There is a game you can play with football that involves listing the kind of phrases you’ll never, ever hear anyone say in public. For example, in the peak years of his Manchester United dotage, the phrase “Paul Scholes, he’s a bit overrated, isn’t he?” was effectively unprintable, its publication likely to spark mob anger, civil unrest, punishable ultimately by being stabbed in the eye with a skewer by the Queen.
It can be an interesting exercise to think the otherwise unsayable. Watching Chelsea’s stirring rearguard at the Parc des Princes Tuesday night against a dominant Paris Saint-Germain team who will contemplate their narrow first-leg lead with a little anxiety, another candidate for the list occurred.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic scored a goal, had a hand in Edinson Cavani’s second and made a decisive difference against a suffocating deep defence. As knockout matches go, this was up there with his best against English opposition, a counterpart to that memorable cutting-edge performance for Barcelona against Arsenal at the Emirates six years ago.
Still, though, at times it was hard to avoid the impression as PSG’s attacks crashed against the Chelsea breakwaters that Ibrahimovic’s best qualities–virtuoso touches, the irresistible imperative that the team play through him–are less likely to unsettle the stronger teams in Europe than they are the routinely terrorised defences of Ligue 1. That perhaps, oddly enough, the focus on his magnetic talents is even a hindrance for a group of players with no shortage of talent in other areas.
This is not to weasel away at the obvious brilliance of a player capable of moments of skill and physical dexterity beyond the reach of pretty much anyone else on the planet. Ibrahimovic remains elite European football’s own dazzling kung-fu colossus, a player whose famously moreish highlights reel is backed by the hard yards of goals scored, 12 league titles won at six different clubs and an underrated appetite for the physical battle. He is, in so many ways, a joy to watch.
At the same time this is an unusual elite footballer with unusual elite gifts, one whose outline can often be obscured by that irresistible charisma. Not least in France where his wider importance both to the league and its champion team is hard to overstate.
Zlatan is 34, and in a team where other players are detailed to do the hard running. Of nine strikers who have played more than 520 minutes in the Champions League this season he has run the least, and in the main by a considerable distance. Still, he has the one-off talent to demolish Chelsea given time and space.
What Ligue 1’s reigning sun king does next will remain the main fascination in France until his contract impasse is resolved. How his current employers go about building a team after that not just to charm and thrill but to beat the best in Europe could be just as interesting.