'You didn't study well': An audience with Zlatan Ibrahimovic

Zlatan Ibrahimovic struts into the bar of a New Jersey hotel. “I have only one restriction when I do interviews,” he says, straight-faced.

“When a journalist comes for an interview, he first must put on this outfit.” He points across the room, to the AC Milan red devil costume resting on an adjacent table. The ice broken, Ibrahimovic giggles and leads the way to a quiet boardroom. “My time is expensive,” he smiles, “Let’s get going.”

So here we go. Welcome to Zlatan’s world, where Zlatan could not be any more Zlatan. The Zlatan caricature is now well-established; the self-deification, the comparisons to apex predators, the third-person references. I ask if there is anything he would like to speak about.

“Everything,” he answers. “I am not like the other ones. I am a different species.”

A few days after we meet, he is due to throw the first ceremonial pitch at a New York Yankees game. Has he ever pitched? Will he practice? “No and no,” he shrugs. “I only need one hit.”

To some, the Zlatan shtick can be wearisome, but all the self-aggrandising statements (well, most of them) are greeted with just enough of a knowing grin or a side-eye wink that you get the sense that Ibrahimovic, the person, is very deliberately playing on Zlatan, the brand. If this was boxing, he would be both the fighter and the promoter. But at the same time, even as he veers between bravado and sincerity, he does give the impression of believing much of what he says.

He remains imposing, standing at 6ft 5in (197cm) tall, but also broad, muscular and so fiercely chiselled that he would not look out of place at the Olympics in Paris. Is there a sport he’d fancy his chances in?

“I would be the best in every ball sport,” he says. ”Martial arts — I could challenge. I used to do taekwondo. With my feet, I’m fast, I move well. I had the advantage of being 1.97m tall, but moved like a guy of 1.60m. That’s why I was a freak of nature. This is not me trying to impress you. These are true facts. But I like the adrenaline of taekwondo. I like duels. I need to feel alive. That is the only thing I miss with football. It is not actually playing football. I just miss sometimes feeling… alive.”

He opens out his arms. “Imagine you are in front of 80,000 people, my friend. If you were so small, you would get so big. And imagine if you can get 80,000 to bounce or you can make them cry. This is who I was.”

Ibrahimovic applauds the Sweden fans after a defeat to Belgium at Euro 2016 (EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP via Getty Images)

Ibrahimovic is now 42 and it is just over a year since the Swedish striker retired from professional football. It was a stunning career, beginning at Swedish side Malmo, and then representing Ajax, Juventus, Inter Milan, AC Milan (twice), Barcelona, Paris Saint-Germain, Manchester United and LA Galaxy. He scored 561 goals for club and country and won 12 league titles across four countries. Behind the persona lies one of the greatest footballers of any era.

He is in New York as part of AC Milan’s travelling party for their pre-season tour of the United States. These days, Ibrahimovic is an advisor to the Italian club’s board and an operating partner to the club’s majority owner Red Bird, a fund that manages $10billion (£7.9m) in capital across sports, media and entertainment. Ibrahimovic describes this role as “daily work”. He says his position cuts across the sports and commercial strategy. “I have a finger in many categories to bring results and bring up the value, all with an ambition to win.”

He was part of the taskforce, along with chief executive Giorgio Furlani and technical director Geoffrey Moncada, which advised owner Gerry Cardinale to appoint Paulo Fonseca as the club’s new head coach this summer. The club are seeking to improve on last season’s second-place finish in Serie A. His 17-year-old son, Maximilian, signed his first professional contract with AC Milan this summer. And his younger son, Vincent, born in 2008, is also on the club’s books. “The younger one is coming,” Ibrahimovic Sr. says, “But I keep silent.”

Ibrahimovic says he attends first-team training, observing star names such as Rafael Leao and Christian Pulisic, twice per week. “But I’m not a babysitter,” he warns. “My players, they’re adults and they have to take responsibility. They have to do 200 per cent even when I’m not there.”

Ibrahimovic is an advisor to the AC Milan board (Nicolò Campo/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Would he not want to coach? “No.”

