For a moment, it seemed as if Zlatan Ibrahimovic was going to be humble. He walked into the press conference room at the Stade de France and started speaking like a man who wasn’t Zlatan, a man who looked a little like Zlatan, but spoke as you would expect any other player to speak on the eve of the first match in a tournament. In other words, not like Zlatan.
He was asked about the comments by his team-mate Marcus Berg that Ireland’s centre-backs were slow and he pointed out that he was also slow. “They can still be good, even if they’re slow.”
This was a nice bit of sugar for John O’Shea or Richard Keogh or whoever Martin O’Neill selects on Monday evening, but it wasn’t Zlatan.
He talked about the collective, how that mattered most of all and said nothing was possible without a team effort.
“You become the best by having team mates around you that make you the best. If the collective succeed then you succeed.”
Yes, Zlatan, that all sounds plausible and considerate towards your hardworking team-mates, but what have they done with you?
Slowly then, the other Zlatan emerged, helped possibly by the almost complete lack of interest anyone in the room had in speaking to Erik Hamren, his coach, who was sitting beside him.
Zlatan arrived at Stade de France pic.twitter.com/S5UHZCYgXY
— Dion Fanning (@dionfanning) June 12, 2016
“We’ll move on now to some questions for Erik Hamren,” the Uefa suit announced, hoping to look around the room and see hands raised eagerly. Instead the floor only had questions for Zlatan.
Hamren seemed unperturbed by all this. In Sweden they tend to keep Zlatan’s press conferences separate to avoid these situations where the coach or a team-mate must sit there looking pleased to be ignored.
But Hamren sat through it and encouraged questions for Zlatan by saying nothing of interest on the rare occasions someone addressed him.
The world wanted to hear from his captain and Zlatan moved through the gears, finally announcing that the “legend can still deliver”.
We sighed with relief at that point, happy in one sense that Zlatan had finally appeared and declared himself a legend who delivers. Robbie Keane would later call him a “top, top player” but if Zlatan joins Manchester United and adapts to English ways, he may soon describe himself as a “top, top, top, top” player.
Zlatan’s verve may have been welcome in the press conference, but it didn’t stop us being fearful still of what Zlatan can do to those slow Irish defenders whose slowness is no handicap, because Zlatan himself is slow.
On Saturday, Stephen Quinn and Shane Duffy were asked which Swedish players worried them apart from Zlatan.
They looked at each other, wondering who should take this question and then Quinn proceeded to talk at length about all the strong players in the Sweden squad, without naming one who wasn’t Zlatan, presumably because it would be unfair to single anyone out.
Yet it did nothing to alter the sense that Sweden are a team dependent on one player and if Zlatan is kept quiet, Sweden will be kept quiet.
Martin O’Neill hadn’t been happy to be reminded of his comment from 2006 that Zlatan was the “most overrated player on the planet” last week, but if there is a truth to Zlatan failing to deliver when it really matters, he may still be able to deliver against Ireland.
O’Neill was asked about his remark again in the Stade de France on Sunday. His answer acknowledged that he may have been wrong and that, certainly, he would like nobody to think he held that view as Ireland prepare to face Sweden.
“There was a period of time where I felt Henrik Larsson was over-rated and after about three and a half minutes he changed my mind. Zlatan’s a top class player, one of the best in Europe if not the world.”
If Sweden are a team with one star, Ireland are a side who stress the collective in a way that sounds more plausible than when Zlatan does it.
When Ireland trained in front of local school kids in Versailles last Thursday, they chanted endlessly for Robbie Keane, perhaps the one player they recognised. Keane is fit to start in Paris on Monday, but he is unlikely to be selected. If O’Neill is going to make a surprise selection, it may well be that Stephen Quinn is chosen and given the job of shadowing Ibrahimovic.
If Seamus Coleman is Ireland’s world-class player and Shane Long the most dangerous, Ireland remain a team which will have to succeed through a collective effort.
O’Neill stresses this with his approach to team selection. Waiting until the last minute underlines this sense that the players may be interchangeable, a point that is easier to make thanks to the absence of a superstar.
Of course, few countries have a player as magnetic as Zlatan. Sometimes, however, it is tempting to look at Zlatan as Pep Guardiola looked at Mourinho when he declared Jose the king of the press conference. “In this room, he is the chief, “the f***ing man,” Pep said when he had been worn down by Mourinho in Spain.
Zlatan is on one side in that battle and he may be returning to it soon, but in the press conference room, like Mourinho, he is also the chief.
None of that really matters and, as if to emphasise that, and their rejection of the star system, Robbie Keane and Martin O’Neill were relentlessly downbeat in their pre-match press conference, as if they were handing the floor to Zlatan.
But they won’t surrender on the pitch. O’Neill confirmed that Ireland had worked on set-pieces on Friday when training had been cancelled and he will be hoping for an edge from a dead-ball against a side that could be vulnerable from them.
Sweden are concerned about Robbie Brady’s delivery and Shane Duffy could yet be another slightly surprising selection if O’Neill tries to capitalise on their vulnerability in the air.
As usual, O’Neill will wait before selecting his side, but his choices – even with a full squad available for selection – reflect Ireland’s position in European football.
This is a team without stars, but one which will get a chance on Monday to show that it is a team with talent.
They will need to handle the star. “I’ve been dominating wherever I go,” Zlatan replied when it was put to him that he hadn’t dominated at international tournaments. Certainly he was dominating in the press conference room, but that is his platform. Ireland will hope on Monday evening that the main stage belongs to them.
