AC Milan striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic said sportsmen like Los Angeles Lakers striker LeBron James should stop meddling in politics.
NBA four-time champion James, whom Ibrahimovic described as a phenomenal basketball player, has been one of the NBA’s leading voices against racial injustice and police brutality in the United States.
A frequent critic of former U.S. President Donald Trump, James also helped form a group that aims to combat voter disenfranchisement in predominantly black communities last year.
“I like him a lot (James). He’s phenomenal, but I don’t like it when people with status talk about politics. Do what you know how to do, ”Ibrahimovic told Uef and Discovery + in Sweden.
“I play football because I am the best football player, I am not a politician. If I were a politician, I would be doing politics.
“This is the first mistake that famous people make when they become famous: for me it is better to avoid certain subjects and do what you do well, otherwise you risk doing something wrong.”
James’ longstanding activism on racial justice issues and his criticisms of Trump led Fox News white commentator Laura Ingraham in 2018 to tell him and other black NBA player Kevin Durant to “shut up and dribble ”.
Ibrahimovic’s comment, whose two-year stint at the LA Galaxy coincided with James’ time in Los Angeles, was criticized by American sprint athlete Michael Johnson.
“Ok Ibra, based on your position, @KingJames is great at basketball and shouldn’t be expressing his opinion on politics,” Johnson tweeted.
“You are really good at football, so you shouldn’t express your opinion about LeBron using your platform for good. Or your opinion about anything outside of football! “
James’s entry into the social justice arena has been careful and measured over the past decade: a 2012 tweet that declared #WeAreTrayvonMartin; the shirt I CANNOT BREATHE worn before a 2014 game; the opening of a public school in his hometown of Akron.
But the four-time winner of the NBA’s Most Valuable Player has taken his activism to new heights since Trump started picking fights with prominent U.S. black athletes to score political points.
With the sports world paralyzed by the coronavirus pandemic and amid riots across the country over police deaths of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville, James joined a group of prominent athletes and artists to launch More Than a Vote, a 501 (c) (4) non-profit organization that aims to inform, protect and publicize African-American voters.
“We never told anyone who to vote for or who not to vote for,” he said. “We never said anything about either candidate. We just wanted people to exercise their opportunity to vote and create change.