1981
Zlatan Ibrahimović is born
A boy from Malmö grew into one of the most decorated strikers in football, winning 34 trophies and scoring goals in four different decades.
Zlatan Ibrahimović was born in Malmö, in southern Sweden, on October 3, 1981. His father was a Bosniak Muslim who had emigrated to Sweden in 1977, and his mother was a Croatian Catholic who had also moved there. His childhood was hard: his parents divorced, food was often scarce, and at nine he went to live with his father. He started playing football at six, after someone gave him a pair of boots, and moved between small local clubs, including one founded by Yugoslav immigrants.
By his early teens he was a regular at his hometown club, Malmö FF, though at 15 he nearly quit to take a job at the city’s port before his coach talked him out of it. He signed his first contract in 1996 and broke into the senior team for the 1999 season. Two years later Ajax paid 80 million Swedish kronor to bring him to Amsterdam, the first stop in a career that would cross much of Europe.
From the Netherlands he moved to Juventus, Inter Milan, Barcelona, AC Milan, Paris Saint-Germain, and Manchester United, before heading to the LA Galaxy in 2018 and returning to AC Milan in 2020. Along the way he won two Eredivisie titles with Ajax, three straight Serie A titles with Inter, and four straight Ligue 1 titles with PSG, where he left as the club’s all-time leading scorer at the time.
Why it matters
Ibrahimović is widely counted among the greatest strikers of all time and one of the most decorated players in the sport, with 34 trophies. He scored more than 570 career goals, and he scored in four consecutive decades, from the 1990s to the 2020s. For Sweden he made more than 100 appearances and became the national team’s all-time top scorer with 62 goals. His 35-yard bicycle kick against England won the FIFA Puskás Award for 2013, and he received the Guldbollen, Sweden’s player of the year prize, a record 12 times.
He also became a personality as large as his game, known for his acrobatic finishes, his outspoken remarks, and his habit of referring to himself in the third person. In March 2023, at 41 years and 166 days, he became the oldest goalscorer in Serie A history, and he retired at the end of that season.
Did you know?
Ibrahimović took taekwondo classes at a club in Malmö as a child and was later awarded an honorary black belt in the sport.
