Why did Ibrahimovic never win the CL?

I don't think he's a particularly surprising player to not have won it. He was a fantastic player to watch, capable of the most outrageous goals and technical tricks, but not that great to rely on day in, day out when he was playing for your team. He conditioned the whole set up too much, without being as regular and decisive as other greater players.
 
Because he wasn’t that good in the knockout stages. And bad luck.
 
FootballHQ said:
What's he up to now, any ambitions to be a manager?
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He's a senior advisor at AC Milan, dealing with both the sporting and the business end of things. Doesn't have his coaching badges if I understand it correctly.
 
cafecillos said:
I don't think he's a particularly surprising player to not have won it. He was a fantastic player to watch, capable of the most outrageous goals and technical tricks, but not that great to rely on day in, day out when he was playing for your team. He conditioned the whole set up too much, without being as regular and decisive as other greater players.
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If you tailor your system around Zlatan your chances of winning the CL is low, still cant forget his atrocious missed in 2005 Juve vs Liverpool

LInkash said:
He's good but not so good that he's guaranteed a Champions League, his hype is GOAT level but not sure if he was a top 20 player in the past 20 years
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Acrobat7 said:
Because he is not as outstanding as he is somewhat romanticised. As a mercenary, he went wherever there was the most money and usually never stayed long because his ego was often causing problems.
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I agree with this, More hyped than his actual ability
 
Check his CL knockout record and you'll get the answer.


Zlatan is the classic no-pressure magician.


I think the memes and his quotes have resulted in casuals overrating him to a ridiculous extent.


His longevity is excellent though. His game does have some glaring weaknesses people tend to or choose to ignore.


He wasn't good enough to be the main man of a CL winning team and he wasn't humble enough to accept being the second fiddle to win a CL. It's that simple.
 
VojjE said:
He's a senior advisor at AC Milan, dealing with both the sporting and the business end of things. Doesn't have his coaching badges if I understand it correctly.
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He's a part owner of Hammarby took whether that involves any work or stops him from managing/coaching is another matter
 
If he was playing in this era he would have been a ballond'Or contender. There is a shortage of proper number 9 in this era. Great goal scorer in the wrong era.
 
The question is badly posed, leading to a heap of nonsensical answers in the thread.

A better question would be: How can we explain that Zlatan never won the Champions league, while he won 13 league titles and 32 trophees (incl Europa Cup, club world cup and several domestic trophies) for five different clubs, four of them in the three biggest leagues in the world at the time?

Not many CL winners have this roster of league wins, the bread and butter as Sit Alex said it. Explanations like ‘ego being detrimental to the team’ or ‘overhyped’ falls down as an explanation there, as very few CL-winning players can point to his output in terms of league wins. If lack of team success is a proff that he’s overhyped, so is every player with less than 12 league titles.

You could speculate that he was better at consistently exploiting superiority than at lifting a team against better opposition, which you could also say about Pep Guardiola as a coach, vs for instance Zindedine Zizane. It’s all a bit tenues if you ask me, as there are so many factors and coincidences determining which teams win a cup like CL, and the most systematic clear tendency fir a player is that it helps a lot being in the Real Madrid squad.
 
FootballHQ said:
What's he up to now, any ambitions to be a manager?
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Post-playing career
On 11 December 2023, RedBird Capital Partners announced the hiring of Ibrahimović as a new senior adviser to AC Milan.[371] Since then, despite not being officially part of AC Milan's managerial staff, Ibrahimović was deeply involved in the club's internal organizational matters, with RedBird's head Gerry Cardinale stating him to be his "proxy" at the club.[372][373]

Football-related business activities
Hammarby IF
On 27 November 2019, it was announced that Ibrahimović had bought 23.5 percent of the shares in Hammarby IF, a Swedish top flight club from Stockholm. The seller was Anschutz Entertainment Group, also the owner of his former club LA Galaxy, who reduced their stake in Hammarby by half.[374]
 
Because he wasn't that good. His career after turning 30 did wonders for creating a picture of his career.

Zlatan was at his best when teams were built around him as the centrepiece. He was excellent at Inter, Milan and PSG in this alpha role but his best chances at winning the CL were in teams where he was a cog in a pretty formidable machine and that was at Juventus and Barcelona.

