A Tribute To Zlatan Ibrahimovic, The Cult-Like Leader Who Transformed An Italian Institution

“When I arrived, very few believed in us. But when we understood that we needed to make sacrifices, suffer, believe and work,” preached the man at the centre of the room.” When this happened, we became a group, and when you are a group, you can achieve the things we’ve achieved.

“Now we are champions of Italy.”

The man at the centre of the room, towering above everyone else, wasn’t a preacher giving out a sermon on a pulpit. It was Zlatan Ibrahimovic, and every Milan player in the dressing room was listening intently, like disciples in a cult, hanging on the word of its maverick leader.

Say what you want about Ibrahimovic’s persona off the field: references to lions, God, speaking in the third person, the whole Chuck Norris-style jokes that circled the internet a decade ago, that all got tiresome a long time ago. But very few can argue against his mentality and his undeniable influence on Milan since his return two-and-a-half years ago.

In short, Ibrahimovic took the winning mentality that was ingrained in him at Juventus under Fabio Capello in the mid-00s and instilled it in this young and inexperienced Milan team, pushing and cajoling them into becoming not just better players, but players able to handle the pressure that comes with playing for one of the grandest clubs in the European game.

It’s genuinely difficult to think of a single player having such a transformative effect on a football club in recent times, both on and off the pitch. Milan’s rebirth can be traced by the club’s decision to bring him back in the winter of 2019/2020 following their 5-0 demolition against Atalanta in Bergamo.

Milan were taken to pieces by a slick Gian Piero Gasperini team that were arguably at their zenith. Sporting director Paolo Maldini knew that this very young, able, but very inexperienced group of players needed guidance, a leader to which they could look to when things weren’t going well.

And so Maldini turned to Ibrahimovic, who was a free agent following his contract expiring at LA Gala
GALA
xy. Who better to demand absolute perfection and almost unreachable levels of satisfaction than the Swede?

Ibrahimovic himself had a point to prove. His departure from Manchester United was bitter on a personal level, as his cruciate ligament injury ended his 2016/17 season early. He wasn’t quite the same player upon his return and many thought his transfer to MLS signified the end of his European career, going out not with a bang, but a whimper, in the most un-Ibrahimovic way imaginable.

So he took up the challenge of trying to restore Milan to their rightful place atop the Italian summit.

And for a good 12 months, he was almost doing it single handedly on the pitch. In the second half of 2019/20 and the first of 2020/21, Ibrahimovic scored 22 Serie A goals in 26 games, a phenomenal rate by anyone’s standards, let alone someone verging on 40.

His presence in the team took the pressure off the likes of Rafael Leao, Brahim Diaz, Ante Rebic and Milan’s other youngsters, all of the limelight firmly on him. It allowed the team to develop in their own time, but Ibrahimovic demands high standards, and many times during the course of games he could be seen scowling at a teammate for a poorly-hit pass in his direction.

This season has been a difficult one, and Ibrahimovic has acknowledged as much in a recent interview with ESPN. Injuries over the last year have curtailed his starts for Milan, and this season he’s only featured from the beginning 11 times in Serie A. Yet he still managed to score eight goals and provided three assists.

But it’s been his off the pitch contributions that have arguably mattered most in the title-winning season. Ibrahimovic has almost morphed into an assistant to Stefano Pioli, and the two could be seen conferring on the sidelines throughout games when Ibrahimovic wasn’t on the field.

“I arrived here making a promise and I kept it. Many laughed when I said that we’d win the Scudetto again, but we worked hard and showed the team what it means to suffer for your results,” he told Sky Sport Italia after the Scudetto was won, Ibrahimovic’s fifth (seven if one counts the two revoked in the aftermath of the Calciopoli scandal).

It wasn’t surprising that when the trophy presentation began and each player came out individually in a simplified manner, he entered the pitch with a bottle of champagne in hand and a cigar in mouth. The larger-than-life character, the locker room leader, seizing the moment to prove the doubters wrong.

“Naturally, I talk a lot in the locker room,” he said. “I told everyone to stay concentrated, as it’s easy in these situations to lose your head. It is revenge for many players that people didn’t believe in.”

What happens to Ibrahimovic now is up for discussion. Milan’s first league triumph in 11 years is the culmination of the Swede’s second stint, and in a sense his work is complete, he’s turned a group of talented players with no record of success into winners. This would be the perfect time to retire, a winner for the umpteenth time in a storied career.

Moreover, his body is struggling to cope with the demands of high level football, entirely acceptable considering he’s been fighting the passing of time for years. It’s long been thought that Ibrahimovic will be the one to decide whether to go again or call it quits this summer.

And should he walk away, his last achievement as a player is arguably his finest. Many Milan fans believe the Scudetto signified the end of the ‘Banter Years’, that very dark era of the 2010s when Milan were represented by the likes of Kevin Constant, Urby Emanuelson, Sulley Muntari and players years past their best like Kaka, Michael Essien and Fernando Torres.

But the true end of the Banter Years was the signing of Ibrahimovic, the cult-like leader whose personality, whose sheer desire to win, transformed an Italian institution.