Zlatan Ibrahimovic claims Pep Guardiola is his “most immature Coach” as “he put me on the bench” for questioning Barcelona’s reliance on Lionel Messi.

Ibrahimovic famously left Inter for Barca in a swap deal with Samuel Eto’o eight years ago, but the striker returned to Italy with Milan just a season later, and he looked back at his rift with Guardiola in the second and final part of his Sky Sport Italia interview.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic claims Pep Guardiola is his “most immature Coach” as “he put me on the bench” for questioning Barcelona’s reliance on Lionel Messi.

Ibrahimovic famously left Inter for Barca in a swap deal with Samuel Eto’o eight years ago, but the striker returned to Italy with Milan just a season later, and he looked back at his rift with Guardiola in the second and final part of his Sky Sport Italia interview.

“There was Barcelona, ​​they’d just won the Champions League,” continued the Manchester United veteran.

“But it was hard to take me away from Inter, my relationship with Moratti was great. Maxwell had also joined Barcelona and ​​I told him ‘I’ll give you my shoes, bring them to Barcelona and wait for me there, warm them up.’

“After one or two days, the two clubs met and after 20 minutes, everything was done.

“Mino called me and we went there, it was all done, the contract was signed and the Press conference was ready.

“There were 70,000 people at the stadium, I felt an adrenaline rush and motivation that I wanted to play right away.

“My run of League titles? Barcelona wanted it, as did all the players, plus I didn’t want a complicated relationship with Barcelona.

“It was the start, I wanted to do well and I was doing that. It looked like the Dream Team, there were Messi, Iniesta, Xavi, Henry, Dani Alves.

“It was like when I arrived at Juventus, it was like playing FIFA. Crisis with Guardiola? I was at Barca for a reason.

“I’d scored a lot of goals in my first six months and we won two Super Cups. The first six months were perfect.

“After that, we changed system and tactics, and it wasn’t good for me, so the club told me to talk to Guardiola.

“And I told Guardiola that he’d sacrificed the other players for Messi. He told me he understood me.

“After that, he put me on the bench for the next game, the one after that and the one after that.

“And I thought, ‘he’s solved the problem very well I see!’ After that, he didn’t talk to me or even look at me.

“I’d walk into a room and he’d walk out. I’d go to meet him and he’d go somewhere else. I understood that there was something beyond football.

“But the problem was his, it was he who hadn’t solved the problem with me. I remember on my first day, he told me that the Barcelona players didn’t turn up to training in Ferraris or Porsches.

“He’d already judged me then, but if you don’t know a person then you can’t judge them. I had my experience with him, I don’t know about others.

“But I read the same thing had happened to Mandzukic and Eto’o. He wasn’t the worst Coach I’d worked under, but he was certainly the most immature because a man solves his problems.”

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