Laudrup or Ibrahimović: who is the best Scandinavian soccer player of all time?

The essay does not provide a final answer to the question of its subtitle, but it juxtaposes the profiles of Michael Laudrup and Zlatan Ibrahimović in terms of soccer abilities, career statistics and social backgrounds. While arguing that comparisons between soccer players are in principle meaningless, the essay nevertheless employs comparison heuristically in order to outline each player’s uniqueness through differences and similarities. If Laudrup and Ibrahimović are considered to be the best ever soccer players of Scandinavia, sharing traits of technical brilliance and postmodern nomadism, they are also conspicuously contrasting characters and players, partly as a result of their different backgrounds. Common for both of them, though, is their symbolic value in the contexts of their social and national backgrounds.