(Malmö) With much love mingled with a hint of hate, Sweden on Monday greeted the retirement of its “greatest footballer in history” Zlatan Ibrahimovic, an enfant terrible who “influenced an entire nation”.
These mixed feelings sum up the tumultuous relationship that united Sweden and Ibrahimovic, son of Yugoslav immigrants from a city of Malmö who in 41 years became the most famous living Swede in the world, plebeian of the neighborhoods self-proclaimed “king”.
Star perceived as arrogant and loudmouth with sensational exits in a country which elevates moderation and the collective to the rank of cardinal virtues, “Zlatan” was, in his country, adored as much as he annoyed.
“It’s very sad that he’s quitting. It’s the end of an era,” Mohammed Salem told AFP outside the Malmö FF stadium, where the young “Ibra” began his professional career in 1999-2001.
National team manager Janne Andersson called him “the greatest Swedish player of all time”.
The one who had managed to put an end to the sulking between Zlatan and the selection in 2021 paid tribute in a press release “to an athlete and an extraordinary sportsman, a unique footballer”.
Conservative Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson hailed him “Swedish pride” (sic), with that distinctive Z of the player that Swedes have trouble pronouncing.
No other place than Malmö, where he grew up in the difficult district of Rosengård, epitomizes the character’s contradictions better.
Zlatan said it himself: “You can get a guy out of Rosengård (suburb of Malmö, editor’s note), but you can never get Rosengård out of him”.
The southern Swedish city finds it difficult to forgive him for having invested at the end of 2019 in a rival club from Stockholm, an act of absolute betrayal for the one who until then had been his hero without rival.
Installed shortly before, the statue of the player has been vandalized on numerous occasions.
Renovated at great expense, it still remains hidden away from view years later, unbolted sine die.
“The ‘ultra’ fans of Malmö FF will surely not forgive him, but in my heart he will always be a kid from Malmö”, consoles Anton Kallholm, a 22-year-old employee working in a school.
For Johan Lund, a 38-year-old municipal worker, the feelings of Malmö residents towards “Ibra” can be summed up as “a mixture of hate and love”.
“Most people like him, but there will always be ‘haters'”, explains the one for whom the player has “meant a lot”.
It’s that the media beast has never minced his words, earning him a number of controversies in the land of “lagom”, the Swedish “just what it takes” which commands not to fall into excess.
On the Malmö FF side, the pill does not seem to have passed yet. The club contented itself with a terse sentence and clarified that it was not planning any tribute or jubilee.
“A long and successful career started in Malmö and ended in Milan. Good luck with life outside football,” the club wrote on Twitter.
For Erik Niva, a sports journalist at the daily Aftonbladet who has followed his entire career, Zlatan “influenced an entire nation”.
An exceptional footballer, the player also symbolizes the changes in a Sweden that has become more mixed and more individualistic than when Ibrahimovic started his first pro match in September 1999.
“We have moved from a collectivist nation to an individualistic people. And no one has been more important in this change than Zlatan Ibrahimovic, ”said the columnist.
