The struggles to replace Sir Alex Ferguson is a cautionary tale that ought to be heeded by those who want Arsène Wenger to leave Arsenal
It probably won’t surprise anybody who has followed the life and times of Zlatan Ibrahimovic to know that when he was rich enough to afford the house of his dreams in Malmo – a mansion, painted pink, “as big as a castle” – it didn’t particularly bother him that somebody was already living there. Ibrahimovic, as you may have gathered, is not short of self-confidence and turned up one day with his partner, Helena, to knock on the door and introduce himself. “We’re here because you’re living in our house,” was one way to break the ice.
It did the trick, though. The neighbours could be a problem – “It’s all posh people,” he once complained, “there’s nobody who speaks like me, who says stuff like ‘the wickedest house’ and that” – but they bought the place a few months later and on the first day Ibrahimovic hung a framed portrait of two dirty feet inside the main entrance. Friends would visit and ask why he would hang such an unsightly picture in such a beautiful house. “You idiots,” he would reply. “Those feet have paid for all of this.”
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