Pep Guardiola and Zlatan Ibrahimovic are two absolute footballing legends. One has become one of the greatest managers in the world, winning absolutely everything there is to win at Manchester City, and building great club teams both in the north-west and at Barcelona.
Ibrahimovic, by comparison, is a maverick, an almost overly-assured individual who believes wholeheartedly in his own hype, and is perhaps right to do so. Across 827 club games, he has scored 496 goals and provided 204 assists. A Swedish icon, he remains one of the best strikers ever to step foot on a pitch.
It is perhaps little surprise, then, that the pair butted heads at Barcelona, leading to an iconic falling out…
Improving on perfection
The 2008-09 season saw Barcelona go down in sporting immortality. Guardiola’s side won the treble, beating Real Madrid to the Liga title by nine points, won the Copa del Rey by beating Athletic Club in the final, and pipped Manchester United to the Champions League thanks to Lionel Messi’s magic performance in Rome.
How do you improve on a treble-winning season, though? That was the question not just facing Guardiola, but also Samuel Eto’o, who decided to find a new challenge after lifting all three trophies at Camp Nou. Jose Mourinho convinced him to move to Inter, and the Italian club sold Barcelona Ibrahimovic as part of the deal. Alexander Hleb also joined Inter, on loan, as Barca paid €46m for the Swede.
Ibrahimovic was coming off a season for Inter in which he scored 25 Serie A goals in 35 games, as well as providing seven assists. It appeared, as a result, that he would fit like a glove in Catalunya. He could both score and create, offering a multifunctional threat in Guardiola’s carefully crafted system. And while he did score plenty for Barcelona, his and Guardiola’s relationship quickly hit the rocks…
‘Ferrari driven like a Fiat’
Ibrahimovic arrived at Barcelona when they were at the top of the mountain, and there was only one place for them to go. Yes, Barcelona won La Liga again in 2009-10 – they were one game away from an unbeaten season, only losing to Atletico Madrid – but they were to face disappointment in both the Copa del Rey, where they lost to Sevilla in the final due to away goals, and the Champions League, eliminated, famously, by Mourinho’s Inter in the semi-finals.
Ibrahimovic played sporadically, particularly by his standards; in La Liga, he was left out of the matchday squad on five occasions and was benched twice. He did not take it lying down.
The Swede later claimed that he was “a Ferrari being driven like a Fiat” in his book as he was limited to 23 league starts, and was substituted off in both legs against his old club, Inter.
He provided 34 goal involvements throughout the season, but the team simply didn’t seem to function as well with him as the focal point; Guardiola’s tiki-taka style did not require a bruising frontman, instead a light touch with flexibility and swift interchanges. Lionel Messi and Pedro were trusted to do that; it appeared that Ibrahimovic was not.
Not holding back
Ibrahimovic now claims that his season at Barcelona was his “worst memory” and it all appeared to come to a head after their European exit. At Camp Nou, Inter came into the game 3-1 up from a masterful first-leg performance, but the second leg saw Thiago Motta sent off early on, and Mourinho parked the bus.
Inter did not have a shot on goal and boasted a mere 24 percent possession, and yet they achieved the improbable; they lost 1-0, and booked their spot in a final in which they would complete their own treble.
Afterwards, Ibrahimovic and his manager lost it, with the striker recalling: “Guardiola was staring at me and I lost it. I thought ‘There is my enemy, scratching his bald head!’ I yelled to him: ‘You have no balls!’ And probably worse things than that.
“I added: ‘You are sh*tting yourself because of [Mourinho]. You can go to hell!’ I was completely mad. I threw a box full of training gear across the room, it crashed to the floor and Pep said nothing, just put stuff back in the box. I’m not violent, but if I were Guardiola I would have been frightened.”
Consistently challenging
Ibrahimovic continued in his book that he felt his team-mates followed Guardiola “blindly”. He added: “I would walk into a room; he would leave. He would greet everyone by saying ‘hello’, but would ignore me. I had done a lot to adapt – the Barca players were like schoolboys, following the coach blindly, whereas I was used to asking ‘why?’. I like guys who run red lights, not pedantic and strict rules. I tried to be overly nice, didn’t dare lose my temper.
“But after this I stopped trying to adapt. For example, at Barcelona, players were banned from driving their sports cars to training. I thought this was ridiculous – it was certainly not the club’s business what car I drive – so in April, before a match with Almeria, I drove my Ferrari Enzo to training and it caused a scene.”
Guardiola, for his own part, claimed that he would only ever speak to Zlatan in person, and was disappointed by the way he was represented in the book. At the time, the Catalan said: “If Ibra and I have spoken only twice in six months, there is a reason, but it is better for the club if I don’t talk about it.”
Pastures new
Ibrahimovic was essentially frozen out at Barcelona due to a tactical shift, although he has consistently maintained that his exit was the fault of Guardiola. The coach made the decision to move Messi into a central striking role, leading to Ibrahimovic, in his own words, being “sacrificed”. He says that Messi asked for the change, as he no longer wanted to play on the wing, and he rewarded his manager handsomely; in 2009-10, Messi scored 47 goals in 53 games in all competitions.
It was little surprise, then, that Barcelona were so willing to loan Ibrahimovic back to Italy at the end of the season, as he joined AC Milan.
Pep was effusive in his praise. “It was a pleasure to coach Zlatan,” he said in 2010, “I learned a lot from him. He has been playing at the top level for eight to 10 years, while I have coached for only two.”
He added: “Ibrahimovic was a very important player for us. He helped us a lot and his first six months were excellent. Part of that league title we won is his. If I meet him, I’ll greet him, I say again that I have no problems with him.”
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‘Don’t know what his problem was’
Guardiola spent two more seasons in Spain, winning La Liga again, as well as the Champions League, as the triumvirate of Messi, Xavi, and Andres Iniesta propelled Barca towards sporting immortality. They remain one of the best teams to ever play the game and Guardiola, of course, would go on to win the Bundesliga three times with Bayern Munich before landing in Manchester. He has now, arguably, built a team that can rival his great Barcelona side, winning the Premier League title four times in a row and also masterminding a near-impossible treble with City.
Ibrahimovic has also been busy, winning Serie A twice with AC Milan, Ligue 1 four times with Paris Saint-Germain, and both the Europa League and League Cup with Manchester United. He also played for the LA Galaxy, although he now claims that “drinking water is as easy as scoring goals in MLS”, because he simply cannot resist.
As for their feud, Guardiola has seemed conciliatory, consistently remarking that Ibrahimovic was a superb player who simply did not fit in with his vision of how the game should be played.
And Zlatan? We’ll leave the last words to him from a 2017 interview: “The problem wasn’t with me, it was with him, and he never came to terms with it. I don’t know what his problem was with me.”
