Zlatan Ibrahimovic, a Swedish superstar who has excelled in every major European league, has earned every possible honour at the club and individual levels. Whether he’s playing for Sweden or club football, something crazy is bound to happen if Zlatan is on the pitch. Sadly, for football fans, the star has retired from the game.
AS Nelly Furtado puts it; All Good Things Come To An End!
Zlatan Ibrahimovic announced his retirement from football on Sunday, following AC Milan’s final Serie A match of the season.
“It’s the moment to say goodbye to football, not just to you,” said Ibrahimovic on the San Siro pitch following Milan’s 3-1 win over Verona.
Ibrahimovi is known for his acrobatic volleys and strikes, powerful long-range shots, and excellent technique and ball control. He is considered one of the greatest strikers of all time and one of the most decorated active footballers in the world, having won 34 trophies during his career.
He has over 570 goals in his career, including over 500 club goals, and has scored in each of the last four decades.
Ibrahimovi began his career at Malmö FF in 1999 before joining Ajax two years later, where he quickly established himself as one of Europe’s most promising forwards. He left two years later to join Juventus before joining domestic rivals Inter Milan in 2006, where he won three Serie A titles in a row.
In the summer of 2009, he relocated to Barcelona in one of the most expensive transfers in history. He returned to Italy after only one season, having signed for Inter’s rival Milan. In his first season with them, he won the Serie A title.
Ibrahimovi joined Paris Saint-Germain in 2012, guiding them to their first Ligue 1 title in 19 years and quickly establishing himself as a key figure in the club’s dominance of French football.
During his four-season stay in France, he won four consecutive Ligue 1 titles, was the Ligue 1 top scorer for three seasons, and became PSG’s all-time leading goalscorer. He joined Manchester United on a free transfer in 2016 and won his first European award in his debut season. Ibrahimovi joined American club LA Galaxy in 2018 before returning to Milan in 2020, where he will win his fifth Serie A title in 2022.
Over a 20-year international career, Ibrahimovi is one of eleven players to have made 100 or more appearances for the Swedish national team. With 62 goals, he is the country’s all-time leading scorer. He represented Sweden in the FIFA World Cups of 2002 and 2006, as well as the UEFA European Championships of 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2016.
He has won the Swedish player of the year award, Guldbollen (the Golden Ball), a record 12 times, including 10 consecutive times from 2007 to 2016.
Ibrahimovi’s 35-yard bicycle kick goal against England in 2013 won the FIFA Puskás Award and is widely regarded as one of the best goals of all time.
In 2013, Ibrahimovi was named to the FIFA FIFPro World XI, and in 2007, 2009, 2013, and 2014, he was named to the UEFA Team of the Year. In 2013, he finished fourth in the FIFA Ballon d’Or voting.
UEFA named him one of the best players who have never won the UEFA Champions League in 2015, and FourFourTwo magazine named him the third-greatest player who has never won the competition in 2019.
In December 2014, the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter named him the second-greatest Swedish athlete of all time, trailing only tennis player Björn Borg.
Ibrahimovi is known off the pitch for his brash persona and outspoken comments, as well as referring to himself in the third person.
13 Zlatan Ibrahimovic Facts
1. Born on October 3, 1981, in Malmö, Sweden, Zlatan Ibrahimovic overcame a rough upbringing to become a professional soccer star. He played for clubs in Sweden, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain, nabbing multiple scoring titles while leading his teams to eight consecutive league championships.
2. He is a great fan of Brazilian footballer “Ronaldo”. He idolized him as a teenager.
3. He has a burger named after him in a French café
4. Zlatan Is A Trademark. This is undoubtedly one of the Zlatan Ibrahimovic facts that has caused the entire world to go insane after learning about it. With both “Zlatan” and “Zlatan Ibrahimovic” trademarked, he has exclusive rights to products bearing his name, such as clothing, shoes, and sporting goods. Furthermore, the phrase “To Zlatan” was added to the Swedish national dictionary and is now widely used throughout the world to mean “to dominate or execute something with extreme talent.”
5. Ibrahimović was born in Sweden to a Bosnian Muslim father and a Croatian Catholic mother, who both emigrated to Sweden.
6. Ibrahimović received an honorary black belt in taekwondo; he attended classes at the Malmö Taekwondo club Enighet as a child.
7. Ibrahimović silenced his critics by scoring and dominating in some of the biggest matches in football including the Milan Derby, the El Clásico and in ties from the Champions League and UEFA Euro against some of the strongest opponents in football.
8. Following the 2000-01 season with Malmo, Ibrahimovic joined the Eredivisie runner-up Ajax for a fee of €8.7 million. He didn’t seem to enjoy his first season with the Dutch giants, often finding himself in the Ajax dugout under the then Head Coach of Co Adriaanse.
9. His first game in the line-up for Sweden, they played an Euro (04) qualifier against Hungary. If Sweden lost, it meant they were out of the tournament. Hungary scored after 5 minutes and the game kept getting more desperate, and the other players just couldn’t win the duels with goalkeeper Gabor Kiraly.
10. With 24 appearances in his first season at the Amsterdam Arena, Ibrahimovic scored six goals. This remained as the lowest tally of goals, scored by the Swedish striker after having played for a minimum of 10 games for any club.
11. He represented his club’s senior side in the all Swedish club league “Allsvenskan” in the year 1999.
12. On Feb 14, 2015 in a match against “S.M. Caen” on scoring a goal, he took off his shirt to reveal tattoo of 50 people names around the world, suffering of hunger. This act was in support of “U.N. Food Program.”
13. Once, Zlatan’s agent and lawyer set up a meeting between him and two “Aftonbladet” journalists (one of them was Robert Laul, the one who wrote about the bar incident), to set things straight and try to move on. Zlatan agreed to the meeting, but once the journalists got there he just started screaming at them, and kept on until they started talking back.
