Remember , once one of the world's best goalkeepers and possessor of a famously unruly, shoulder-length mane of curly hair, at least until the latter days of his career?
Well, football fans, or at least those who have not been paying close attention to what has been happening , will be on Wednesday.
All's square so far in Champions League Group A after a pair of in the opening round of matches. Twente proved they should be in the hunt for a place in the last 16 right the way through to December with .
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On Friday night, I could have constructed a long list of things that I didn't expect to see on Monday morning but, if I had then erased anything sordid or relating to my personal life, Valencia sitting pretty in would have featured very near the top.
The facts have been touched upon in this blog a couple of times in the past but in the summer Valencia sold their best two players from recent seasons, David Villa and David Silva.
They can't sell their own Mestalla stadium thanks to the Spanish economic crisis and .
For the last two seasons, players' wages have been routinely paid late, often several months in arrears, and estimates of how much in the red the club really is suggests that a figure of around 450m euros may be not too far off the mark.
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you might think that it's business as usual for the main contenders from England, Spain and Italy.
There's no denying that Barcelona, Real Madrid, Chelsea, Manchester United and the two Milan teams once again feature among the favourites.
However, look again and look a bit more closely.
A few of the usual suspects are missing and the Champions League appears to finally be fulfilling Uefa boss Michel Platini's ambition for the competition to become just a little more open, democratic and, dare I say it, exciting and unpredictable.
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The track record of Barcelona coach Pep Guardiola suggests that he rarely gets things wrong but it became apparent very quickly that just over a year ago was wrong, wrong and wrong.
It was economically wrong immediately, with Barcelona paying the best part of 70m euros (£58.5m in today's money) to Inter Milan in a deal which included sending the hugely productive but sometimes disruptive the other way at what seemed like a knockdown price.
It quickly became wrong in playing terms when Ibrahimovic, despite scoring seven goals in his first seven league games for Barca and briefly becoming La Liga's top scorer, rapidly lost form just a few months into the season, a situation admittedly not helped by several niggling but hardly serious injuries.
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Hi, I'm Phil Minshull. I've lived in Spain since 1997 and covered Spanish football since the first day I got here. My blog aims to provide some insight into what's happening in La Liga, and there is much more to it than only Real and Barcelona, as well as elsewhere around Europe.
