In Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s new autobiography the big Swede reignites his feud with Pep Guardiola, labelling the Bayern Munich boss a “spineless coward.”
Ibra and Pep fell out when Guardiola sold him after just one season at Barcelona.
The hulking striker clearly felt aggrieved that he was not deemed good enough to thrive at the Camp Nou, and in the aftermath of his move to AC Milan, he questioned Guardiola’s managerial skills, and slammed him for having “no balls.”
It appeared as if Ibra’s scorn for Guardiola had cooled of late, after he extended an olive branch to the Catalan schemer.
Read: Pep And Ibra Kiss And Make Up
But with the latest release of a book by the PSG forward, things have got nasty again.
In his book, Ibra says that during his time at Inter Milan, then manager Jose Mourinho inspired him in such a way that he was “willing to die” for the Serie A club.
But when he lost to Inter in the Champions League with Barca, he decided that Pep was more insipid than inspirational.
Describing events in the dressing room after Inter had knocked Barca out, Ibra writes of his confrontation with Pep: “I yelled: 'You haven't got any balls!' and worse than that I added: 'You can go to hell!' I completely lost it, and you might have expected Guardiola to say a few words in response, but he's a spineless coward. He just picked up the metal box, like a little caretaker, and then left, never to mention it again, not a word.”
Ibra may have been embarrassed to have been exiled from Barca after just one season, as if it said something bad about his footballing abilities.
But today he believes leaving was the best thing he could have done, after being at Barca foced him to conform in a way that he no longer felt like his real self.
"Everyone did as they were told. I didn't fit in, not at all,” he recalls of his time at the Camp Nou.
“I thought, just enjoy the opportunity, don't confirm their prejudices. So I started to adapt and blend in. I became way too nice. It was mental. I said what I thought people wanted me to say. It was completely messed up. I drove the club's Audi and stood there and nodded my head. I hardly even yelled at my team-mates any more. I was boring. Zlatan was no longer Zlatan."
Ibra’s book sounds like a must-read! What do you make of his comments?
