ZLATAN
“boast”
verb
- talk with excessive pride and self-satisfaction
about one’s achievements, possessions or
abilities.
“Ted used to boast, ‘I manage ten people.’”
synonyms: brag, crow, swagger, swank, gloat,
show off, exaggerate, overstate;
informal-talk big, bloviate, blow one’s
own horn, lay it on thick
noun
1. an act of talking with excessive pride and self-satisfaction.
“I said I would score, and it wasn’t an idle boast.”
synonyms: brag, self-praise, exaggeration, overstatement,
grandiloquence, fanfaronade
“everyone has tired of listening to your boast.”
Zlatan Ibrahimovic is hardly a wallflower. Milk and toast is as close as he’s ever been to milquetoast. One of the most entertaining footballers in the world, it remains a toss-up as to whether or not he is more artful on or off the pitch. His abilities between the touch lines are well-documented and border on legendary. Of this there can be no debate. But his in-match talents are given a serious run for their money when stacked up against some of the unfiltered drivel spewing from his ever-wagging tongue.
To wit:
“I can’t help but laugh at how perfect I am.”
“Swedish style? No. Yugoslavian style? Of course not.
It has to be Zlatan-style.”
“Zlatan doesn’t do auditions.”
— When Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger offered
the then teen-aged Ibrahimovic a trial —
“What [John] Carew does with a football, I can do with an orange.”
— In response to Carew’s suggestions that Ibrahimovic’s
flicks and tricks were “pointless” —
“First I went left; he did too. Then I went right and he did too. Then I went
left again and he went to buy a hot dog.”
— On how he twisted Liverpool defender Stephane Henchoz
inside-out —
And then there was this gold standard exchange with a reporter in advance of the 2014 World Cup qualifying playoffs:
Zlatan: “Only God knows who will go through.”
Reporter: “It’s hard to ask him.”
Zlatan: “You’re talking to him.”
Cristiano Ronaldo. Lionel Messi. Neymar. Paul Pogba. Sergio Aguero. Kevin De Bruyne. Edinson Cavani. Harry Kane. Luka Modric. Mohamed Salah. Luis Suarez. Wayne Rooney. Gareth Bale. Sergio Ramos. Andres Iniesta. David De Gea. Eden Hazard.
And then of course there were Pele, Maradona, Cruyff, Alfredo Di Stefano, Ferenc Puskas, Beckenbauer, Zidane, Paolo Maldini, Michel Platini, Garrincha, Gerd Muller, Zico, Cafu, Lev Yashin, Marco van Basten, Bobby Moore, George Best, Eusebio, Jurgen Klinsmann, Ronaldinho, Ronaldo and Beckham.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic?
Zlatan?
In December 2013 Ibrahimovic was ranked by British Daily The Guardian, as the third-best player in the world behind only Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. A year later Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter named him the second-greatest Swedish sports person ever, following tennis legend Bjorn Borg. He is currently the third-most decorated active footballer in the world, having won 32 trophies in his career. (Brazilian Dani Alves has won 38 trophies; Iniesta of Spain, 35). He has scored over 500 senior career goals for club and country — only top-level/division goal scorers in official matches played with national teams at all age levels and clubs in all divisions are considered — ranking 28th. on the hallowed all-time list with 506 strikes in 877 matches, a ratio of 0.58 G/PG. With his flamboyant and hard-nosed playing style, creativity, strength, ability in the air and acrobatic finishing — reminiscent of the Dutchman van Basten — Ibrahimovic is widely regarded as one of the best strikers in the game and one of the premier footballers of his — or any — generation. But somehow it is his brash persona and outspoken nature off the pitch that wrest away the headlines and garner the attention. His propensity toward referring to himself in the third person adds spice and flavor to his uniqueness.
Now with the MSL’s Los Angeles Galaxy, Ibrahimovic has quickly become the most outspoken, confident and unapologetic athletic superhero in La La Land. “After me, you don’t need to have (anybody) to come,” he boldly proclaimed. “It’s all done.” Maybe he’s right. It is possible that Major League Soccer has never landed a more accomplished import than the giant 36-year-old Swede, born of a Bosnian father and Croatian mother. Eleven league championships in four European countries playing for some of the world’s most iconic sides — Barcelona, Manchester United, Juventus, Milan, Inter and Paris St. Germain — dot his studded resume. And all the bluster and pomp aside, he knows that it’s about winning. Nothing more; nothing less. Though never directly asked he unsurprisingly had this to say about LeBron’s arrival in LA: “For the city, the basketball fans, the Lakers, it is a good thing. But it is even better if you win. It is all about winning. You don’t win, you came for nothing. He needs to win, just like me.” At 10–10–8 good for 38 points, the Galaxy find themselves in eighth place in the league’s Western Conference, 3 points out of playoff position. (The top six teams in each conference qualify). Zlatan leads the team in Goals, Assists, Shots and Shots-on-Goal. When he arrived in America he took out a full-page ad in the LA Times reading, “Los Angeles. You’re welcome.”
To read his words and digest his quotes on paper, one is overwhelmed by the man’s unabashed arrogance and conceit. But it is deeper and more complex than that. In person you are treated to the gleam in his eye and the faint smile when he pontificates, a signal to the listener that he gets the joke. Do you? What rolls off his acerbic tongue may shock and amaze you, but there is an ‘I know from whence I speak’ element to it that is both persuasive and compelling. His confidence and candor are real. When he is critical of Major League Soccer, citing stifling rules and regulations which prevent the circuit from competing with the big boys — the NBA, NFL and MLB — he is right. How can the world’s “biggest sport” not be that in America? Or even approach that? “American (sports) are huge in America,’ he observes. “(Soccer) is huge in the world. The world is bigger than America.” And when he criticizes his own team’s performance and states that they wouldn’t be deserving of a postseason berth the way they’re playing, he reasons truthfully and with the keen understanding of one who’s been there. “It’s very irritating because we make basic things look very difficult. This should not happen…These mistakes happen where my son is training, but there you learn basic things. We just have to work hard and keep going because I feel a big confusion on the field. Basic things we make look difficult and it cannot happen. Everybody talks about the playoffs…the way we play now we don’t even deserve playoffs.” His fifteen goals and five assists in sixteen starts lend credence to his diatribe(s).
Josh Guesman, producer and co-host of the LA Galaxy podcast, Corner of the Galaxy, believes that Zlatan’s confidence, frankness and ego are good for the club. “Zlatan’s ego has, and currently is, being used to motivate. He certainly uses it to motivate himself and it seems that he’s using it to motivate the team as well…the Galaxy need that. No one is tired of the ego. This team needs more ego, more swagger. But they are tired of under-performing and Zlatan is doing his best to make sure that’s not going to happen.” The injection of ego which Ibrahimovic administers could be the tonic the Galaxy need. He simply states that, “I want to help the club. I want to help the people around. I want to help my teammates win and I’m here for the moment, so all of you should enjoy [it] while I’m here.”
Ego is a funny thing. To have a bit of ego can be important, useful and instructive. Too big an ego is off-putting, damaging, repugnant and counter-productive. What makes Zlatan’s ego easier to take and more palatable than say the colossal ego belonging to the orange-haired president, is that he gets it. He has been there from an impoverished beginning, right on through. He is legit, the real deal. His words ring true and he can back them up. Always.
Even if they sometimes make you cringe.
