Pep: Barca must deactivate Zlatan
Reuters - Tuesday 27 March 2012, 18:14
Zlatan Ibrahimovic is unstoppable if he
is given too much of the ball and Barcelona will try to
deactivate the AC Milan forward with their trademark possession
game, coach Pep Guardiola said on Tuesday.
Barca will face their former striker Ibrahimovic, who left
Nou Camp on bad terms at the end of the 2009/10 season, as they
visit the Serie A champions for their Champions League
quarter-final first leg on Wednesday, the outstanding tie of the
round.
"We have to deactivate Ibra and Milan by monopolising
possession of the ball," said Guardiola. He is a very strong
player especially in the air. He is unstoppable if he
participates a lot in the match.
"We owe him part of a league title. His first six months [at
Barcelona] were very good."
Having left Barcelona after only one season in which he
helped them win La Liga, Ibrahimovic launched a stinging attack
on Guardiola, saying he could not understand why their
relationship had broken down.
"I still haven't got an answer as to what the problem was,"
he said shortly afterwards. "It can't have been the quality [of
my football] because there was never a discussion about the
football part."
The volatile Swede has enjoyed an excellent season with
Milan, scoring 22 goals in Serie A and five in the Champions
League.
Guardiola refused to accept that his side, who won 3-2 at
San Siro in a group stage match in which Ibrahimovic was among
the scorers, were favourites to knock out the injury-hit Serie A
leaders.
"The only certainty is that if you don't play too good
games, you don't go to the semi-finals," he said. "I expect the
best possible Milan team in one of the world's great stadiums."
"I try to transmit to the players the message that they must
not let up after winning so much. I wouldn't want us to betray
ourselves, knowing that we could be knocked out as a result."