Why not? “You see my grey hair?,” he says, pointing at his very much jet-black hair. “Fully grey hair is after one week as a coach. A coach’s life is up to 12 hours per day. You absolutely don’t have free time. My role is connect everything; to be a leader from above and make sure the structure and organisation works. To keep everybody on their toes.”

From a Milan perspective, it is easy to see why the club’s media and entertainment mogul, Cardinale, wished to keep Ibrahimovic at the club following his retirement. On a commercial level, Ibrahimovic is a global icon with 64.5m followers on Instagram, and he has a rare ability to hold an audience and grow Milan’s brand.

“I am curious about entertainment,” Ibrahimovic says. He suggested recently that he would make a fine James Bond villain. “But I only do things I believe in. I would not do it just to promote myself for nothing.”

At Milan, he is respected by the football department. He returned to the club as a player in early 2020, taking the unusual step of re-entering European football after a couple of years in MLS in his late thirties. Ibrahimovic had joined the Galaxy in 2018, after recuperating from an anterior cruciate knee ligament injury suffered at Manchester United. The move to America, he says, “was to see if I was still alive”.

Ibrahimovic joined LA Galaxy in 2018 (Matthew Ashton – AMA/Getty Images)

“And I found I was still alive. And that became a problem. I needed to go back to where I belonged.”

When Ibrahimovic rejoined Milan, they were 11th in Serie A, averaging 1.2 points per game, but he told the media the club would win the Italian title. The team he joined was the youngest in the division, with an average age of 24.5, and plenty questioned the wisdom of signing a nigh-on 40-year-old. Yet Ibrahimovic guided the group and the next year, they fulfilled his promise: they won the title, for the first time since he played for Milan in their 2010-11 title-winning season. Players such as goalkeeper Mike Maignan, defender Fikayo Tomori, midfielder Sandro Tonali and winger Leao all hit new levels.

“When I came the second time, it was more about giving than taking. I wanted to open the way for a new generation. You’re the example, saying, ‘Listen, this is how it works’. When you’re in Milan, it’s the elite of the elite: pressure, demands, obligations. You have to take responsibility, become a man, because a player is not only about the field, but also the person outside. I was the reference point. I didn’t have an ego about it. I was like some kind of…”

He pauses, searching for the right phrase.

“Guardian angel,” he decides. “So all the pressure would come onto me, not on them, but at the same time I pressured them.”

I point out how unusual it is to see an older player, who has achieved so much, take a paternal role, when other high-profiles names appear to rage against the dying of the light. Did he watch Cristiano Ronaldo during the European Championship this summer? The Portuguese icon appeared personally tormented by the limitations enforced by Father Time. He smiles.

“It depends on the person,” Ibrahimovic says, diplomatically. “I didn’t need to score one goal more or one goal less. It would not change my career. It was more about preparing the future for the other ones because I believe this young generation needs a leader to follow. If you don’t have examples, especially when you’re playing at great clubs, who will show the way?

“I did it in a way where it was not about me, it was about the team. All these young guys that had never played in the Champions League and had never won. When you get older, you need to find trigger points. It’s not about contracts after 20 years. My trigger point was to show the path for the young team.”

Ibrahimovic celebrates winning Serie A in 2022 (Elianto/Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images)

It seems almost pointless to ask, but did he have any anxiety, or insecurity, when returning from MLS?

“No.”

Has he ever felt insecurity?

“No.”

How?

“It is because if I’m objective, I go all in, and then either you succeed or you fail. Is it a 50-50 chance? No, in my case, it’s 99-1. I will do everything to succeed. It’s all mental. I know how good I am. Even higher, actually, 99.9 per cent.

“It depends on you. I am sure about myself. The 0.1 per cent chance or 1 per cent chance (of failure) is depending on them. Either they follow or they go against, but whoever goes against, they fail. This time they followed. And we won.”

If you want to understand Ibrahimovic, it helps to return to his upbringing in Rosengard, an immigrant neighbourhood in the Swedish city of Malmo. He is the son of a Croatian Catholic mother and a Bosnian Muslim father. She worked as a cleaner and he worked as a caretaker. The marriage ended when he was two years old. His childhood was tough and volatile. But, Ibrahimovic says, it fuelled the traits he retains to this day.

