Zlatan Ibrahimovic failed trial at EFL club for swearing at coach years before Arsenal snub

Throughout his career, Zlatan Ibrahimovic has never been afraid to speak his mind.

Whether it be to teammates, the media or figures of authority at clubs, the Swedish superstar served up some iconic and cutting quotes.

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Unfortunately for one English team dwelling in the Championship, one of their coaches was on the wrong end of an Ibrahimovic quip.

What followed next meant the club missed out on the chance to sign one of the greatest goalscorers in modern football when he was just a teenager.

Ibrahimovic spent the back-end of his teenage years with Swedish giants Malmo and made quite the impression in their youth set-up.

As a result, Malmo decided to send Ibrahimovic and his friend Tony Flygare, who was a teammate of the 43-year-old in the club’s academy, for a one-week trial with an English club.

The destination was Queens Park Rangers, who recorded three top-ten finishes in the opening three seasons of the Premier League only to be relegated in 1996.

Following their drop to the second tier, known as Division One at the time, the Rangers struggled to find their footing.

They almost fell to the third tier after finishing 21st in the 1997/98 campaign.

The next season didn’t start much better under manager Ray Harford and the west London club elected to sack him in late September.

Gerry Francis, the man who oversaw the club’s remarkable start to life in the Premier League, was brought back to the dugout in October 1998 having been plucked from Loftus Road by Tottenham in 1994.

The club’s powerbrokers had hoped Francis could rediscover the mojo that made the R’s such a formidable force earlier in the decade.

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Perhaps that sprinkle of magic was meant to arrive in the form of Ibrahimovic and Flygare.

After one week in west London, Ibrahimovic had left a lasting impression.

However, it was for all the wrong reasons as Flygare spilled the beans in his book ‘Once, I was Bigger Than Zlatan’, which he co-wrote with Swedish journalist Daniel Nilsson Padilla.

“Zlatan was holding on to the ball for too long and the trainer tackled him when he wasn’t expecting it,” Flygare said in 2014.

“For that, Zlatan tackled him back and then told the trainer to f*** off. He went mad at Zlatan.

“Being in England was so much different. He just told Zlatan, ‘For that, you’re going to breathe through your a***.’

Zlatan Ibrahimovic career goals

“I’ll never forget it. We didn’t hear from QPR again. Zlatan didn’t want to play or stay in England, that is my opinion.”

QPR wasn’t the only London-based club to have famously let Ibrahimovic slip through their fingers.

A year on from his trial at QPR, the Swede paid a visit to Arsenal only a handful of years into the Arsene Wenger era.

However, one simple request from Wenger derailed the club’s entire recruitment bid.

“So, when I was young, I had a lot of interest from a lot of clubs,” Ibrahimovic told Piers Morgan in 2023.

“One of them was Arsenal. So I came to the office of Arsene Wenger. It was big hype because I saw these players, (Dennis) Bergkamp, (Thierry) Henry, I saw (Freddie) Ljungberg, (Patrick) Vieira. I saw all these players.

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Ibrahimovic eventually arrived in the Premier League at the age of 34[/caption]

“This was big because this was like, ‘I am here now. Last week, I was playing PlayStation with these guys.’

“I spoke with Wenger. He was tall, I didn’t expect him to be so tall. I come into his office and we speak. He was like, ‘What do you want?’

“He wanted to get to know me, to feel me, because I think he is a type of person who doesn’t just buy the player. He wants to know what he is buying, I think.

“He had an Arsenal shirt with number nine and wanted me to come and do a trial for two weeks. Everything was all good until he said you come and do a trial.

“Obviously, he is Wenger and I am nobody in this moment. I said, ‘I don’t do trials.’ He said, ‘What do you mean?’

“‘I don’t do trials. Either you want me or you don’t want me. Why else am I here?’”

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Ibrahimovic would ultimately remain at Malmo until 2001, when he joined Ajax.

The 43-year-old enjoyed stints at some of Europe’s biggest clubs including Juventus, Inter Milan, Barcelona, AC Milan and Paris Saint-Germain where he cemented himself as one of the game’s most ruthless goalscorers.

He eventually secured a move to an English club in 2016 when Manchester United came calling.

Ibrahimovic slammed home 28 goals in all competitions during his debut season at Old Trafford but struggled with injuries in his second year and moved on to Major League Soccer side Los Angeles Galaxy in March 2018.

He sealed a romantic return to Milan in 2019 where he remained until his retirement in June 2023.

But had those two trials earlier in his career gone a different way, who knows what would have become of the Swedish great.