Zlatan could learn a thing or two from ‘The Greatest’
Zlatan Ibrahimovic is very good at talking about Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Even when he is talking about someone else, Zlatan Ibrahimovic is, in fact, talking about Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
So, when he decided to tell LeBron James to keep politics out of sport it was because he wanted people to notice him again. He said, in case you are one of those people who missed Ibrahimovic’s little bit of advice for James: “I like him [James] a lot. He’s phenomenal, what he’s doing, but I don’t like when people with a status speak about politics. Do what you’re good at doing.” So said Ibrahimovic to Uefa and Discovery+ in Sweden before talking about himself.
“I play football because I’m the best playing at football, I don’t do politics. If I’d been a politician, I would be doing politics. This is the first mistake famous people do when they become famous: for me it is better to avoid certain topics and do what you’re good doing, otherwise you risk doing something wrongly.”
Which is a little weird because in June 2016, just after another famous black sporting activist died, Ibrahimovic said: “My big idol passed a couple of days ago, it was Muhammad Ali. For me, he was a big inspiration, he was my idol, this was one of my dreams, to meet him but it will not happen.
“But what he did inside of the ring, outside the ring, nobody will reach halfway of what he did. He put colour not for one country, he put colour for the whole world and what he stood for so he’s a big inspiration to take after.”
In case you thought that was just him talking, in December of the same year, he said: “I looked at different kind of personalities. That is what drove my motivation, my adrenaline. I liked Muhammad Ali.
“The way he was, the way he performed, the way he was talking, the way he was moving, the way he responded to the critics, to whoever talked. That was my inspiration. It’s exactly how it should be. I was training hard for it, every day, and I’m here now.”
What James does, what Colin Kaepernick did in taking a knee, Tommie Smith and John Carlos and their black hand salute on the podium at the 1968 Olympics, the history of black protest began with Ali. He came
back from the 1960 Olympics with a gold medal and was refused a meal at a diner because he was black.
In 1966, when he was 25, he refused to be called up to the US army for religious beliefs and he was against the war in Vietnam.
Perhaps, Ibrahimovic may not have heard Ali say: “My conscience won’t let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people, or some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America. And shoot them for what. They never called me n **** r, they never lynched me, they didn’t put no dogs on me, they didn’t rob me of my nationality, rape or kill my mother and father ... How can I shoot them poor people? Just take me to jail.”
He was convicted, fined $10,000, had his passport taken away and stripped of the heavyweight world title. He was not allowed a boxing licence and could not fight from March 1967 until October 1970. Threeand-a-half years, from the age of 25-28. The man was in his prime. Did he keep quiet during those years? Did he stick to what he was good at doing? No.
He talked against the war, gave talks across the nation he was not allowed to leave and which had denied him the ability to make a living at what he was good at doing. He was depressed, vilified, but they were not wasted years. He grew as a man and an icon.
He inspired Smith, Carlos, Arthur Ashe, Kaepernick, Steph Curry, Raheem Sterling and Lewis Hamilton to speak up against social injustice and systemic racism. He showed them the path to walk, a voice to make others listen.
“There are only two kinds of men,” Ali told New York Times sportswriter Robert Lipsyte in 1968, “those who compromise and those who take a stand.”
Ali stood for something. Zlatan Ibrahimovic stands for Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
McCallum is a former sports editor who has covered the Olympic Games as well as Rugby, Cricket and Football World Cups.