Zlatan Ibrahimovic's outstanding career evokes a multitude of memories and strong emotions.
Not least among yesterday's, today's, and tomorrow's national team players.
About a week after the match against Serbia at Friends Arena on Saturday evening, Swedish football says goodbye to Ibrahimovic. The national team roster that is assembling to honor him includes players he knows well, some he has occasionally played with, and others he has never met.
Dejan Kulusevski was born about nine months before Ibrahimovic made his national team debut in January 2001.
Twenty years later, Ibrahimovic made a comeback in the national team after a five-year absence. Kulusevski was on the pitch in the Euro qualifying match against Georgia when Ibrahimovic became the oldest male player to don the national team jersey.
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Even Alexander Isak and Victor Nilsson Lindelof got to be part of Ibrahimovic's final chapter. Both highlight "Ibra's" four goals against England at Friends Arena in November 2012 as the greatest national team memory of the legend.
Especially the last full-strength goal – the bicycle kick from just over 30 meters.
A 18-year-old Nilsson Lindelof was on the stands at Friends Arena.
Goalkeeper Robin Olsen also brings up the bicycle kick against England as his best sporting memory of Ibrahimovic.
Words flow out of Emil Forsberg when Ibrahimovic is mentioned.
So, many years later, he reveals:
Emil Holm is just like Ibrahimovic active in Lombardy, Italy. He holds the attacking legend as Sweden's greatest athlete of all time – and says he has met him once.
Many in the new generation of national team players have never played with Ibrahimovic or even met him.
Blue-yellow newcomer Samuel Dahl is one of them.
