When you decide sell off your top goalscorer — a player who has helped you win two Champions League trophies, a Copa del Rey crown, three Liga titles, and two Spanish Supercopas — you had better have a replacement that can exceed or at the very least meet the departing player’s level of performance.
In signing Zlatan Ibrahimovic from Inter Milan, Barcelona may have parted ways with one of their most iconic players of the past decade in Samuel Eto’o, but they gain a player of the very highest quality — one who has helped his teams win a host of titles, including the Eredivisie (twice), Serie A (three times consecutively) and the Supercoppa Italiana (twice).
In playing for Inter this past season, a team that was arguably far less talented than Barcelona, Ibrahimovic still managed to score 25 goals in the Serie A — just five fewer than Samuel Eto’o’s 30 in La Liga. The Cameroon star's strikes were scored with the help of the best supporting cast in the world: Lionel Messi; Dani Alves; Xavi Hernandez; Andres Iniesta; and Thierry Henry.
That is not in any way to sell Eto’o short. Three times the African Player of the Year (among a long list of personal accolades), Eto’o is one of the most talented in the world in his position. But closer to the top of that list of the world’s best strikers, Zlatan Ibrahimovic could, if one can imagine it, be an upgrade for Barca.
While both players have comparable goalscoring ability, what separates ‘Ibra’ from Eto’o is the Swede’s technique. While Eto’o is a pacey, powerful striker who rarely takes more than three touches of the ball before scoring, Ibrahimovic is comfortable with the ball at his feet, frequently leading the counterattack or feeding a team-mate through on goal with a deft backheel.
For a man of such towering stature (1.92m or 6 ft 3.5 in) — which usually translates into awkward control of the ball at one’s feet and limited agility — Ibrahimovic has the touch of a fleet-footed winger. Such is his mastery of ball control that Ibra has even been directly compared to the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo, as Nike did in their famous Joga Bonito ad campaign, pitting the Swedish sensation against the Portuguese starlet:
With such an impressive repertoire, affectionately dubbed by the press as ‘Ibracadabra’, it is no wonder as to why Barcelona so publicly pursued Ibra; one can only begin to imagine the added element of creativity the Swede will bring to the Barca attack and how he will link up with Messi, Xavi, Iniesta, Henry, Alves, and others.
The other area in which Barca have made an upgrade from Eto’o to Ibrahimovic is in matters off the pitch. While Ibra has still been the subject of controversy throughout his career, relative to Eto’o he is as humble as Zidane.
Eto’o’s comments in the press during his tenure at Barca were polemically divisive at worst and distracting at best, as he did not hesitate to lambaste his previous coach, Frank Rijkaard, his team-mates, chiefly Ronaldinho, and even club president Joan Laporta.
But despite the improvements that Zlatan offers over Eto’o on paper, there are still some doubts with respect to how the Swede’s signing will play out over the course of a season and beyond. Only seven months younger than Eto’o at 27-years-old, Ibrahimovic is no spring chicken and has lost some of the pace that made him such a dangerous threat when he received the ball in midfield with it all to do.
Moreover, Ibra has suffered from a chronic knee injury and fitness could prove to be a problem as he continues to age. Barca coach Pep Guardiola did a superb job preventing injury to his key players by sufficiently rotating his squad through Barcelona’s three competitions last term. Using this strategy, and with the added element of fortune, Ibrahimovic may be able to avoid the sort of major injury that kept in on the sidelines for prolonged spells at Inter. Should he be able to do so, Zlatan could help his new team dazzle Barca fans even more so than they did last season… if such a thing can possibly be imagined.
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