You’re immature, Ibrahimovic tells Guardiola in renewed attack

Zlatan Ibrahimovic has branded Pep Guardiola ‘immature’ in a renewed attack on the Manchester City coach.

The Manchester United striker first criticised the Catalan coach in his book I Am Zlatan after the pair fell out during their time together at Barcelona.

The Swede endured a turbulent year under Guardiola at the Nou Camp, leaving for Inter Milan after questioning Barca’s perceived reliance on Lionel Messi.

He later called the coach a ‘spineless coward’ and admitted he is still driven by proving a point to the now Blues boss after joining United last year.

Now Ibrahimovic – a second-half substitute in United’s derby defeat to City on Sunday – has reasserted his view of his former boss in an interview with Sky Italia .

“And I told Guardiola that he’d sacrificed the other players for Messi,” he said. “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.”

Manchester Evening News, UK