Ajax have signed the teenage son of Zlatan Ibrahimovic 25 years after the iconic striker’s move from Malmo

Zlatan Ibrahimovic went on to achieve enormous success and it all began at home-town club Malmo.

Ibrahimovic left Sweden to join Eredivisie titans Ajax in 2001, the first of a sequence of transfers that took him to a number of Europe’s most prominent clubs and titles across the continent.

In 2010, he joined AC Milan from Barcelona, initially on loan, and his 19-year-old son has been taking his first steps into professional football with the Rossoneri’s youth ranks since he moved to Italy in 2022.

Ibrahimovic follows in the giant footsteps of his father

Ajax have confirmed that Ibrahimovic the younger has completed a loan move from Milan to the Netherlands.

“The loan agreement runs for six months, until the end of this season. The agreement includes an option to buy for Ajax,” announced Ajax.

The club’s director of football hailed the deal and revealed Ajax’s plans for the young centre-forward.

“We are very pleased with the arrival of Maximilian,” said Marijn Beuker. “He is a talented forward with a good sense of positioning in and around the penalty area, and he has strong goal-oriented finishing.

“He will initially mainly get his playing minutes with Ajax U23 and will regularly move between Ajax U23 and the first team during the season, so that he can get used to the higher level and the intensity of Ajax 1.

“Maximilian is a player with a lot of potential, and we hope that in time he can become a permanent part of Ajax 1’s attack.”

Ibrahimovic the elder, who ranked at no.12 in FourFourTwo's list of the greatest finishers in football history, made his name during a famous three-year stint in Amsterdam, during which he scored 35 times in 74 Eredivisie matches and made his first appearances in the Champions League.

He won the Dutch league twice with Ajax and the Serie A title twice as a Milan player. He won championships with Inter Milan, Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain, and was part of the Juventus side stripped of two championships in the wake of the Calciopoli scandal.

Maximilian was born in Sweden in 2006, weeks after Zlatan’s switch to Inter from the demoted Bianconeri. He has been playing and scoring for Milan’s Futuro team since last year and is a Swedish youth international.

“It’s cool that [my father] also played for Ajax,” the teenager said in his first club interview as an Ajax player. “I want to write my own story. I’m my own person, my own player, and I’m here to do my own thing.

“Ibrahimovic is just a name.”