reminds me of the Makelele book about Mourinho in Chelsea. The guy is just mad because he failed at Barca and got the boot. Him writing a book or w/e just shows the guy is classless, like I always had suspected.
Someone's bitter. Not really. Ibra was brought to be a taller presence in the box area and the fact that he was versatile. At the end Bojan was outplaying him and Pep rightfully benched Ibra. It's not like Barca won anything that year
he's right that we shouldn't have bought him. henry, villa, and mascherano might all have had similar reason to complain about being used in ways they were not accustomed to. but they all [gasp] followed Pep's directions and put the team before their own egos, and the team as a whole benefited as a result. zlatan should stop describing himself as a ferari when he actually behaved more like a runaway train. Ibra to Guardiola: “You sh*t yourself because of Mourinho.” Luckily, Pep already has something to wipe his ass with. (Paper from Ibrahimovic’s new book)
That's my point (and his). Everybody knows Ibra's temper and style of play. You can't buy a guy like that and expect him to be an utility player. It's bad management.
Ibra was leading Serie A in assists and goals. It's crazy to think a forward like that could adapt to different styles of play. Ibra has himself to blame for sucking for a while. I already said it but BOJAN was outplaying him. Theres no excuse for a top striker like that.
I remember Ibra was very good when he arrived and then started to suck horribly. Maybe that off the field drama had something to do with it? He has a huge ego and maybe he thinks he can't be dropped even when he's performing badly. That's a luxury he would not have at Barcelona and people who bought him should have known it. Off course Pep got it right with his plan. It's the team's management who screwed up. For example: Real Madrid wants to buy Neymar and everybody knows what kind of character he is. Would you advise them to buy him and keep him on the bench for a season or two? I'm sure as a Barcelona fan you would
Ibra was great at the beginning. I chose him over in as the best player in the first half of that season. Over Messi. I don't like Neymar at all so I don't care about him. Barca need to get defenders. Depth is the issue. Pep has done nothing wrong aside from the Eto'o thing. He's won everything since he became coach of Barca. Its ridiculous to blame him for that when the team produces results.
ztalan was a panic buy. pep had already made it very clear that eto'o was out and the club had failed to negotiate a deal with valencia for pep's first choice replacement (villa), so they had painted themselves into a corner with only one way out unfortunately. because pep's decision to release eto'o had been made public, the selling clubs of all the potential replacements (valencia/villa; inter/zlatan; athletico/forlan) had the upper hand in negotiations because it was a very short list of players who were anywhere near good enough and barca had to buy, everyone knew it would have been a complete disaster if we had failed to sign anyone, and we had no leverage in negotiations other than offering eto'o in exchange. no way was eto'o willing to move to valencia or athletico. the big mistake was making it public that eto'o was no longer wanted before securing his replacement. it was certainly a big and costly mistake, but they seemed to have learnt the lesson because the following summer they secured the signing of villa early before surprising everyone and showing zlatan the door.
Messi in the middle is only the most fascinating and productive tactical change in club football in a long, long time. It's hilarious that he would use that as some excuse for being hard done given the results it has produced for Barça.
The system didn't changed to a 4-5-1, if anything the system was still a 4-3-3 with Messi even dropped back more than a regular striker since he plays the false 9 role. Zlatan is just making up excuses, at least to me. He wanted the team to be built around him instead of the other way around. Glad he's out.
I can understand why Pep changed the system, I can understand Messi for wanting to play in the middle, and we can all see the results. But having your team built around Zlatan is not such a bad idea either... unless you strive for non-domestic success.
Zlatan is an amazing talent, and he amazed us while he was here, basically first half of the season, he tried to adapt, he scored some great goals, he even hustled and played a bit of pressing defense. But eventually he had his falling out with Pep, and stopped adapting to our system, started getting outplayed by Bojan within the parameters of our system. Still a great player, but unlike the luxury of starting a Larson on our bench (as a "parked-bus breaking plan B") Z expected to start and even, naively thought he might get a WPOTY here. Didn't work out. His domestic title record over 4 teams and 10 years or so is incredible, no doubt. And he and Pique were cute together before Pique found Shakire - just kidding.
Thuram is the curator of a major exhibition in Paris on the history of "Human Zoos: The Invention of the Savage." Really troubling look at the West's construction of racial others and 'primitive' cultures and how they were exhibited in big European and US cities. Bravo, Lilian.
Call me an old man but that sort of thing only kids do. We all know Ronnie is young* at heart. *ashley young
Toure score a golazo today for City. He's a one man wrecking crew for them. Brilliant on defense when needed and then easily switches to an AM role. City are scary and there is no shame in saying that. I've noticed they started doing the Barca thing of taking short corner kicks and preferring to pass their way in. Silva and Aguero are killing and they always played well against Barca when they were in La Liga.
Henry scored the winner in an FA cup match for Arsenal...off the bench *edit - holy shit! this thread is going on 6 years! all started when PK9 started his precipitous decline