International: Ibrahimovic to give up Sweden friendlies
According to Catalan sports paper Sport, Barcelona forward and Swedish international Zlatan Ibrahimovic (28) plans to stop playing friendly matches for his country in order to concentrate on games of FC Barcelona. Sweden failed to qualify for next year’s World Cup in South Africa and Ibrahimovic said he had reached a point in his career where matches with Barcelona have to take priority. “It has always been a great honour to play in Swedish national team,” Ibrahimovic told in a press conference before Barcelona’s Champions League match at Dynamo Kiev on Wednesday.
“For the time being I won’t play for the national team because I am not motivated. There are no important matches or the World Cup and so it’s very difficult. It would be expending energy for no reason, a sacrifice for nothing.” Ibrahimovic moved to Barcelona from Inter Milan in the summer and has scored 10 goals in 12 La Liga appearances, putting him second in the scoring charts behind Valencia striker David Villa, who has scored 11 goals. “There are so many games with Barcelona and so many things to think about that I hardly have time to think about the national team,” Ibrahimovic said. “I don’t know what could happen in the future, let’s see what happens next year.”
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by totalBarca, Monica Ramirez. Monica Ramirez said: International: Ibrahimovic to give up Sweden friendlies http://bit.ly/4Gl4Qe [...]
Makes total sense. No need to play in, literally, meaningless games. I think he knows that his entire legacy is going to based upon what he accomplishes in the next three plus years at Barca.
Great news for Barca, not so good for Sweden
friendlies are such a waste and it cause club football alot of grief. van persie for example… netherlands ended arsenal's chance of winning epl
you are right Zlatan there is no reason to play friendly matchs just for fan, it's better to do it with barça and look for golden ball next year, you're great and you can do it like messi, just think of it and with this dream team you'll reach more and more good things
this is great. such comitment to the club already!
They play friendly matches to let the players get use to playing with each other, to prepare for major tournaments. But I guess Zlatan is right, there is nothing for Sweden to play for in the near future and Barca has tight fixtures in their calender.