'They wanted to send me into retirement!' Ibrahimovic can make the summer of Euro 2016 brighter

If the end really is near for Zlatan Ibrahimovic, he is doing his best to delay it.

His season so far has played out like an extended goodbye. Paris Saint-Germain will coast to another Ligue 1 title, and his contract will expire. Before the first leg of Sweden’s play-off against Denmark for a place at Euro 2016, he hinted defeat would spell the end of his international career.

Ibrahimovic could carry on with a different club, but probably with one like AC Milan, who are just detached from Europe’s true elite.

When this was put to him he was, of course, having none of it, reeling off his personal statistics. “I have better statistics than before. So if I am old and getting weak and doing what I do, imagine if I was good and young, what I would do then. But what I am doing is enough so if I can be old and weak, still I can play. So I will be more than happy then to continue.”

Much of what Ibrahimovic says - in the same press conference he claimed to have put Sweden and then France on the map - is high on entertainment value and somewhat lower on substance, but on Tuesday he backed up his big words.

Sweden are an average team. They entered the second leg of this play-off with a 2-1 lead, earned thanks to Ibrahimovic’s penalty in a narrow victory at home. The match in Copenhagen started and ended badly.

But in the middle, the best player on the pitch made his mark. First, out of not much, Ibrahimovic escaped his marker to drift to the near post and divert Kim Kallstrom’s low corner past Kasper Schmeichel.

Then, some magic. From at least 25 yards out, a free-kick that during its flight appeared to be heading a good couple of yards wide reversed its course inside the near post.

"They said they were going to send me to retirement," he reflected, "but I sent their whole nation into retirement!"

Ibrahimovic has scored 11 goals in 10 internationals in 2015. He is often criticised for failing to deliver in big games, but he scored two goals in three games at Euro 2012 and did the same at Euro 2008. Of his eight goals in qualifying before the play-off, four were the first of the game - more than anyone except Thomas Muller. What he has done as the focal point of a middling side is just as impressive as Gareth Bale with Wales, or Robert Lewandowski with Poland.

In the past, international teams were known for their own distinctive styles to the extent they became stereotypes: the Germans were well-drilled and organised, the English played with passion and aggression but a lack of quality and thought and the Dutch were perhaps too clever for their own good.

But nowadays, with the way in which the game has globalised and leagues have been filled with foreign players, that difference has largely disappeared. Everyone wants to be like Germany, or Spain, or whoever has won most recently.

What’s left to make international football truly international and its competing countries identifiable are a select group of individual players. There is Muller, Andres Iniesta, Paul Pogba and Gianluigi Buffon, all of whom embody the best qualities of their respective teams.

He may not have long left, but with one curling shot Ibrahimovic demonstrated he is still one of those players. The summer will be a brighter one for his presence.