Former Manchester United teammates Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Bastian Schweinsteiger met today in Major League Soccer action as Ibra’s L.A. Galaxy beat Basti’s Chicago Fire 1-0. After the match, Schweinsteiger went into the visiting Galaxy’s locker room at Chicago’s Toyota Park, where he caught up with his former mate.
Ibrahimovic did his best impression of Kanye West going on stage to perform at a concert, as he kept the media waiting nearly an hour before he finally spoke with reporters. When he finally got around to emerging from the dressing room he asked the large number of assembled media, from all over the world, if they were here for him, or for Schweinsteiger.
Zlatan already knew the answer; especially so since he provided the game’s only scoring, in the 45’+1. Ibrahimovic discussed seeing the German football legend, visiting with him, and of course playing against him.
“It was good,” Ibrahimovic opened.
“He is lucky there was wind today; that is my excuse (for not scoring more) or else there would have been more problems (of a more lopsided score).”
“He tries to help everybody and make it easier for the other ones. I have known him from Manchester, and he is an intelligent player, and a person also. He not only plays football, he thinks football. He’s a great player.”
Audio of the full Ibrahimovic media session, it was not even four minutes long, is below (note: they limited the session so much that they even cut off a reporter from Sweden! Ibra’s homeland!):
Chicago Fire coach Veljko Paunovic discussed Ibrahimovic’s scoring the lone goal and the Fire’s first half struggles:
“Of course, Zlatan has an amazing talent that he was able to display today and he was, undoubtedly, decisive. The result shows that. But for us, the first half was not bad.
“For us, this is how we wanted to play to be able to get to the second half with options where we could execute a distinct game plan that we had to modify a bit. But we wanted to counterattack.
“We wanted to make the game difficult for them. We wanted to be very organized and it worked for us except for that one occasion and that was decisive.”
“As I said before, this was a very tactical game from both sides who were playing a game of chess. I think in the end the individual quality decided the game where both teams were organized and clear with the plan they were following.”
https://twitter.com/PaulMBanks/status/985299598603366401
Zlatan scored the match’s only goal, but anyone who watched this game knows that he easily could have had a brace or a hat trick today.
“I don’t want to have an excuse, because if I do something wrong it is my fault, I could easily blame the wind or whatever but I won’t, said the only player to play in the UEFA Champions League with seven different teams as to why he didn’t score.
“I should have scored.”
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes regularly to WGN CLTV and the Tribune company’s blogging community Chicago Now.
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