the ranking of the most adored by fans of football players.

The thing is, Zlatan Ibrahimovic is not really a story about titles.

And not even about the statistics, although Ibrahimovic has everything in perfect order with her: in his professional career, he scored 573 goals, and 62 in the Sweden jersey – by the way, her record. She’s talking about something else. About brightness and eccentricity. About the refusal to conform to patterns and the incredible charm that he gave birth to. And about beauty, of course.

The unusual, uniqueness of the son of a Bosnian emigrant blinded many, even when he, a recent junior, moved from Malmö to the already accustomed to upgrade young prodigies for sale to big Ajax clubs. Growth – under two meters, but the functionality, the set of qualities does not correspond to the dimensions at all. Ramming forwards are molded from such tall guys, and Ibrahimovic did not take power, but technique, as well as flexibility and subtlety, acquired, apparently, during taekwondo classes, sometimes turning from “nine” into “ten” without any problems – more like a playmaker than an attacker .

Ajax sold the ripened Zlatan Ibrahimovic to Juventus, in which he immediately earned the prize for the best player in the Italian championship, then in no way inferior in terms of opportunities to English and Spanish, and soon received informal recognition as an unprecedented phenomenon.

Ibrahimovic often scored and often helped teammates score. But much more important is how he scored and helped to score.

These tricks of his are cunning “scoops”, flying around the opponents who reliably block all approaches to the goalkeeper, goals with “scissors” from such intricate positions that at first glance you can’t get to the ball, the ball sent to the Bologna goal with a heel from the summer after a flank chamber , – became video hits and were put on stream. And he performed them with the same regularity, both in Juventus and in Inter, who signed him after Turintsy in 2006, in the wake of a grandiose corruption scandal, were thrown out of the top division and stripped of their titles, which in those famous clubs in which he found himself later.

A selection of Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s maddening spectacularity and complexity of goals executed by Zlatan Ibrahimovic is a whole short film, a portfolio so voluminous that all modern footballers, including Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, can envy him. And it is impossible to choose the most spectacular and complex. It is customary to single out a blow through oneself from 25 meters, with which Ibrahimovic in 2013 defeated the England team on the spot, but in fact there are a lot of options.

And most importantly, his magical goals, passes and tricks were extremely organic, or something.

Despite the fact that Zlatan Ibrahimovic did not try to hide his leadership ambitions, the desire to always be at the forefront, he always managed to be a team player, whose inevitable, given the specifics of style and character, pulling the collective blanket over himself does not harm the team.

The only short period in his biography when Ibrahimovic’s pride and selfishness let him down was the period of his stay at Barcelona with Pep Guardiola, who suddenly decided in 2009 that another celebrity company would not hurt. Strictly speaking, Ibrahimovic’s Catalan season was not terrible in terms of performance (the Swede even got into the symbolic team of the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) following its results), but he still looked in a team whose strength was based on generosity and in which already had its leader in the person of Lionel Messi, a slightly alien element and lost its former gloss. And soon, from the autobiography published by the forward, everyone learned about how he disliked Messi, who allegedly forced him out of the center of the attack to an uncomfortable position, and the Argentine Guardiola, who allegedly indulged the whims. The conflict with the coach eventually resulted in leaving Barcelona.

But then the career returned to its previous course. The leaders of Milan, PSG, Manchester United did not hesitate to pay serious money to intercept Zlatan Ibrahimovic, and, thanks to him, acquiring an extra portion of the interest of the public and new fans, then did not regret either about them or about their luck in the Champions League, nor about the constant incidents involving the attacker, who did not like to restrain himself on the field, ran into disqualifications, breaking the foreheads and noses of his opponents, and allowing himself statements that carry misogyny or even racism a mile away. The Milanese believed in Ibrahimovic’s magic so strongly that they risked re-contracting him at the end of the previous decade, after his pre-retirement-like voyage to the American League, to the Los Angeles Galaxy club. But the return to the elite on the threshold of the fifth decade turned out to be quite good. Ibrahimovic, confirming the status of a man-paradox, made his way to the basis of Milan and again earned an invitation to the national team. And in the reserve, he was only last season, at the close of his decision that he had to say goodbye to football, let the heavens cry about it.

Alexey Dospekhov