Zlatan Ibrahimovic: Genius, or Overrated?

By: Rob | April 4th, 2010

Bad new for Barcelona – Zlatan Ibrahimovic will miss Barcelona’s Champions League Second Leg with Arsenal. The Swede scored twice in the first leg, and indeed, the team appeared to lack any will to win after he was switched for Thierry Henry.

The question is – just how much of a blow is Ibra missing out?

In England, where I live, Ibra’s reputation is pretty much nothing. He’s judged mostly on his Champions League performances, and of course, before this season, he had never scored in the knockout rounds of the Champions League.

I am a big fan of him. I saw plenty of him in Serie A, and for me he basically made Inter (and Juve before) worth watching. You never know what he’s going to do with the ball – he gives me that feeling that I haven’t had since Ronaldinho in his pomp, the sense that I might see something I’ve never seen before.

But he’s far from perfect. He is undoubtedly quite lazy. And infuriatingly enough, he doesn’t produce the magic week in week out – as Ronaldinho and Zidane seemed to in their primes.

There were eyebrows raised at his transfer fee in the summer of course. Not only did Barca offer Inter an absurd amount of money, but they also offered Samuel Eto’o as a makeweight. Eto’o scored goals for fun for Barca, but he was a divisive force in the dressing room, where Ibra probably isn’t.

At the end of the day, I’d rather have one player I could carry when he couldn’t be bothered knowing he could do something special, if it was my team. He is what football is all about, the chance to see something you just know you couldn’t do.

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Coconut

Genius. And Ibra is far from "consistent." He had what? 2 or 3 months without scoring? But with that being said, he has 19-ish goals to his name this season? imagine if he had been scoring in those few months, he would well be ahead of Messi for the pichinni (sp?). Ibrah is one of the better strikers in the world, but he does have somewhat of a temper as well.
Carl

Genius and fun to watch
wvr

He's great. He has a lot of creativity flair and skill. He's not perfect but really, who is? Is he really over-hyped because he didn't do great week in week out like Zidane did or Xavi? Whatever.

He's a striker and scores goals on a fairly consistent basis. At Barca, in his first year, I think he is doing well. At Inter, he did well but often suffered when his teammates gave him the ball and expected him to do it on his own. The math against ManU last year for example. Lots of people blamed him but he was actually one of the better performers and Inter's mid didn't take as much heat as they should have.

Also, if you look at the reason for his fame you will know without a doubt that he's not over-rated or over-hyped. He's known for doing things that others can't do. Back heel ninja goals, weird samurai passes with his feet, etc. Does he do those things? Yes. Does he do them a lot? Yes. That's what he is known for and he does them.

It's typical for people to say "look at these numbers here: they prove he's not a great player!" But that's very simplified and naive. Football involves numbers but really I'm more worried about the performance and Zlatan delivers in tons.
tommy wong

Barca we're probably going to make enough money from Nike, to advertise/market Ibrahimovic, as well as the club as a whole with the Nike logo.

Eto'o is Puma right? It's all about money and number crunching these days.
MOMONEY

Genius. Typical English media pushing the notion that he is overrated to distract from CR7's overrated-ness
Weston (@wpazzurri)

i agree perfectly with alessio. and to say he isnt a divisive force in the dressing room doesnt make any sense at all, i remember hearing he got in a figh with a teammate while at ajax which resulted in scissor throwing. and while at juventus he also fought with vieira (or was it thuram?) quite regularly if i remember correctly.
Aman

Genius.
Nick

Give him a break. How many big agile strikers were there ever? He was born and raised in Sweden. I am not implying Swedes are lazy, but if you ever lived there it's the perfect life minus the long winters, so why try too hard and get some dumb injury?
ED

There is no denying the skill level that Ibra has and the beauty in some of his goals, but that alone does NOT make you a great striker because there have been many that had talent, but still failed to rise above the rest to take their teams to glory! There are many times I have watched Ibra play that I have found his desire and heart and work ethic lacking bigtime. When you see how hard a guy like Olic works to get his goals and then watch Ibra it really makes you wonder what he could really do or be if he had that kind of desire!
Luka

Good touch for a big man ;)
Oli

Genius.
Drabik

Genius.