Alexandre Pato, after many years, shared his version of the brawl between Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Onechu Onyewu on the podcast Voci di Calcio, which occurred when the two were playing for Milan:
"Zlatan took the ball, and he went to mark him, then Onyewu unintentionally 'bam,' hit Ibra's foot. The thing is, Ibra's foot is huge, right? Onyewu's tackle wasn't exactly simple, you see? It wasn’t just a coincidence; he hit Ibra’s ankle, and Onyewu kept playing."
Pato continued:
"We understood, Onyewu did that, but it wasn’t with malice; he did it because he wanted to take the ball. Onyewu had just come back from an injury. Imagine running and being a bit scared, feeling a bit insecure. You make a tackle, and you do it wrong; Onyewu controlled the ball with his back to Ibra, and we felt Ibra coming in, and he went in with both feet on Onyewu, really trying to hurt him, and I said: 'Damn, what just happened?'. They both fell to the ground; Onyewu got up calmly, he was really nice, with a heart of gold. Not that Ibra isn’t, but he’s more impulsive, and he got up immediately, started insulting him, and was speaking in Swedish; sometimes, we didn’t understand anything. He tried to grab Onyewu like this (by the collar), pulled him to throw him down, and what did Onyewu do?"
Pato continued:
"He grabbed Ibra and 'bam.' He threw him down. I think there was a camera filming everything; I think they later had it turned off. For Onyewu, it was easy, like drinking a glass of water. Imagine Ibra, the guy is huge; he grabbed him and let him fall to the ground, threw him down, and jumped on top of him, pinned him down, and raised his arm. When he did that, I said to him: 'Stop, my God, stop, you’ll kill him!'"
