Zlatan Ibrahimovic drummed up his teammates, spoke at the moment of the great triumph – awe-inspiring silence surrounded him.

"Keep cool guys.

I won't say 'goodbye',” the egocentric star striker yelled through the dressing room after the championship with AC Milan, causing a storm of cheers.

But a few days later these words could be obsolete, the self-proclaimed "God" is threatened with the end of his career.

At the age of 40, the body goes on strike – for the long term.

As Milan announced, Ibrahimovic will be out for seven to eight months due to an operation on his left knee.

During a long-planned intervention in Lyon, the anterior cruciate ligament had to be reconstructed, and there was also a need for improvement on the meniscus.

The Swede is facing the longest break of his career, the year 2022 has already passed - and the biological clock is ticking against him more than ever.

His contract with the Rossoneri expires after June 30 this summer, and now even a one-year extension at significantly lower salaries is faltering.

Such a long break so close to your 41st birthday?

An eternity.

“For six months I hardly slept because of the pain.

I've never suffered so much on and off the pitch.

I made something impossible into something possible," Ibrahimovic wrote on Instagram on Thursday.

He explained that he played for half a year without a cruciate ligament.

Got pain killers every day, 20 shots, fluid drained from knee every week.

The joint had simply been swollen since the beginning of the year.

"I had only one goal in mind: to make my team-mates and the coach Italian champions because I made a promise to them," he continued.

Ibrahimovic had repeatedly taken breaks from the game because of the pain in the second half of the season, he only completed ten training sessions.

The goal quota still spoke for him, in just 1006 minutes of action the center forward scored eight goals in Serie A.

On his milestone birthday in October, he had compared himself to Benjamin Button: "I was born old and I will die young." His body is now telling him something else - the end as an active soccer player is probably not far off.