Zlatan Ibrahimovic's season with AC Milan has been really difficult and complicated due to many injuries. As per an exclusive interview with La Gazzetta dello Sport newspaper, Francesco Totti, former legendary Italian forward of AS Roma spoke about the Swede veteran and said the following:
"It's been 5 years but I remember all the sensations and watching Ibra in the last period and I relive them. Even though my situation was a little different from his. I hadn't had any particular injuries. I felt I could still contribute, but I was quickly pushed aside and if you play three minutes or five or ten once in a while it becomes dripping."
"I do not wish my last year to my worst enemy. It was very heavy mentally. Because when after a life on the pitch you don't play continuously, especially at a certain age, your body isn't letting it rest, you're making it rust."
Totti continued:
"When you get used to just taking over, you slowly lose the game rhythm. And when you enter you realize that you finish second on the ball, that you are losing those hundredths of a second that make the difference. Because the head still tells you perfectly what to do, but the legs get there a moment later. You know you are better than the others but if the body does not 'stay in the game' it becomes hard. Zlatan plays little at the moment and I imagine his difficulties also because his body is a demanding machine. But he has a fortune compared to me."
On Ibrahimovic's luck:
"From what it seems to me from the outside, his desire to be on the pitch is as strong as Milan's to still have him available. The problem is not the technician or the club, they are the number of minutes of play and what they physically mean for him in the following days, when you have to recover and problems arise that you never had before. If one has a serious injury even at the age of 40, but then recovers and returns to his place, it is one thing: but if the troubles are continuous..."
Ibrahimovic said he was scared of what comes after the "football life":
"It is a lot, because you have lived all your life in that green rectangle. Because you also call the blades of grass in your stadium or sports center by name. Because between changing for training or being in a manager's suit and tie in a locker room, all the difference in the world passes. But at that moment we must prepare. Ibra is an intelligent, brilliant man, I also see it from how he manages to stay in front of the cameras and I think he has an excellent business sense."
On the advertisement he made with Ibrahimovic last year:
"It was a lot of fun. And it would have been even more so to play together. If I think about it? I don't know how many goals he has scored in his career, but with my assists in three or four years he would certainly have gone up a hundred more."
Totti concluded with a message to Ibrahimovic:
"Dear Ibra, I hope to see you spread your arms and rejoice again after a few goals in these last days of the championship. Then at the end of the season listen to your body: it will tell you what to do."
