The biggest compliment you can pay the veteran Milan striker is that sometimes he is almost as good as he says he is
Zlatan Ibrahimovic believes you should stick to what you’re good at, which is presumably why he’s been talking about himself again. The Milan striker is probably unique among elite modern footballers in that despite his considerable body of work on the pitch, the most memorable episodes of his career have emanated largely from his own mouth. Perhaps the warmest compliment you can pay Ibrahimovic as a footballer is that there are times when he is genuinely almost as good as he says he is.
Of course, we’ll never forget that famous solo goal for Ajax against that other Dutch team 17 years ago. The time he dominated Ryan Shawcross in an international friendly. The goal he scored into an empty net on his LA Galaxy debut. That’s all safe: golden memories. It’s just that, if he’s really serious about staying in his lane, perhaps he should set the football to one side for a moment and focus on his true calling: making provocative statements about himself in the third person, a field in which he remains utterly peerless.
Related: ‘I will never shut up’: LeBron James responds to Ibrahimovic criticism
Related: Zlatan’s attack on LeBron James echoes the hypocrisy of the American right | Etan Thomas