Zlatan Ibrahimovic has branded Pep Guardiola ‘immature’ over the way he was managed by the Manchester City boss during their time together at Barcelona.
The Swede, who spent a year under Guardiola at Camp Nou, lost out to his former manager on Sunday as City registered a 2-1 victory over United in a fiercely contested derby at Old Trafford.
After the match, a mass brawl was triggered which involved both sets of players and coaching staff around City’s dressing room.
Reports have subsequently claimed that City’s players ridiculed Ibrahimovic by telling the striker: ‘Ibra, you talk a lot but you move a little!’
But speaking on Sky Sport Italia’s ‘The Lords of Football’, the 36-year-old has taken a fresh swipe at Guardiola.
‘I’d scored a lot of goals in my first six months [at Barcelona] and we won two Super Cups. The first six months were perfect,’ said the United striker.
‘After that, we changed system and tactics, and it wasn’t good for me, so the club told me to talk to Guardiola.
‘And I told Guardiola that he’d sacrificed the other players for Messi. 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 [Mario] Mandzukic and [Samuel] 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.’
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