Last week Zlatan Ibrahimovic got into a practice scuffle with Oguchi Onyewu that was rumored to be instigated by a dirty tackle that the Swede made on the Yank center back and the rough play possibly put Onyewu’s vulnerable repaired knee into question. Regardless, the tackle sparked a serious fight between the two men. Onyewu ended up choking the Golden Goal man and the two men reportedly had to be pulled apart from one another as they continued delivering blows to each other’s face.
The incident was a strange one to hear about (although it isn’t the first time something like this has happened), but I must admit I was not shocked to hear Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s name brought up with the scenario. Ibrahimovic has been known to instigate problems before and that is part of the reason why he has moved on to AC Milan in the first place. Ibra constantly called out his old coach Pep Guardiola for supposidely not treating him with much respect when he was in Spain and the forward also recently insulted his former club of Inter Milan claiming that the club had not achieved anything before his arrival in 2006.
Ibra is one of these outspoken guys that has allowed his stardom go straight to his head. The former Barca, Inter, and Juve man has insulted most of his past clubs, teammates, and coaches and even 18 months ago he claimed Serie A football was generally a dirty and boring league that lacks spectacular football teams like Barcelona. The guy doesn’t appear to be what they call a team player and I suppose this often is the case with talents at the featured lone striker position. Ibra recently expressed his desire for Fillipo Inzaghi to start alongside him because the Italian-born striker allows the forward to have more freedom, but the Swede also suggested that the Brazilian players were not as effective in the same role.
Ibra is one of those play-for-himself type of characters that will always be considered for a transfer because he is one of those rare, unique talents. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that he is the Randy Moss of soccer because he hasn’t gone that far off of the deep end yet, but if Ibra continues to burn bridges with every team he plays for then pretty soon he will run out of options.
Just like Randy will too.
http://blog.nationmultimedia.com/home/blog_data/38/1038/images/Zlatan.jpg
