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Zlatan Ibrahimovic has once again set foot in the debate over his remaining selection.
One problem is that he seems to forget how big his feet are and how many follow each step they take.
The Swedish national team does not need a quasi-debate on racism at the moment.
But Swedish football still needs a debate on diversity.
It started with a shake-up on the bottom deck, when Dejan Kulusevski explained on TV4 that he was surprised he wasn’t allowed to start the match against France. Kulusevski is almost new to the gang, hailing from one of the biggest transfer deals in Swedish football and will form a chain of attack with Cristiano Ronaldo this fall. It is clear that he thinks that he should have been allowed to start the game. It is not obvious that you should express it in an interview.
Now Dejan Kulusevski is 20 years old and does not have a full education at Janne Andersson’s ABC.
The statement, of course, gave rings in the water, that’s what we are here for! – but no more than that, it would have flown in a couple of days.
Then Zlatan Ibrahimovic put his size 47 feet on Twitter and declared that he did not trust the entire management of the Swedish national team. A “shit joke” and “another proof” of what “incompetent people” are ruining for Swedish football. It even drowns it.
Photo: Paolo Rattini / Getty Images Europe
Streaks of envy
Here are a hundred questions to ask, so let’s clean up a couple right away:
Of course, here it is possible to talk about nuances, about the importance of diplomacy and clarity when, as the most important cultural carrier of Swedish football, you start a war with him. But asking Zlatan Ibrahimovic to be a diplomat is as effective as using him as a goalkeeper in Milan. This is not where it has its qualities.
Zlatan hasn’t hesitated to join his old national team since he left, not infrequently with streaks of envy and a kind of pettiness that should still be too good. Today’s poop sandwich on Twitter is a fully conscious way to create chaos for the national team just days before the Portugal game. That part is very sad for Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s own legacy. In a country where he might have aged as an icon with hero status, he has effectively turned down every opportunity to be ennobled by the Swedish Football Association. And then they still erected a statue in his memory. Or I tried it anyway.
You must not be so careless
But the problem is twofold:
That Ibrahimovic shoots poison arrows at Blågult, the national team had almost learned to live with him.
Whispering racism in the direction of the national team each time is a completely different story. And here once can be never, but twice, three times a clear habit.
Last fall, Zlatan disappeared in an interview on Expressen when he called Ibrahimovic’s position on the national team a “cult” and said that no foreign-born players were in Janne Andersson’s first team. That was not true and you shouldn’t be so careless when you make accusations of that magnitude. Especially not if you have feet as big as Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
But the feeling of being a rare bird, of not fitting in and deriving it from its ethnic origin, no one can take it away. That he shares it with many first- and second-generation immigrants in Swedish football is nothing new. Former national team player Abbe Khalili said after the debacle that he and several teammates shared Zlatan’s opinion.
Surveys of the structure of Swedish football at management level show year after year an acute lack of diversity in almost all directions.
Swedish football needs to talk more about this problem and ask the right questions.
It’s hard to get rid of the feeling that something is wrong with your system. It’s no surprise, to use a buzzword, that it spreads to the level of the national team. Because if a whole generation of gamers grow up feeling irritated and suspect that their skin and eye color controls their chances of being selected, every example of this, big or small, will be taken for granted. And just because you are paranoid does not mean that you are not being persecuted.
Photo: JOEL MARKLUND / BILDBYRÅN
Janne Andersson did the best she could on the subject at today’s press conference. It’s easy to sympathize with the league captain who has had this problem on the table more times than he’s comfortable with. It can also be said that the trio Andersson, John Guidetti and Gustav Svensson stopped the questions for more than an hour without once saying Zlatan’s name. Ibrahimovic has gone from being the great idol of many players on the national team to becoming a concern in almost every collection.
This has turned into a full-scale war between the Swedish national team and their former high priest. The Swedish team currently has France, Portugal, Croatia and Zlatan to face. That is at least one size fits all.
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