FIFA World Cup Qualifiers: Cometh the hour, cometh the man - The stage is set for Zlatan

Dealing with expectations

Eight Guldbollen (Swedish Golden Ball award) wins, two Swedish Male Athlete of the Year awards and one Radiosportens Jerringpris award (voted by Sweden’s radio audience) – Zlatan is arguably Sweden’s most loved athlete, and consequently the one individual that the country has the greatest expectations from.

Only a few days ago, the Swedish Postal Service announced that they would be printing Zlatan stamps, in honour of Sweden’s favourite son. An astounding achievement, considering Zlatan is still a few years away from hanging up his boots.

It cannot be easy dealing with this kind of unique pressure, but Ibrahimovic is yet to buckle under it. On the contrary, the Swede admits the extra pressure helps him overcome anxiety and nerves ahead of a match.

The biggest game of his career

It’s nearly impossible to predict what must be going on in the mind of this 32-year-old Swede, a self-confessed madman, but one can imagine he must be seething from the 1-0 loss to Portugal a couple of nights ago. No footballer likes to lose, and none more so than Zlatan, a high performance athlete and a serial winner.

But if there’s anything that we have learnt over the last few years, it’s that writing off individuals like Zlatan is a folly that is second to none. You pit all the things that he has done in football against what he must achieve, and you feel that Zlatan will somehow find a way through. Like he did when growing up in the ghetto of Rosengard.

At 32, time is running short for Zlatan on the international level. Sure, there’s Euro 2016 to look forward to, but the 2018 World Cup is perhaps a stretch. No, in all likelihood, this is Zlatan’s last World Cup. If he makes it, that is.

Forget the scoreline, forget the battle between Ibrahimovic and Ronaldo. The return leg against Portugal, in front of his fans, will be quite comfortably Zlatan’s biggest match. And if history has taught us anything, it will be Zlatan’s Sweden who will be boarding the plane to Brazil.

Zlatan is Sweden, Sweden is Zlatan. And you would have to be a brave man to bet against him when the Swede takes on Ronaldo’s Portugal on Tuesday night.

The hunger to win, to put his country in front of him, that unshakeable belief that he truly is the greatest to have graced the game, a boisterous home crowd egging him onto further glory – I simply cannot see anything other a Swedish win, with Zlatan scoring a spectacular, somersaulting, back-heeled goal.