A beautiful duel: Ibrahimovic, Chiellini set to renew deep-rooted rivalry

Ten years have passed since Zlatan Ibrahimovic walked out on Juventus. He was hardly the only high-profile player to do so in the summer of 2006, as the club reeled from the Calciopoli verdict that had dumped it down into Serie B. Fabio Cannavaro signed for Real Madrid, Lilian Thuram headed off with Gianluca Zambrotta to Barcelona and Adrian Mutu joined Fiorentina.

It was Ibra’s sale, though, that rankled most of all. In part, that was because he moved to Inter - Juve’s most hated domestic rival. Even more significant, though, was his age. At 24, he was the one departing player who could clearly be said to have his best years ahead of him. And, consequently, the one who Juventus had been most desperate to retain.

Related - Conte: Italy preparing for Sweden, not just Ibrahimovic

As Ibrahimovic tells it in his autobiography, the Bianconeri made every effort to convince him to stay. Newly-appointed manager Didier Deschamps told the Swede he was the only reason that he had agreed to take the job in the first place. Club directors prepared a lucrative new contract offer, but when they tried to show it to Ibrahimovic, he declined to even take a glance.

"I had to play a high stakes game," he wrote of that period - noting that his bargaining position had been weakened by poor form in the preceding campaign. He eventually forced Juventus’ hand by refusing flat out to take part in preseason friendlies, sitting in his room playing Playstation even as Deschamps stood in the doorway bawling at him to go and board the team bus.

Such betrayal would not soon be forgotten. When Ibrahimovic returned to Turin with Inter in November 2007, after Juventus had bounced back to the top-flight at the first attempt, one former team-mate in particular made sure that he would feel unwelcome in his former home.

Giorgio Chiellini’s tussle with Ibrahimovic that day was so intense that the Italian broadcaster Sky Sport wound up devoting a three-and- a-half minute highlight package just to the pair of them after full-time. Over the course of 90 minutes, legs had been swept, insults exchanged and elbows thrown. At a certain point, Ibrahimovic took a Chiellini forearm right to the cheekbone, but another incident angered him even more.

"He tried to provoke me, and then he tackled me from behind," recalls the striker in his book. "That’s a cowardly thing to do. You don’t see the guy coming, and I went down in pain. I was in a lot of pain."

Ibrahimovic waited until after the final whistle for revenge. "I went up to him and took his head and dragged him like a disobedient dog, and Chiellini got scared, I could see it. ‘You wanted to fight. So how come you’re shitting yourself now,’ I hissed, and headed off to the changing room."

The pair will renew hostilities on Friday at the Stadium Municipal in Toulouse. Sweden and Italy might not share a history quite like Juventus and Inter, but there is at least a hint of bad blood in their past. It was Ibrahimovic’s brilliant backheeled equaliser at Euro 2004 that paved the way for his country to eliminate the Azzurri with a suspiciously convenient 2-2 draw against Denmark in the final group game.

Few Italians have forgotten that story. Revenge will not be the priority for Antonio Conte’s side, but it might be a welcome bonus for a player like Gigi Buffon - the one Italy holdover from that fixture 12 years ago, not to mention another former team-mate of Ibra’s at Juventus.

They have met many times since then as opponents. Remarkably, despite scoring 99 times and winning four Scudetti across his five seasons with Inter, and then later AC Milan, Ibrahimovic has never scored another goal past Buffon in a competitive fixture.

You would have a hard time getting either the goalkeeper or Chiellini to say a bad word about him nowadays. Chiellini has named Ibrahimovic as the best No. 9 that he ever played with, or against. As he put it during an interview with Gazzetta dello Sport in 2014: "I’ve never seen a player who can shift the balance of a game like he can."

In his 'social biography,' The Defender, published this February, Chiellini even went so far as to say that he "would like to see Ibrahimovic wearing the Juventus shirt again." With the forward’s future yet to be resolved this summer, perhaps this might be an opportune occasion to float that idea in person.

No amount of mutual respect, though, will dampen the intensity of their personal battle on Friday. "For me Giorgio Chiellini is the toughest, and the roughest, marker that I have ever faced," confessed Ibrahimovic a few years back. "He is the one that I suffer against the most. It’s truly difficult to play against him, he does not give you space, he does not let you breathe.

"But I like 'Chiello', he’s loyal, a true warrior. We have always had beautiful duels."