Cult of One

Zlatan Ibrahimovic Football’s most and least important player, enters his Final act.

- Corley Miller

Zlatan’s last for Sweden is against Belgium, in the group stages of this June’s Euros. It starts as ordinary football—a long cross from the right, early and a little hopeful. A low bounce, and Marcus Berg’s foot is racing Toby Alderweireld’s face for a touch just beyond the penalty spot. A gentle upward loop, back toward where Zlatan has stolen half a yard from Thomas Termaelen. He glances quickly at Thibaut Courtois’s positioning and takes a short, chopping step toward the ball.

It’s a clear chance, but a challenging one. Central, only eight or 10 yards out, but the ball’s coming down slowly enough that Vermaelen will get near it, and in this late afternoon of his career Zlatan’s a six-foot-five pillar of muscle and self-certainty, but not the world’s fastest. The percentage play, the way to work Courtois, is for Zlatan to rise up immediately into the elite athlete’s momentary antigravity, to twistee-treat his whole spinal column, and dart a header toward either of the closest corners of the goal.

But this is Zlatan. Instead he waits, gathers, until Vermaelen is seemingly closer to the falling ball than he is, and then he rises up on his right toes, stretches a long left leg up into the sky (past the surprised chin of Vermaelen), and hooks the ball across Courtois and into the far upper corner of the net. It’s perfect Zlatan: There are a few hundred other players large enough to reach the ball before Vermaelen, maybe 20 with the technique to keep the ball below the bar, and possibly two who’d even have the idea in the first place, but the intersection of those sets—of technical ability, insouciant creativity, and sheer bulk—is only and exactly Zlatan Ibrahimovici