Becom­ing Zlatan

You might well think that Zla­tan Ibrahi­movic, for all his obvi­ous foot­balling nous, doesn’t real­ly mer­it his own fea­ture-length doc­u­men­tary. And you’d be wrong. In fact, it’s a won­der that great works of lit­er­a­ture have yet to be writ­ten about his mer­cu­r­ial tal­ents, or grand cathe­drals and oth­er gild­ed mon­u­ments erect­ed in his hon­our. At least, that’s how the enig­mat­ic star would have it, so irre­press­ibly pal­pa­ble is his con­fi­dence in his own ability.

There’s a won­der­ful sto­ry from a cou­ple of years ago about Zla­tan becom­ing irate upon being told that he had placed sec­ond behind five-times Wim­ble­don win­ner Björn Borg on a list rank­ing Sweden’s great­est ever sports peo­ple. ​“To fin­ish sec­ond is like fin­ish­ing last,” he told the nation­al paper that ran the poll, appar­ent­ly see­ing this as a seri­ous affront. ​“On that list I would have been num­ber one, two, three, four and five, with due respect to the others.”

It’s easy to scoff at such brazen self-aggran­dis­e­ment, but take a step back and this anec­dote reveals some­thing inter­est­ing about the rela­tion­ship between Zla­tan and Swedish foot­ball fans. He is with­out ques­tion the biggest glob­al super­star the coun­try has pro­duced, but he is also, as Fredrik and Mag­nus Gertten’s insight­ful film details, regard­ed as some­thing of a mis­fit back home, an icon who will nev­er be uni­ver­sal­ly accept­ed or adored. Part of the rea­son is that he was born to a Bosn­ian father and a Croa­t­ian moth­er, and despite the hero’s wel­come he receives when­ev­er he returns to his native Malmö, you get the sense that the peo­ple here have nev­er ful­ly viewed him as one of their own.

That his ego is even greater than his goals-to-game ratio is anoth­er con­tribut­ing fac­tor. Indeed, arro­gance, pride and self­ish­ness are not typ­i­cal Swedish traits, and Zlatan’s fiery tem­pera­ment and per­ceived lack of respect towards his oppo­nents saw him rou­tine­ly court con­tro­ver­sy in the ear­ly part of his career. But real­ly, whether you think he’s a flawed genius or a colos­sal prick, it’s hard not to admire the sheer force of per­son­al­i­ty that has pro­pelled him to the upper ech­e­lons of the game over the last decade or so.

With its wealth of rare archive footage and can­did inter­view mate­r­i­al with a curi­ous blend of ex-team­mates and coach­es, Becom­ing Zla­tan goes deep­er than any foot­baller biog­ra­phy before it. And yet, through no fault of the film­mak­ers, it only scratch­es the sur­face of what makes this monony­mous tal­is­man such a cap­ti­vat­ing, divine pres­ence both on and off the field.