AC Milan’s Zlatan Ibrahimovic slams Barcelona coach Pep Guardiola
As is often the case in world football, as soon as a player makes his way out of a club, he starts attacking it. It’s the same story with Swedish striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who made a switch from Barcelona to AC Milan. The front man has said that his former manager Pep Guardiola was not good at communication, and that is the reason why he did not have a successful spell at Camp Nou.
The Swedish international joined Barcelona last season in a swap deal that saw Samuel Eto’o go to Inter Milan while Zlatan made his way to Catalonia. Barcelona also paid 46 million Euros to the Italian champions for the striker’s services.
Zlatan has now signed for AC Milan for a season-long loan deal, but Milan has the option of signing the player for 24 million Euros at the end of the season.
Ibrahimovic is on intentional duty for Sweden, and before the match against Hungary in the Euro 2012 qualifier, he said that the relationship between him and the manager at Barcelona had broken down long ago, and that was the reason for him not being able to make it in the first-team.
He said that he had no problems with the club in general and his teammates. He added that there was only one person who he did not get along with, and it was the manager. Zlatan tagged Guardiola as a small-time coach. He said that a great coach looks after his players and tries to solve every single problem, whereas a small-time coach runs away from such issues and ignores them. And that is exactly what Guardiola did, according to Ibrahimovic.
The former Inter Milan striker said that the club did not want to sell him off but there was one man who was always in favour of him leaving. He said that previously he has worked with two of the best coaches in the world. He was referring to Fabio Capello at Juventus and Jose Mourinho at Inter Milan. Zlatan said that under those two managers, he never had any problems as they were both great at communicating and solving issues at hand.
However, as soon as he went to Barcelona, he said that a number of problems started to arise, and only if the manager had been willing to talk it out, it would all have been sorted long ago. He added that till this day, he does not understand what Guardiola’s problem with him was.
Ibrahimovic went on to say that the problem started in March; he said that he went up to the manager and asked for an explanation, but he did not offer him any.
He said that he tried his best but could not understand Guardiola, and eventually had no choice but to find a way out of the club. Zlatan said that he feels very lucky and honoured that Milan came to buy him and now he can start a whole new chapter in his career.
He went on to say that he will be 29 soon, and warming the bench is not what he wants to do at this stage of his career. The former Juventus man said that he did not want to go through the same ordeal that Thierry Henry had to. He said that Henry is one of the best in the world and Pep Guardiola insulted a player of such quality by keeping him on the bench for most of his career, and that is the reason why he decided to go and play in the Major League Soccer (New York Red Bulls) in the United States.
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