Strikers who played up front for the CL winners from 09-16 were Eto'o, Milito, Messi, Drogba, Mandzukic, Benzema, Suarez. Other than Messi who was supremely gifted all the other strikers had top quality but were also incredibly hardworking on and off the ball and played selfless roles for their teams. Ibra thought this was beyond him and that explains why he never won one.
 
JPRouve said:
His teams weren't bad and he wasn't bad. But there is one thing about him, at his prime he was the kind of player that would cannibalize his own team offense, everything revolved around him and only him which is not a good recipe at the highest level of CL Football, top teams have top defensive players and they can generally neutralize or reduce the efficiency of a single player.

But in general winning the CL isn't a given and it's not easy, you need to have everything going your way.
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Yeah, this, spot on
 
Grande said:
The question is badly posed, leading to a heap of nonsensical answers in the thread.

A better question would be: How can we explain that Zlatan never won the Champions league, while he won 13 league titles and 32 trophees (incl Europa Cup, club world cup and several domestic trophies) for five different clubs, four of them in the three biggest leagues in the world at the time?

Not many CL winners have this roster of league wins, the bread and butter as Sit Alex said it. Explanations like ‘ego being detrimental to the team’ or ‘overhyped’ falls down as an explanation there, as very few CL-winning players can point to his output in terms of league wins. If lack of team success is a proff that he’s overhyped, so is every player with less than 12 league titles.

You could speculate that he was better at consistently exploiting superiority than at lifting a team against better opposition, which you could also say about Pep Guardiola as a coach, vs for instance Zindedine Zizane. It’s all a bit tenues if you ask me, as there are so many factors and coincidences determining which teams win a cup like CL, and the most systematic clear tendency fir a player is that it helps a lot being in the Real Madrid squad.
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Pin this comment at the top.
 
cafecillos said:
I don't think he's a particularly surprising player to not have won it. He was a fantastic player to watch, capable of the most outrageous goals and technical tricks, but not that great to rely on day in, day out when he was playing for your team. He conditioned the whole set up too much, without being as regular and decisive as other greater players.
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No actually that's the opposite, in the league he was a relentless grind in his prime.
He truly was league winning guarantee.

Any team that did let him have the pass on his feet, was done. Any team with smaller CBs than him, too.

And in the league, that means like 16 teams out of 20 =)

Problem is, in his combination of skill and physique, he lacked pace, and the first touch on the move.

With defences at the level of CL last-eight, he always suffered a bit.
 
He certainly wasn’t as good as he or his fans thought he was.
 
I never understand why Real Madrid didn't attempt to sign him. He was made for Real Madrid.
 
You don’t need to have a absolute world class striker to win the CL.
Ibrahimovic isn’t that good as that you would expect him to carry a team to a CL win.

Both can be true.
 
They've already answered: bad luck and he and Raiola prioritized earnings over trophies

Ibra is a strange case of a player who is overrated and underrated at the same time. Casual fans love him for his personality and catchphrases, perhaps they remember him more than other great strikers of the past. But at the same time, some hardcore fans underestimate him, thinking he was all about beautiful goals, when he was one of the best passing center-forwards of recent years. Not just assists, but the whole package (long balls, cross, through-balls, etc). Ibra and Rooney had the whole package.
 
I think he could have won it 4 times in his career.
In 04/05 with Juventus, somehow losing to an inferior Liverpool that ended up winning it. (Capello was washed up)
In 08/09 with Inter they were very good but SAF got the better of Mourinho and we had a very strong team.
In 09/10 with Barça, they should have won it. I think his clash with Pep contributed to their defeat. Losing to Inter…
In 15/16 with Paris. Had they not bottled the City games, they could have beaten Real in the semis and Atletico in the final. That was the best squad of QSI era PSG, and Madrid were very shaky, throughout the season.
 
It's not even that he never won it, he made the Semi final once in his entire career and was dropped for it in 2010 for Barca. It's not just bad luck that Barca were better before and after him, not that Inter won the treble after he left (Milito as a proper 9 with Etoo wide and Sneijder as a 10 was much better balanced).

Imo something similar has happened with Kane and late years Messi (in the CL) where being so good you can be the team's main scorer and creator is fine for the league but in the CL teams can nullify the entire offensive threat too easily.
 
