Ibrahimovic puts this flexibility down to his years practising the Korean martial art, tae kwon do, which is based on kicks thrown from a mobile stance. He informed the Italian press after EURO 2004 that his goal against Italy — greeted by most observers as a stunning piece of improvisation-was nothing more than a “rnom-dollyo chagi”, a backwards circular kicking action common in tae kwon do.
His mastery of the ball on the ground in limited space is surprising in such a tall player – Ibrahimovic is 1.92m. This repertoire of flicks and tricks — which have earned him the nickname “Ibracadabra” — he puts down to a childhood spent in one of Sweden’s toughest neighbourhoods, the Rosengard area of Malmo. Ibrahimovic was born there in 1981, the son of immigrants from Bosnia-Herzegovina. It was an area largely populated by immigrants, with a reputation for being full of “gangsters and criminals”, as the player put it in one interview. But the young Zlatan was happy: he had his family, his friends and a football.
“I always had a ball with me,” he said. “It was always, ‘Who can do the most beautiful trick, who can do the most difficult thing?’ That was what we tried, all the rime, in the playground. Every day I’d try to do a new kind of rrick. But after a while, it’s something you stop learning. It’s just something you do. When I cry something on the field, it’s not that I’ve decided, ‘Hey, now I’m going to do something nice’. It’s just something that happens by itself. When it works, it’s very nice. When it doesn’t, it’s bad. But you have LO think, ‘I will try it again’.”

England’s new coach, the Italian Fabio Capelio, once famously used the comparison with the Dutch legend to spur Ibrahimovic to greater heights. When the player transferred from Ajax to Juventus in 2004, Capelio — who had been in charge of Van Basten in the great Milan team of the early 1990s — left Ibrahimovic in a room with a video of Van Basten’s goals. “You’re similar to Van Basten,” he told the striker, “but he scored more goals than you do.”
Ibrahimovic does score goals bur he also does much more. He has often said that he is a ream player who gets as much satisfaction from setting up goals for team-mares as he does from scoring them. It is the kind of platitude forwards often come out with but the statistics back him up. In his final season at Ajax, in 2003-2004, he scored 16 league goals in 22 appearances and contributed 26 assists. The previous season, he scored 13 goals, with 16 assists.
His unselfishness could be seen in one of Inter’s key league games this season, away to high-flying Fiorentina in November. In a hard-fought 2-0 victory, Ibrahimovic produced a slide-rule pass to set up Luis Antonio Jimenez for the first goal and a devastating first-time flick — while looking in the other direction, a la Ronaldlnho – to give Julio Cruz an unmissable opportunity for the second.
As Eriksson noted, Ibrahimovic combines immense physical strength with delicate bail skills. He can do a step-over dribble at speed to compare with that of Manchester Uniteds Ctistiano Ronaldo. He can pull a fast-moving ball down on his toe with the precision of someone taking an onion from a jar with a cocktail stick. He can shoot powerfully and accurately with minimum backlift.
In his ability to contort his upper body while in mid-air, to get a touch on a ball arriving at a difficult height, he is probably unique. It has helped him to produce many important assists and some unforgettable goals, such as his back-heeled lob over goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon for Sweden’s 85th-minure equaliser against Italy at EURO 2004 in Portugal.

“My time will come!” Zlatan Ibrahimovic made this bullish prediction in 2001 as a raw 20-year-old, five months into his first season with Ajax. Six years later, the forward, now playing for Inter Milan, is one of the world’s most outstanding footballers.
Many experts and fans compare Ibrahimovic with Van Hasten, which was perhaps inevitable from the moment that the tall, gangly striker pulled on the Ajax number nine jersey after joining the Eredivisie club from Malmo in his native Sweden. But not everybody sees the similarity. Ibrahimovic’s fellow Swede, the former England coach, Sven-Goran Eriksson, said recently: “In Italy they compare Ibrahimovic with Van Basten. I’m not convinced. Zlatan is Zlatan; he’s unique. He’s a giant with the technique of a Brazilian.”
Before the 2006 FIFA World Cup, Eriksson had tipped Ibrahimovic to become the “best in the world.” Now coach at Manchester City, Eriksson says, rather optimistically: “If Roberto Mancini ever gees tired of Ibrahimovic, he should call me. I would take him immediately, at any price.”