Ibrahimovic lashes out at Chelsea: success bought, not the team for me

Zlatan Ibrahimović doesn’t go far for controversial words, few people can divide fans so much with their opinions. Now he has hit out at Chelsea in London, where he dislikes the funding of Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich.

At the start of the 21st century, Chelsea were a team mired in financial debt, having won the league title only once, in 1955. But that all changed completely with the arrival of Roman Abramovich.

The Russian dollar billionaire pumped unimaginable money into the London outfit to pull the Blues to the top. He has already spent £2 billion in transfer fees since 2003! Roman Abramovich is considered to be the one who “broke” the transfer market and started spending crazy money.

In his quest to build a competitive team, he spent like mad. He spent £153 million in the first transfer window of the 2003/04 season. An incredible sum for the time.

He continued to spend further and went over the £200 million mark twice. In the 2017/18 season he pumped £234 million into the squad, adding £222 million in 2020/21. And this year he brought in Romelu Lukaku again for almost £100m.

And Zlatan Ibrahimovic certainly doesn’t like that. The latter, with his traditional candour, has leaned quite heavily on Chelsea London.

“I just don’t like Chelsea, full stop. It’s a team that has to use 2 coaches in one season to achieve something. To me, that’s not a team. Chelsea bought their success with money, simple as that,” Zlatan told Purely Football.

Chelsea actually had to change coaches last season to reach the Champions League trophy. The troubled Frank Lampard was replaced by Thomas Tuchel in the winter, until then it looked like Chelsea would have more of a problem staying in the top 4 for the Champions League.

The 2012 season was the same, when Chelsea dominated the Champions League for the first time. In March, Andre Villas-Boas was sacked and replaced by Roberto Di-Matteo.

He managed to win the Champions League with Chelsea in May, but he didn’t stay at Stamford Bridge for long, as he was sacked in November.

Source: Purely Football, Transfermarkt