statue attacked
Repaired at great cost, the statue has not been returned to its original location and is kept in a secret location.
“The ‘ultras’ fans of Malmö FF will surely not forgive him, but in my heart, he will always be someone from Malmö,” Anton Kallhom, a 22-year-old employee who works at a school, consoles himself.
For Johan Lund, a 38-year-old municipal employee, what Malmö residents feel about Ibra could be summed up as “a mixture of hate and love”.
“Most people love him but there will always be ‘haters’“, explains Lund, for whom the player “has counted a lot”.
Zlatan was always a media beast who never chewed his words, which earned him many controversies in the country of the ‘lagom’, the ‘almost perfect’ Swedish who preaches not to fall into excesses.
On the Malmö FF side, it seems that the wound is still open and he was content with a laconic sentence: “A long career crowned with success that began in Malmö and ended in Milan. Good luck for life outside of football,” tweeted the club, specifying that it will not organize any act of homage.
“A long career crowned with success that began in Malmö and ended in Milan
For Erik Niva, a sports journalist for the daily Aftonbladet who has followed Ibrahimovic’s career, he has had “an influence throughout the country.”
A world-class footballer, the player also symbolizes the changes in a Sweden that has become more mixed race and more individualistic than when ‘Ibra’ made his professional debut in September 1999.
“We have gone from a collectivist nation to an individualist people. And nothing is more important in this change than Zlatan Ibrahimovic”, assures the chronicler.