VorZakone said:
Were his teams bad? Was he himself bad? A mix of both?
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I remember us playing against Juventus in a friendly match. We had a fantastic side back then (Ince, Keane, Cantona etc) yet they schooled us. When Lippi was asked why he told them that United are too predictable. You only have to mark Giggs and Cantona and United were a goner.

I don't fully agree with Lippi but he had a point. Cantona was too much of a big influence to ignore. Every pass seem to be made to him and that did make us predictable. When Cantona left, United lost that gravitational pull forcing or rather liberating our players in relying more on their judgment and their quality. It took us just 24 months to win the treble.

Ibra has Cantona's and Roberto Baggio's aura. Its almost impossible not to pass the ball to them because they are simply too good to ignore.
 
LInkash said:
He's good but not so good that he's guaranteed a Champions League
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That's a good summary. He's certainly good enough individually to be a CL winner (many worse players have done it) but he's not able to lead his team to an unlikely win in a tournament without a huge amount of luck. And he didn't get much.

Plus, he is the guy you build a team around. You don't push him on the wing like Jose did with Eto'o and still expect him to perform. And the best teams already had better players as their talismans, so he was forced to play for less dominant sides — aside from Barca but this quickly fell apart precisely because they wouldn't (understandably) build their team around him.
 
abundance said:
No actually that's the opposite, in the league he was a relentless grind in his prime.
He truly was league winning guarantee.

Any team that did let him have the pass on his feet, was done. Any team with smaller CBs than him, too.

And in the league, that means like 16 teams out of 20 =)

Problem is, in his combination of skill and physique, he lacked pace, and the first touch on the move.

With defences at the level of CL last-eight, he always suffered a bit.
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Were those league titles won because of him though? His stats look good throughout his career, but the only season I followed him closely (Barça 09/10), I can categorically say that they won the league despite him, he was a clear net negative to the team.
 
He was a tactical hindrance. Too tall, immobile and easy for elite defenders to mark out of business end games especially cause mentally had a tendency to choke as well. Shame as his Ajax version, looked like a Van Basten successor.
 
cafecillos said:
Were those league titles won because of him though? His stats look good throughout his career, but the only season I followed him closely (Barça 09/10), I can categorically say that they won the league despite him, he was a clear net negative to the team.
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Well, yes.


Barcelona was the one year where it just not worked out for him.

At Juve he was young, played well but things didn't revolve around him.

At Inter, he became a true talisman.
That team was stacked but you could feel that Ibra made the difference from dominating it for 3 years vs having to fight for it and risk losing.

At Milan, it was more than a talisman, he became a true trasformative leader for their locker room.

At PSG, they could've won without him, sure, but he did just never stop scoring.
 
He had a mental block in the Champions League, getting sent off against Chelsea and missing a key penalty against Man City during his time at PSG.

Pair a prime him with prime Mbappé and they would have had a shout, mind.
 
JPRouve said:
His teams weren't bad and he wasn't bad. But there is one thing about him, at his prime he was the kind of player that would cannibalize his own team offense, everything revolved around him and only him which is not a good recipe at the highest level of CL Football, top teams have top defensive players and they can generally neutralize or reduce the efficiency of a single player.

But in general winning the CL isn't a given and it's not easy, you need to have everything going your way.
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Spot on.

Though I add that Messi cannibalized his team's attack too.(it was the whole reason Zlatan didn't work out at Barcelona). Then again he's Messi. Hard to tell if the issue is Zlatan wasn't good enough for that or Messi was so good that it didn't matter
 
cafecillos said:
Were those league titles won because of him though?
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I mean, Inter won 4 in a row since he came.

First one by over 20 point margins;

second one by 3 points on the last day on the league, Ibra was injured for the last couple months of the season, came back in the last game, subbed in for second half while 0-1 down, scored a brace;

third one by over 10 points margin;

fourth one by 2 points on the last day of the season, Ibra was at Barca.


Fifth season we fell to Milan, finishing 6 points behind by virtue of losing both derbies, Ibra was at Milan.
 
