Zlatan Ibrahimovic was already annoyed with Romelu Lukaku, believing that his one-time Manchester United teammate and now Serie A rival had tried to present himself as the new king of their domain. It was October 2020, Ibrahimovic was in the red-and-black of Milan, Lukaku the blue-and-black of Internazionale and the former had drawn first blood in the first Milan derby of the 2020-21 season, scoring twice in a 2-1 win. “Milan has never had a king, just a god,” Ibrahimovic tweeted, in trademark self-effacing style.
It was never going to take much for tempers to flare when next they met. The way that Ibrahimovic tells it in his new book, Adrenaline: My Untold Stories, it is unapologetically his side of the story. It started when Lukaku argued with Alexis Saelemaekers, the young Milan midfielder, in the 45th minute of last January’s Coppa Italia quarter-final at San Siro.
