Zlatan Ibrahimovic: A Mixed Bag in Barcelona’s 3–0 Victory over Sporting Gijón

Ibrahi­movic scores in his first La Liga game

Writer’s Note: Unfor­tu­nately, Word­Press does not rec­og­nize the “c” with an accent mark, so Bojan Krkic and Zla­tan Ibrahimovic’s names will not include an accent mark above the ” c.”

It is easy to over­re­act and over­an­a­lyze after one match and assume that what­ever hap­pens in that match will become a trend through­out the sea­son; there­fore, in eval­u­at­ing Zla­tan Ibrahimovic’s per­for­mance in the Barcelona — Sport­ing Gijón match on Mon­day night, hyper­bole will not be the over­all sen­ti­ment of this piece.

As for the match itself, Barcelona never let Sport­ing Gijón play, and Sport­ing did not really seem inter­ested in retriev­ing the ball back from Barcelona.  Barça had 74% of the pos­ses­sion in each half, but unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cally, Barça con­structed their three goals from cor­ner kicks rather than from open play.  Bojan Krkic, dep­u­tiz­ing for Thierry Henry, who Pep Guardi­ola decided to rest after play­ing in the UEFA Super Cup on Fri­day, per­formed at a high level with a goal and numer­ous indi­vid­ual runs that men­aced the Sport­ing defense all night long.  While Bojan brought the Camp Nou to its feet, Sey­dou Keita was the man of the match with his tire­less work rate in the mid­field and his abil­ity to get his head onto free kicks and crosses.  His near post flick on from a cor­ner kick in the 18th minute directly led to Bojan’s headed goal on the back post, his header from a cor­ner kick in the 42nd minute scored the sec­ond goal for Barcelona, and another header in the 67th minute hit the post.  While Barcelona did not pro­duce the sparkling dis­play of foot­ball like most expect them to do on every occa­sion, they took the belief out of Sport­ing and thus could play around with the ball for ninety minutes.

With Thierry Henry rest­ing and Lionel Messi in Argentina prepar­ing for World Cup qual­i­fy­ing against Brazil, the lime­light was squarely focused on Zla­tan Ibrahi­movic and how he would fare in his first match in the blau­grana shirt.  With Pedro Rodríguez on his right and Bojan Krkic on his left, Ibrahi­movic had more than capa­ble for­wards on the wings, but they were not Henry or Messi.  His first sig­nif­i­cant touch came in the fourth minute when Pedro sent him a through ball into the box, which got him behind the Sport­ing defense; how­ever, he was posi­tioned at an acute angle and he scuffed his shot try­ing to blast it past Sport­ing goal­keeper Juan Pablo.  In the 30th minute, he made a run into the box and faked a shot, caus­ing two defend­ers to go to ground in antic­i­pa­tion.  Open for the shot, he tried a cute, swerved shot towards the near post, and Juan Pablo saved it eas­ily.  A diag­o­nal run in the 40th minute set up a shot for Ibrahi­movic, but Juan Pablo made a rou­tine save.  In the first half, Ibrahi­movic seemed a bit slug­gish and lax in attack, but that could be directly attrib­uted to his lack of match fit­ness.  He injured his hand while on a US tour with Inter Milan and did not play a com­pet­i­tive match until the Joan Gam­per Tro­phy against Man­ches­ter City on August 19.

Ibrahi­movic raised his energy level and involved him­self more into the attack in the sec­ond half.  In the 66th minute, Eric Abidal sent a long ball to the edge of the penalty area, and Alberto Botía, a cen­tral defender on loan to Sport­ing from Barcelona, harassed Ibrahi­movic, but he was able to fight him off and restart the attack.  His will­ing­ness to scrap and clash with the defense gave a rise to the Barça faith­ful.  In the 74th minute, on an aver­age cross by Pedro, Ibrahi­movic was able to rise over Botía and deliver a solid header, but it headed toward Juan Pablo’s grate­ful hands.  Pedro’s cross hung in the air, so Ibrahi­movic had to sup­ply most of the power for the header, and he accom­plished that feat quite well.  His aer­ial abil­ity is one of the attrib­utes that dif­fer­en­ti­ated Ibrahi­movic from his pre­de­ces­sor Samuel Eto’o.

Then in the 82nd minute, Ibrahi­movic scored his first goal for Barça.  On another cor­ner kick, Xavi took it short to Dani Alves, and after he crossed the ball into the box, it took a slight deflec­tion off Sport­ing defender Grégory’s head, and Ibrahi­movic exe­cuted the div­ing header at the back post to per­fec­tion.  It was almost a car­bon copy of the first Barcelona goal where Sey­dou Keita’s near-post flick sent the ball to the back post, and Bojan headed home the open­ing score.  It was not the most attrac­tive goal he has ever scored, but at that moment, it must have been sweet for him to score in his first match for Barça.

There were a few flashes of bril­liance by Zla­tan Ibrahi­movic, includ­ing the goal late in the con­test, but he will not be putting this per­for­mance in his scrap­book of the best ninety min­utes in his career.  The chem­istry among his fel­low for­wards lacked that some­thing extra, but any­one expect­ing the gears to shift seam­lessly in the first match hold unre­al­is­tic expec­ta­tions.  While he did not play his best, scor­ing in his first match was impor­tant because now he does not have to face the pres­sure of a goal drought to start his sea­son.  Ibrahi­movic would admit that he still needs time to adapt to life in Spain and the Barça sys­tem.  When the inter­na­tional break con­cludes and Henry and Messi join Ibrahi­movic in attack for a string of games, Pep Guardi­ola will see if the infi­nite attack­ing poten­tial of this trio will cul­mi­nate into con­sec­u­tive La Liga titles.  A straight­for­ward win and an Ibrahi­movic goal is just the start that Barcelona needed to launch a suc­cess­ful La Liga campaign.

Tagged as: Alberto Botia, barcelona, Bojan Krkic, Camp Nou, Dani Alves, La Liga, lionel messi, pedro rodriguez, Pep Guardiola, Seydou Keita, Sporting Gijón, Thierry Henry, UEFA Super Cup, xavi, Zlatan Ibrahimovic