Marc Ingla, a former Barcelona director who now occupies a similar role at Ligue 1’s Lille, believes there was a “little friction” between Lionel Messi and Zlatan Ibrahimovic in Catalonia, hence the latter lasting just a year at Camp Nou.
The gangly Swede fashioned 16 goals over 29 appearances en route to top spot in La Liga, but his relative lack of mobility – when compared to the rest of Pep Guardiola’s breathless ranks – was widely deemed detrimental to the side’s work.
In that campaign, Barca was eliminated from the last 16 of the Copa del Rey by Sevilla, and lost 3-2 on aggregate to Inter Milan in their Champions League semi-final.
“Why did Zlatan not get on at Barcelona?” Ingla told Telefoot, with translation from ESPN FC’s Samuel Marsden. “He’s a beast, a machine. But he was next to another machine, a smaller one (laughs).
“He was too static and Messi perhaps needed more space. Zlatan occupied too much. There was a little friction, I think.”
Ibrahimovic was shipped on loan to AC Milan in 2011, and made a permanent switch to the Italian powerhouse a …read more