Zlatan Ibrahimovic at Juventus: His first hat-trick & a fork in the road

When Malmo faced Juventus in the Champions League in September 2021, thoughts inevitably turned to the man who famously represented both clubs at a relatively early stage in his glorious career: Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

The sight of Malmo and Juve in the same European group can only ever summon up memories of the big Swede, despite the fact that 15 years have passed since he played football for either team.

Now 40 years old, the veteran has added more than 500 appearances and more than 400 goals to his CV in that time and was back in Champions League action himself with AC Milan this term. However, his career could easily have gone down a different path.

It seems strange now, but Ibrahimovic didn’t score his first club hat-trick until April 2005, having failed to do so with either Malmo or Ajax.

Yes, there was a four-goal haul for Sweden against Malta a few months prior, but the treble against Lecce, at the age of 23, was decisive and varied enough to make you wonder what took him so long.

The first goal, in particular, points to a player whose only excuse for not scoring a hat-trick before this game was that he simply didn’t feel like it yet.

The way he rolls the ball forward with the sole of his boots is his way of saying, ‘Now? You want me to score now? No, I’m going to make you wait an extra second, just because I feel like it.’

It’s the act of a man who has grown up being the most important person on the pitch, building his own mythology in a more improvisational way before he worked out the best and most efficient way to do it. It is Zlatan figuring out what Zlatan is going to be.

If the first goal represented the young and cocky Ibrahimovic, the second and third incorporated the more clinical version who we saw more of