In what has become a one-sided war of words from Zlatan Ibrahimovic, it seems like the Swedish striker was unhappy with FIFA for allowing the organisation to use his image rights in the popular football game developed by EA Sports.
His post is captioned, “Who gave FIFA EA Sport permission to use my name and face? @FIFPro? I’m not aware to be a member of Fifpro and if I am I was put there without any real knowledge through some weird manouver. And for sure I never allowed @FIFAcom or Fifpro to make money using me.”
From the looks of it, this could be a development that one needs to keep their attention on.
Image rights usage is always a problem considering how complex the business of football has become in recent times. Agents and reputation managers are always on the lookout to block out any misuse or non-permissible content of footballers, especially when it is a big player like Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
This could be a very big deal given EA Sports and FIFA are no small-timer organisations themselves. So it will interest to see whether all parties can come to a peaceful negotiation and settlement over this issue, otherwise FIFA gamers would be unable to see the mercurial forward in the game.
On the football pitch, however, Zlatan is tearing it up with a superb start to all competitions this season. He currently has 10 goals in 6 Serie A matches and also scored in a few more across the Europa League.
As with Milan themselves, he has risen and grown at the ripe age of 39 years old to lead the team from the front to strike shots at the opposition. The energy and athleticism are still there to harass defenders and with some help from the likes of Rebic, Theo Hernandez and Calhanoglu has found a golden scoring touch, and many will hope that this keeps on continuing.
