Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s 500th career goal showed off what he does best

I have some things to say about Zlatan Ibrahimovic, but I’ll save them until after the goal, since you probably googled “Zlatan Ibrahimovic goal” or something and just want to see the damn goal. Here’s the amazing goal that Zlatan scored against Toronto FC.

Good lord. There are very few footballers with the body to pull this off, fewer with the technique, even fewer still who would ever concoct this idea, and only one player who has all of the above. This is a goal that is very much unique to Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

This was Ibrahimovic’s 500th senior professional goal, and he’s only the third active player to hit that benchmark, behind Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. It is a bit unfortunate that he had to score it while playing for a trash fire LA Galaxy team, which just fired its coach, and was trailing 3-0 at the time he scored it.

But that’s why people love Zlatan, and why his lame-ass recycled Chuck Norris Jokes brand works. Because you can never turn off a game that he’s involved in. He’s always capable of scoring one of the greatest goals you’ve ever seen in your life.

This is the point in the blog post where someone might insert an Eduardo Galeano quote about what The Beautiful Game is really about, then compare Ibrahimovic’s goal to a sex thing, because they are a cool person who does sex.

Those cliches have a point — to express the idea that watching Ibrahimovic score difficult, stylish goals makes people feel really good. Basically, there are two main reasons that people watch sports:

Ibrahimovic is exceptionally skilled at pulling off the second thing, even more so than his contemporaries, Messi and Ronaldo. Those guys are the two best footballers of all time, but they also do better versions of things that other people have done before, and do them more consistently. Messi and Ronaldo will make you jump out of your chair and yell “YOOO THAT WAS AMAZING,” but they’ve never been nearly as good as Ibrahimovic at getting people to yell “YOOO WHAT THE F---!”

And this is why Ibrahimovic, despite blowing it in the Champions League quarterfinals or earlier for an entire decade, is celebrated as a legend on par with people who have continental and World Cup trophies. He has the goal against England, the bananas solo goal for Ajax, that ninja goal against Italy, his first ever MLS goal, Saturday night’s goal against Toronto, and a dozen more goals that we suspect no one else on the planet could possibly pull off.

Regardless of what you think of his public persona (it’s corny), or his standing among the all-time greats of the game (meh), you have to appreciate this particular skill. Zlatan Ibrahimovic is better than anyone else in the history of soccer at scoring unique goals. He would whoop anyone’s ass at a game of goal-scoring H.O.R.S.E., and that rules.