Today we are going upfront so as not to bore you. There is a Swede that I find to be one of the most charismatic, original, and graceful players to grace the pitch today. I am speaking of the great goal scoring machine Zlatan Ibrahimović. You can just call him Zlatan. He is originally from Bosnia but plays for Sweden and considers himself a true Swede.
This is the goal that made him catch the eyes and ears of the world as it was voted best goal of the year. The beauty in which he plays is so wonderful because of his size. He is almost 6'4" and move like Maradona. Most classic strikers are small and can cut and duck through defenses. Zlatan uses grace and thought to slice apart defenses. I wouldn't dream of having a "best of" team without him.
This is a nice piece from Joga that they did about Zlatan before the World Cup. It's well produced.
This is a longer 10 minute "Best of Zlatan" video - If you watch it you will see that around the 4 minutes mark that Zlatan becomes the Zlatan that I think I like the most. He is about as gritty, competitive, and borderline dirty as anyone. If you do watch that and you think some shots are cheap just remember that what goes around comes around and I guarantee you a dominant player like Zlatan gets hacker 10x more than he does the hacking.
Zlatan became one of my favorites right before the World Cup. I used to watch Juventus play before the scandal. I had never seen a more graceful scorer.
Since we are focusing on a scorer like Zlatan I would like to compare him to an equally great scorer, also tall and graceful, and from the Nederlander area. Even though he only retired 2 years ago he has been a legend for 10 or more. I am speaking about Dennis Bergkamp
Dennis Bergkamp is the Godfather of big man grace. Watching him score was almost like watching an older child tease a younger one. He didn't fire the ball at 100 mph, instead Bergkamp would chip from 22 yards out or flick from 9. He was not so much a goal machine as he was an artist to the game. He isn't exceedingly high up on most top 100 footballers or all time lists but I regard him as the J.D. Salinger of football. Not a ton of goals, but the one's that were scored...really counted. Link posted by JVMM : 11:04 AM
