He may now be into his 40s and is coming back from a major surgery on his knee, but retirement is not yet on Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s mind.
The Swede returned to Milan halfway through the 2019-20 season and in his second spell so far he has made 74 appearances and scored 36 goals in all competitions, but it would also be fair to say that he has repeatedly battled injury problems with the latest being a reconstruction of his knee.
Ibrahimovic spoke during an interview with CNN about what the future holds and the fire that still burns inside to be decisive for his team-mates.
“I have a big passion for my game. I have a different situation now with my age and with the team-mates I have, but I’m enjoying every day because I think, when you stop football, you will miss it so much that you don’t want to have any regrets saying I should have kept playing,” he said.
“I’m trying to stay at the level with these young guys working hard and just to keep the rhythm. I want to be healthy and, when I’m on that level, then I keep playing and see how far I can take it.
“As long as I can produce results, I will still play. The day I slow down, I want the people around me to be honest and say he’s slowing down and then I’ll be realistic.
“I think in my case I have this drive, I want to become better every day. I have a mentality that if I don’t work hard enough, I’m not feeling good.
“And I think that brings you far, it brings you to a level where you challenge your body because it’s all about challenging yourself. How far can you reach? How far can you take your body?
Zlatan suffered a different serious knee problem when he was playing for Manchester United and there was talk of it ending his career then, which was five years ago, so it is a testament to his mental strength that playing is still on his mind.
“That was my first major injury so that everything was new for me. So I didn’t really know what was expecting, what was ahead of me when I was in that situation.
“At first, I was a little bit afraid because I didn’t really know if I could come back or what would happen. But slowly, I took it day-by-day. It was more a mental thing where I had to keep calm, keep patient and, let’s say, do a boring training.”
There has been a lot of talk about the future of Serie A given the ever-increasing gap between the other European leagues and the Premier Leagues in terms of the money generated.
“Money brings possibilities. Money brings alternatives that not maybe other ones cannot bring and the hype in Premier League is much bigger than Serie A and that’s why the economy is much bigger there,” Ibra said.
“But it makes it exciting also because it becomes a challenge for the Italian clubs to beat the other clubs… still we are pro players and the ball is still a round thing and we are doing the same thing.”
Exactly! The premier league is over-hyped! Seria A has way better players than those in the English league….. Naming exorbitant price for below average players…. Ridiculous! E.g Grealish, Maguire e.t.c