Page 136 - Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography

his book: ‘I felt like crap when I was sitting in the locker room with Guardiola staring at me like I
was an annoying distraction, an outsider. It was nuts. He was a wall, a stone wall. I didn’t get any
sign of life from him and I was wishing myself away every moment with the team.’
The line had been crossed.

A cold war ensued, the coach and the player stopped speaking to one another and nothing
motivated Ibrahimović. ‘Then Guardiola started his philosopher thing. I was barely listening. Why
would I? It was advanced bullshit about blood, sweat and tears, that kind of stuff. 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 Barça players were like schoolboys, following the coach blindly, whereas I was
used to asking “why should we?”’
‘Has he looked at you today?’ Thierry Henry used to ask him. ‘Nope, but I have seen his back,’

would answer Ibra. ‘Ah, it’s getting better between the two of you then ...’
At the beginning of April, Ibra had a mini revival as a player but then he got injured before the
Real Madrid–Barça match at the Bernabéu. In that Clásico Messi successfully exploited the false nine
position and scored the first of the two goals in the 0-2 win. That muscle injury made Ibra go into the
final stretch of the season at a different pace from the rest, but Guardiola used him in the semi-final of

the Champions League against Inter, a decision that was damaging for the player, the coach and the
team. And one that Pep wouldn’t forgive himself for.
Ibra’s pitiful contribution in those two games was the straw that broke the camel’s back. After the
3-2 scoreline in the first leg, he considered leaving Ibrahimović on the bench for the second leg in the
Camp Nou to free up that space so that Messi could move around freely. But Pep listened to his head,
instead of his heart. Ibra started the match but his minimal involvement meant that he was substituted
in the sixty-third minute. Barcelona were incapable of winning the tie and Guardiola decided that

never again would he let his head rule his instincts. That turned out to be one of Ibra’s last games for
Barcelona as Pedro and Bojan were selected ahead of him: players who were key to winning the
second Liga title under Guardiola.
A few days after going out of the Champions League to Milan and after coming on as a substitute
against Villarreal, Ibra lost it completely. In his biography he explains that he gave Pep a piece of his
mind in the el Madrigal dressing room, and that, a prisoner of his own rage, he sent a three-metre-high

locker crashing to the floor. ‘[Guardiola] was staring at me and I lost it. I thought “there he 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 shitting yourself because of José 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.’
After the Champions League exit, Guardiola decided once again to change his number nine for the

following season. In reality, Pep had to admit the Swede’s presence in the team delayed setting the
scene for Messi’s role in the centre as a false number nine. Pep also knew he had betrayed himself in
not sticking to his own ideas, not just in the game against Inter, perhaps the whole season. In order to
adapt both the Argentinian and the Swedish players together, he had spent the season adjusting small
details to try to rescue something from an unsalvageable situation: right up to the point of partly

abandoning the path the team had started to follow the previous year. Ultimately, that campaign
reinforced the conviction that everything had to go through Messi.
It was a difficult time for Guardiola. To sell a player who had been signed at huge cost to the club
could and should be seen as a mistake. But it was a decision that had to be taken.