Fresh from another session on the step machine, Mediolana’s CSO had to verify that what he was seeing was not the result of a combination of poor posture and dehydration; however, as the reports rolled in, he had no choice but to credit his eyes with some intelligence. Zlatan Ibrahimović, the Sweden and AC Milan icon, was being hailed as a minor deity by the opinion makers of English football!
One performance – a sublime ninety minutes sporting the red-black shirt of the soccer and cultural asset in the perhaps increasingly tenuous ownership of Silvio Berlusconi – was enough, apparently, to bury a decade of negative appraisals. Ibra, we are told, is now one of the best, if not the best, strikers in the world. The fact that clubs such as Ajax, Internazionale and FC Barcelona – as well as Milan – have all paid out a king’s ransom for Ibrahimović is no longer an anomaly, and his presence in a squad a guarantee that his club will win their domestic league is, we are assured, not the stuff of coincidence.
What next? What will be the next piece of nonsensical, incredible dogma to be vanquished, with Damascene conversions aplenty ensuing? Could it involve something from the world of economics? Or is that hoping for far too much?
