essiIn today’s episode of football matters, we’re going to cover the story of why and how Lionel Messi forced Zlatan Ibrahimovic to leave Barcelona. Not many people know what led to the sale of Zlatan Ibrahimovic from Barcelona to AC Milan. So today, we would tell you everything you need to know.
Everything Pep Guardiola has done in his career has pretty much turned into gold. However, the signing of Zlatan Ibrahimovic in 2009 to add to his treble-winning Barcelona side has to be regarded as one of the biggest mistakes of his career.
This article would explain what led to Barcelona’s signing Ibrahimovic, why it never made sense tactically, and why it was ultimately Lionel Messi who forced Barcelona to sell Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
Why did Barcelona sign Zlatan?
The year is 2009, Pep Guardiola is in his first year as manager, and he’s led Barcelona to one of the greatest, most dominating seasons by a single club.
He won all major trophies. The key players of that Barcelona team were Xavi, Iniesta, Samuel Eto’o, and a 22-year-old Lionel Messi.
Eto’o and Messi were especially key to Barcelona’s attack, and they both scored in the Champions League final against Man Utd to win the trophy. Eto’o’s ability to play on the wing made him useful, and he was also one of the most senior players in that attacking line-up. The only issue was Guardiola never liked Eto’o from the start, and he always wanted to sell him.
Guardiola had successfully sold previous club legends like Ronaldinho and Deco, as he felt these players were past their best and they had too much influence in the dressing room. Also, Guardiola wanted to build the club around Xavi, Iniesta, Busquets, and Messi.
At the same time, Ibrahimovic is a 29-year-old superstar of world football playing for Inter Milan.
So Barcelona, in the summer of 2009, signed Ibrahimovic by offering Inter Milan a swap deal for Samuel Eto’o, plus £60 million. While Ibrahimovic may have been a better striker than Eto’o, many questioned why adding £60 million on top was needed, and they felt that it was overpaying.
Eto’o also had tactical flexibility because he could play in different positions, while Ibrahimovic was a classic striker that could only play centrally.
Now, Ibrahimovic only being able to play centrally as his favourite position is key to this whole saga and story, because Barcelona’s best player, young starboy, legend in the making, Lionel Messi, is slowly wanting to switch from the right-wing position, where he has played most of his career, to a more centrally position. That’s because the season prior, Guardiola experimented with moving Messi to the number nine position centrally, and opponents couldn’t deal with Messi playing there. They formed devastating little triangles with Busquets, Xavi, and Iniesta.
However, Messi was still mainly used as a right-winger, and him playing centrally was seen more of a trick move by Barcelona to full opponents. Messi felt he was more effective down the middle and he wants to play there permanently. His idol Maradona played centrally for the famous Argentinian National team.
Messi showed devastating abilities to play centrally and he knew he was the best player in the team. So, of course, the club should build the team around him and cater to his best abilities and that was the key background information.
Messi wants to play centrally and Barcelona sign a superstar striker, Ibrahimovic, who can only play centrally. There’s going to be a clash.
Nonetheless, Ibrahimovic is now a Barcelona player and his start to his Barcelona career goes great. He scores in each of his first five games and he even scores the winning goal against Real Madrid. So it’s happy days right now.
While Ibrahimovic is on a good run, Lionel Messi was not happy to be playing on the right wing. He wants to play in the middle, false number nine, number 10 role. Messi wanted to be the main creative playmaker and scorer for Barcelona, he starts demanding to Guardiola to find a way to move him back to the middle and doesn’t care what happens with the tactics.
His demands were he wants to play in the middle and Guardiola needs to sort it. This leaves Guardiola with a headache because Ibrahimovic cannot play in the wings, even a tiny bit. At least when he had Eto’o, he was able to switch with Messi on the right wing making them have some tactical fluidity.
Clearly, Barcelona and Guardiola didn’t expect Messi to be so demanding or else they would have not sold Eto’o for Ibrahimovic.
Guardiola tries different ways to make Messi and Ibrahimovic happy. He first tries a system of playing 4-2-3-1 with Zlatan up front and Messi behind him in the number 10 position. However, this didn’t work because it compromised Barcelona’s main strength, which was having three central midfielders in Busquets, Iniesta and Xavi. Guardiola then reverts back to 4-3-3, with this time, Ibrahimovic on the right wing, praying that it works and Messi finally playing in the centre.
Now, this formation was even worse than the 4-2-3-1 because Zlatan cannot play on the wing at all and he offers nothing on the wing. So Guardiola has no choice. He has to revert back to the original formation of 4-3-3, where Messi is on the right wing and Ibrahimovic is in the centre.
The turning point for that season came in their Champions League semi-final loss to Inter Milan. Barcelona, as the defending Champions League winners, they faced off against Jose Mourinho’s Inter Milan in December.
This match was a tactical error by Guardiola because Inter Milan centre-backs Lucio and Walter Samuel were experienced, tough defenders and they were easily able to handle Ibrahimovic playing in the centre. Ibrahimovic himself had two terrible games in both of the legs.
Had Guardiola played Lionel Messi centrally, they could have utilised Messi’s pace and trickery to get him behind Inter Milan centre-backs, who were slow. Instead, Ibrahimovic would play centre and Inter Milan would go on to win that match. Mourinho in his funny style, would end up running around camp now, celebrating, and this embarrassed Guardiola.
In the dressing room, it is said Guardiola had a go at Ibrahimovic for his inability to affect the game. They had a big bust-up, with both of them swearing and shouting at each other. So the ramifications of that semi-final, their fate is sealed. Barcelona’s and Ibrahimovic’s fate is sealed. Guardiola knew he had to sell Ibrahimovic after just one season, and which he does by selling him to AC Milan. Ibrahimovic would later confirm all of this in his autobiography, where he states these following words.
“Everything went well at Barcelona, but then Messi started to talk. He wanted to play in the middle, not on the wing. So the system changed. I was sacrificed and no longer had the freedom on the pitch”. Those are the words of Ibrahimovic, where it pretty much confirms these stories.
Barcelona, though, wanted to redeem their mistake. They would go on to sign David Villa as Ibrahimovic’s replacement and this time, he could actually play on the wing, where Pedro would play on the other wing, and Messi now plays in the central, famous, iconic false nine position.
The following season, they would go on to break all the records. Messi would go on to have one of the greatest seasons of all time, and cement his legacy as the greatest player of all time. Ibrahimovic would go on to find success with AC Milan, then PSG, and Manchester United
So that was the story of how Messi ultimately caused the sale of Ibrahimovic.
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