I see many people find excuses for him but I remember his time in Italy and his CL record was awful. It was long time ago but I remember a prolonged period of time where he didn't score in CL games and he had key game against United where he was pathetic again (I think it was 2009 with Inter). For few years in row he was bad in CL that was one of the reason I thought he was overrated at the time.
But after that he aged well and become better through the years or maybe just the hype around him was way too big because his personality.
 
Grande said:
A better question would be: How can we explain that Zlatan never won the Champions league, while he won 13 league titles and 32 trophees (incl Europa Cup, club world cup and several domestic trophies) for five different clubs, four of them in the three biggest leagues in the world at the time?

Not many CL winners have this roster of league wins, the bread and butter as Sit Alex said it. Explanations like ‘ego being detrimental to the team’ or ‘overhyped’ falls down as an explanation there, as very few CL-winning players can point to his output in terms of league wins. If lack of team success is a proff that he’s overhyped, so is every player with less than 12 league titles.
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I think many of these teams won leagues immediately before or after him so he wasn't exactly the unique factor there.
 
Pintu said:
I think he could have won it 4 times in his career.
In 04/05 with Juventus, somehow losing to an inferior Liverpool that ended up winning it. (Capello was washed up)
In 08/09 with Inter they were very good but SAF got the better of Mourinho and we had a very strong team.
In 09/10 with Barça, they should have won it. I think his clash with Pep contributed to their defeat. Losing to Inter…
In 15/16 with Paris. Had they not bottled the City games, they could have beaten Real in the semis and Atletico in the final. That was the best squad of QSI era PSG, and Madrid were very shaky, throughout the season.
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He was yet young at Juventus and that team wasn't built for CL - very physical, defensively solid and hard to play against but they lacked creativity. It was a team built to win the league, not the CL. 2005/06 he had a bad second half of the season in general, too. At the time he was also a poor goalscorer, much more of a playmaker but that team couldn't survive a bad game from him in CL

Inter in 08/09 weren't very good actually. Won the league because they had him, that team was actually worse than it had been under Mancini

Do agree about PSG though.

So he's rarely had the teams to win the CL without destiny or Madrid's Divine Right on their side - most of it a function of his heliocentrism and sheer league brilliance - and he often underperformed in the KO stages, when it mattered
 
Iker Quesadillas said:
I think many of these teams won leagues immediately before or after him so he wasn't exactly the unique factor there.
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Juventus were 2 years removed but had made some significant changes starting with the manager, but also while Ibra was great he was hardly the main reason they won(a corrupt system was, and they got caught for it too)

Inter changed 5/6 starters between 08/09 and 09/10, Barcelona was barcelona and PSG had lost the title to Montpellier before hin than lost to Monaco after he left
 
He’s a classic case of right place, wrong time. Eto’o won 2 trebles in 2 seasons with 2 different teams - and Zlatan was on the other end

He also joined Milan right as they went to shit, spent his peak at perma-bottlers PSG, then joined United when they were in their Europa league wilderness years. He’s played for the best teams around, just never at a good time.
 
Iker Quesadillas said:
I think many of these teams won leagues immediately before or after him so he wasn't exactly the unique factor there.
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Apart from Messi, nobody is the unique factor. Nor in the champions league. If you read the whole post, tje point here is exactly that if you’re going to analyse team results in the CL and pin it on one single player, you certainly have to do it in the legue as well. Or in neither. You can’t do one and not the other, as is the inpression made in the OP of this thread.

If a player is a key player in 13 league championships, he is definitely part of doing something right.
 
Grande said:
Apart from Messi, nobody is the unique factor. Nor in the champions league. If you read the whole post, tje point here is exactly that if you’re going to analyse team results in the CL and pin it on one single player, you certainly have to do it in the legue as well. Or in neither. You can’t do one and not the other, as is the inpression made in the OP of this thread.

If a player is a key player in 13 league championships, he is definitely part of doing something right.
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1 thing he unquestionably did right was make the right transfers to 90% of the time go to the team that dominates the league he joined. Part of the reason he could do that was reputation and because he'd already won something before.

With his teams wrapping up so many domestic seasons, their lack of success in the champions league is a big stand out. Less weak teams to play against, more teams looking to win matches against the other best sides. His teams came up short.
 
It’s hard to win when you’re always changing clubs. Moving to Barca from Inter was a poor choice in hindsight but understandable when they were a major force in Europe but he missed out on the Inter treble.
 
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