“My parents gave me discipline,” he reflects, now speaking a little more softly. “I was raised with my father, but I went to my mother every day. The first thing he taught me – it was discipline. And I followed this discipline until today. I give it to my children and to the team. When you have discipline, you are right.”

Did his level of discipline always feel higher? “Much,” he nods. “An easy example: if my father said to me, ‘Get home at night, 8pm’ then I didn’t go over one minute because I knew if I came one minute later, I would get punished.”

What would be the punishment? He puffs out his cheeks. “In my world, it is aggression. Everybody has their different way of educating. In my family, it is the hard way. And they came from difficult backgrounds. And that is because I was born in Sweden and my parents met 10 years before the (Balkan) war, and then the war came into the picture. So the surroundings were very, very hard.”

I tell Ibrahimovic I had been reading up on some of his tattoos to prepare for the interview. He looked confused. I suggest they can tell you things about a person.

“I don’t know if you learn a lot from my tattoos.” he laughs. “But OK. Tell me my tattoos. Tell me the position and why.”

So on your chest, it is written, ‘Only God can judge me’.

“I don’t have anything on my chest. So you didn’t study well.”

He lifts up his shirt. The tattoo is on his rib cage. Oops.

Ibrahimovic’s tattoo on his ribcage (Nicolò Campo/LightRocket via Getty Images)

But you are the son of a Catholic and a Muslim — are you religious?

“No. I believe in respect. So if I tell you, ‘only God can judge me’, who am I aiming at?”

The critics? “No.”

Yourself? He nods. “I’ll give you a perfect example. When my brother passed away, he had leukaemia. Where was God to help him? You thank God every day, you pray to God. But where was God now? In my world, you are your own God. That’s what I believe. And that’s my mindset.”

On his back, there are more tattoos, including Buddhist mantras.

“Tell me: why are they on my back?”

So you can’t see them?

“Good,” he says, clapping his hands. “Because when you see them all the time, you get tired of them. This way, I will never get tired.”

(Nicolò Campo/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Is that why you changed clubs often, so as not to tire of familiarity?

“No. Changing clubs is to test myself. I take my backpack and I come to your garden. Different culture, different language, away from home. In your own garden, your mother cooks for you, cleans your clothes, you have everything you want. You were raised and born there. So you’re in a comfort zone. I go away from my comfort zone and I test myself.”

Milan, Ibrahimovic says, “gave me happiness the first time and the second time, they gave me love.”

He joined Milan in 2010, initially on loan, after a disappointing period at Barcelona. He has written plenty and said much more about Pep Guardiola, under whom he won La Liga at Barca. He once described the coach as a “spineless coward”. The problem, Ibrahimovic maintains in this interview, is that he simply felt Guardiola never explained to him what, exactly, his issue was with him but this does not appear to be a saga he wishes to continue. This summer’s tour brought a relative truce, as the pair shook hands ahead of Milan’s 3-2 friendly victory against City at the Yankee Stadium. Body language experts would have a field day, the image of which Ibrahimovic posted on his Instagram page with the caption, “Just a friendly game.”

At Milan, Ibrahimovic’s role cuts across the first team and the academy. His job is to provide guidance and leadership. Who provided it in his career?

“At Juventus, I had Fabio Capello. He was destroying me. But at the same time building me.”

How? “Easy. Today you were s***. Tomorrow you’re the best. And it would go like that. So when you think you’re the best, he would destroy you. Then it becomes confusion and you don’t know: ‘F***, am I really the best or am I s***?’ So when you were down, he was building you up.”

Did it work? “I became the best. So, yes.”

Did Ibrahimovic like it? “I didn’t understand it. He made my head… like there was no balance. But it made me always give 200 per cent. He shaped me. But you also need an identity, culture and a tradition from the club, as well as a coach. A winner creates winners. Losers don’t create winners. That’s a culture. So when you come in the club, as a young talent or a player with potential, the club will shape you because you grow to understand the way a club works and the surroundings. At Milan, we want to create this in a positive way.”

