The ego and big mouth of Zlatan Ibrahimovic never disappoint, and him finishing second behind Bjorn Borg in a Swedish newspaper’s list ranking Sweden’s greatest athletes of all-time didn’t go so well with the PSG striker.
Dagens Nyhether, the newspaper in question, tried talking to Ibrahimovic about the selection, and got quite the interesting response from him.
Dagens Nyhether: Congratulations, you have finished second on the list of Swedish sports people of all time, how do you feel about that?
Zlatan: Thank you but to finish second is like finishing last.
DN: You have previously mentioned Muhammad Ali, Petter Northug and Ronaldo as sports people you rank highly. Who would have finished on the podium if you had ranked the best Swedish sports people of all time?
Zlatan: On that list I would have been No1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, with due respect to the others
DN: Björn Borg is No1 on the list and he has previously expressed his admiration for you and that he sees you as Sweden’s biggest star, “even bigger than IKEA”. How do you see Borg and his career?
Zlatan: He is a cool person and a living legend.
Borg, just a reminder, is a former ATP world number one and an 11-time Grand Slam champion (six in France, five in Wimbledon), including winning at Wimbledon five times in a row. Ibrahimovic is in a different sport, a team one, but has played an instrumental role in winning 11 league championships for Ajax, Juventus (later vacated), Barcelona, Milan and PSG.
He has scored 253 goals in 438 matches for his clubs over the years and 51 goals in 101 caps for Sweden, playing for the national team in two World Cups and three Euro tournaments.