Zlatan Ibrahimovic has a god complex. In a playful bit the Swede performed throughout AC Milan’s summer transfer window, he introduced one new signing after another as a day of creation. Emerson Royal, for instance, was signed from Tottenham Hotspur on the fifth day. In bible studies, that was when the good lord populated the rivers and the seas.
Milan fans have had that sinking feeling ever since.
When Milan fell behind to Lazio before the international break and appeared on the verge of a second defeat in three games, Ibrahimovic’s absence from the Stadio Olimpico did not go unnoticed.
Milan’s new coach Paulo Fonseca had dropped Rafa Leao and Theo Hernandez for it. When they combined to equalise seconds after coming on, the pair distanced themselves from Fonseca as he held a team talk during a cooling break. As they stood on opposite sidelines, the gap between Milan’s stars and their manager was prematurely interpreted as a fracture. Hernandez later clarified his literal position. Leao and his wing man did not need further tactical instruction so soon after coming on.
It was, to use Milan CEO Giorgio Furlani’s phrase in a press conference, “a non-event”. For the media, however, it was an event horizon; a black hole beyond which no light or radiation can escape. The Olimpico is but a rickety tram ride from the Vatican City where Catholicism’s God-fearing doctrine looms large in the ivory shadow of St Peter’s Basilica. The incident raised the question: if Ibrahimovic had been present would Leao and Hernandez have acted like they did? Would God have spoken?
It is, in many respects, a moot point. Milan did not need Ibrahimovic to be at San Siro at the weekend to record their first win of the season over promoted Venezia. An executive team was already in place before Milan’s owner Gerry Cardinale made him an operating partner in his asset management fund, with a senior advisor role at Milan included. Furlani and technical director Geoffrey Moncada had overseen a league title before RedBird Capital Partner’s takeover in 2022.
As such, Zlatan the omnipotent needn’t be there all of the time. He joked at the end of the transfer window that on the seventh day, God rested. Then again he also jested to Sky Italia: “When the lion’s away, the cats appear.”
The lion returned for Tuesday’s Champions League opener against Liverpool at San Siro.
Appearing on Sky Italia before the game, Zlatan could see in the TV studio one of his former coaches, a Milan great, in Fabio Capello, and Zvonimir Boban, who made a timely return to punditry. Boban, a firebrand intellectual in boots, played under Capello and later became an executive at the club beside Paolo Maldini. He had pushed to bring Ibrahimovic back to the club in 2020. It was considered a pivotal move in resetting Milan’s culture, raising standards and winning the title in 2021. Boban wasn’t around to see it. He had been sacked for giving an interview to Gazzetta dello Sport criticising his own club’s strategy.
Boban spoke to the pink again last week, this time expressing perplexity at Ibrahimovic’s role. “Ibra is a genius,” he said, “and I’ll be forever grateful because he accepted to come back out of love for the club, changing Milan’s recent history and all of us. That said, to judge him, I don’t get what he does, and what his responsibilities are. I hope he understands them because in the end, he’ll be the one who gets judged, not Moncada.”
Wherever Ibrahimovic had been in his time away from Milan, he’d clearly read Boban’s chat with Gazzetta and didn’t intend on letting him forget about it. As Boban tried to exchange pleasantries on Sky Italia — “It’s always a pleasure to see the great Zlatan” — the Swede swiftly replied: “You still haven’t understood my role though.” As a policeman in a famous Dinamo Zagreb-Red Star Belgrade game found out in 1990, Boban is not one to duck a fight. “No one has,” he fired back.
Ibrahimovic, by now relishing the verbal joust, smiled down the camera and said: “Let me explain it to you then: I’m in command. I’m the boss and everyone works for me.”
So it’s AZ Milan?
“We work in silence,” he said, surely knowing the noise his words would cause. If the team is performing and wins come as a consequence then God is good. If not, faith is challenged and a common refrain comes to mind. If God really does exist why would he allow this to happen?
Milan picked up two points from nine at the start of the season in part because they conceded twice a game, and always the same goal. As the team bus processed to San Siro at the weekend, the ultras lining the streets unfurled a banner saying: “No more excuses. This is the last call.” Milan responded to it by going 4-0 up inside half an hour.
It was a call of their own. But one that went unheeded by the fair-weather fans on Tuesday. San Siro was not a sell-out for the biggest home game of the league phase of the expanded Champions League. The Curva Sud was full as usual and displayed a choreography with the word ‘FEARLESS’. But the opposite end was patchy. This is unusual since the ground’s reopening after the Covid-19 restrictions. Last year, for instance, Milan’s games were the fifth-best attended in Europe — 1.3million fans came through the turnstiles.
High ticket prices were cited but it seems work is to be done to bring the fans back on side after Maldini’s dismissal and the sale of Sandro Tonali last year. A grace period has ended and while many supporters acknowledged it was time to move on from Stefano Pioli, the appointment of Fonseca and the decision to sign several players for €20million rather than a big, show-stopping name has led to an element of disaffection.
Tuesday night started well against an opponent as used to beating AC Milan at San Siro as Inter Milan in recent years. Man of the match last weekend, Christian Pulisic gave Milan the lead, finishing a finely executed move that started out from goalkeeper Mike Maignan’s feet. But Liverpool, who twice hit the woodwork, knew Milan’s weaknesses; at right-back, where captain Davide Calabria took Royal’s place, and in the air, where Liverpool defenders Ibrahima Konate and Virgil van Dijk dominated.
As the game drew to a close, a chant went up in the Sud. “Fuori coglioni!” The ultras want the players to show some balls. Up next are Inter, who secured the Serie A title in the derby last season and reached the Champions League final at Milan’s expense the season before. While it’s still early days — presumably the eighth or ninth in the creation of a new cycle at the club — a minor miracle would be welcomed on Sunday.
(Top photo: Marco Luzzani/Getty Images)