Was this a challenge during his experience at Manchester United? Ibrahimovic joined the club under Jose Mourinho in the summer of 2016, scoring 29 goals in 53 appearances, including two in a League Cup final win against Southampton, but the team did not come close to winning the Premier League as the club suffered a malaise after the retirement of Sir Alex Ferguson.

“They were different from what I was used to,” he says.

How so? “You’re just a number there, I felt. Then, in my mindset, I want to make my own history. I was not interested in what happened before, with all respect. Yes, that brings pressure to live up to what they were used to. But I was not interested in listening to the Class of ’92. That doesn’t help me because it’s not my team (that I support) and I wanted to do my own history. I wanted people to say, ‘You won and United won this together.’”

Ibrahimovic joined Manchester United in 2016 (Ben Hoskins/Getty Images)

If United did not win the biggest trophies, Ibrahimovic did confound critics personally.

“I was 35. I came to England. People said I’m too old, I should retire, blah blah blah. But this triggers me. This — I will prove you wrong.

“Jose was a machine. He brings the best out of you. He’s that person — manipulative. He knows how to get in your head. He knows how to treat you, independent of your level.

“He reminded me of Capello. But a newer version. Discipline. Hardcore. Intense. Not the soft types. This is what I like. Remember where I came from? My family is tough.”

If you were to invite me to your family home in Sweden, Zlatan…

He interjects: “Are you inviting yourself? Not many have been in my house.”

From the football world, you mean? “No, in general. Only the people who built it. But after that, nobody. My family is not like that. We are very isolated.”

The question I am trying to ask, though, is whether anyone would know from his home that Ibrahimovic has been one of the planet’s greatest players. Are there photos on show of bicycle kicks and trophy lifts?

“Zero,” he says. “You would only know from the materials (of the furniture) that I made money from playing. But I don’t have even one picture of me in my home. Because my partner (Helena) said, ‘We see you so much in general, I don’t need to see you at home’. So, zero pictures. If you go to my boys’ rooms, you will find some shirts from ex-players but ones they asked for.”

There is one subtle reminder he managed. “In the gym at our home, I put a famous picture of my two feet. That is for my family to know where everything comes from.”

Didn’t you score quite a lot with your head, though? “That was at the end of my career. So not for that house. That house was sponsored by my feet.”

Ibrahimovic’s footprints outside the court where he used to play in Rosengard (JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AFP via Getty Images)

He becomes briefly wistful, explaining that he has his trophies and football memorabilia currently hidden away in his basement.

“I would like to build a museum at home because it’s part of my story, so I want to make something nice. But for the moment, she put it in the basement.”

He grins: “So let’s see. It’s either the museum or it’s her. I have to think about it.”

The hope will be that, one day, there may be contributions to the museum from Ibrahimovic’s sons, with Maximilian, a winger, set to play this coming season in the Italian third tier for the Milan Futuro team, which will compete in the division for the first time. When it comes to his children, Ibrahimovic is more measured.

“It’s not easy for him because, obviously, his father is who he is. So he carries a heavy last name. Wherever he goes, he will always be compared. But at Milan, in my role, I don’t see him differently from other ones. I don’t judge him as my son. I judge him as a player, like I judge all the others. He has to learn, he has to work and he has to earn. Then what happens, happens. He’s strong mentally. People think football is easy and that everybody arrives. But it is not the case.”

The upbringing for his children bears little resemblance to his own, in terms of wealth and comfort. “100 per cent,” he says. “He has to get that drive I had in different ways. Where he gets it, you have to ask him. I can only talk as a father. I gave him discipline, respect, and the hard work thing. You want something, you work for it. You will not get nothing for free here. And that is not only in the game. My job as a father is to make him independent when he grows up. If I don’t make him an independent, I failed.

“I try to keep the balance, because when I was young, my father couldn’t give me what I can give my son today. But my father did the best he could for me. And I’m doing the same thing for my sons. I couldn’t be more proud of them, as a father.”

(Photos: Getty Images; design: Sean Reilly)