PHOTO: Bildbyrån
Zlatan Ibrahimovic is one of Swedish football’s greatest ever.
But it could have gone completely differently if Swedish icon Nils Liedholm had gotten what he wanted.
– The first person to mention his name was me, Liedholm admitted in an interview.
41 year old plays Zlatan Ibrahimovic still football at the absolute highest level to this day. It has been 22 years since everything took off in earnest in 2001 when he left Swedish football for Ajax and became the most expensive sale in Allsvenskan history.
Liedholm’s words
But it could have gone completely differently for the Swedish football icon Nils Liedholm had gotten what he wanted. Liedholm, who had enjoyed great success in Italy as part of the famous Gre-No-Li trio, was hired by Roma for his fine football eye and discovered a young Zlatan.
– When I was working at Roma in 2001, I was trying to convince the president to take him (Zlatan). The first person to mention his name in Roma was me, Liedholm said in an interview with Expressen.
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For a long time, Roma was part of the rumor mill around “Ibra”, who had had his big breakthrough at Malmö FF. But in the end, the Italian club chose to pull out and Ajax won the bidding, which landed at 82.6 million kroner, Nils Liedholm knew exactly what was decisive in the end.
– They (Roma) didn’t think he was suitable. They did not want to risk the good camaraderie that existed in the team. It turned out that he was difficult to deal with, so nothing came of it, said Liedholm in the interview with the evening newspaper.
– As they are professionals and pay good money, they want the players to behave. It is very important.
READ MORE: The giant turnaround for Zlatan Ibrahimovic – here is the new future statement after the canceled meeting with Milan
Zlatan in Italy
Zlatan’s agent at the time Mino Raiola was really surprised by the Swedish icon’s unexpected words about why Roma snubbed Ibrahimovic.
– If you talk to players and managers, Zlatan is perceived as one hundred percent professional in everything he does. It seems to be only Swedes who talk badly about and try to find fault with Zlatan. It’s something he’s getting tired of, Raiola said in response.
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Roma would later regret it and were interested in signing Zlatan Ibrahimovic on several occasions during his career, but the parties never managed to find a solution. Ibra would still come to Italy in the end and has presented Juventus, Inter and Milan in Serie A.
READ MORE: When Zlatan made the Norwegians tear off their lice cardigans in anger and became loathed throughout the country: “An arrogant pile of shit”
But it never became Roma and we will never know how his career would have turned out if there was a move to Rome in 2001. Nils Liedholm passed away in 2007 after a long illness and Mino Raiola died in 2022.
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