Zlatan Ibrahimovic snubbed Man City move before he joined Manchester United

ZLATAN IBRAHIMOVIC snubbed a move to Man City eight years ago after Pep Guardiola desperately tried to flog him from Barcelona.

The Swedish superstar moved to the Nou Camp in July 2009 but only spent one season with the then European champions.

Boss Guardiola made it clear to Catalan club chiefs he wanted Ibrahimovic to leave despite the £56.5million transfer fee the year before.

Ibrahimovic, 37, eventually escaped on loan to AC Milan ahead of a £24m cut-price capture.

But in a new book, he reveals a move to the Premier League was on the table.

Ibrahimovic said: “We had a meeting with Sandro Rosell, who had just become club president.

“He was good, he was honest. He told me that Guardiola wanted me sold at any price.

“‘You can say which club you want to join,' he said. 'We’ll call them and offer you to them.’ I replied that there was no other club, because I didn’t want to go.

“At one point they asked me about Manchester City. ‘Might that be an option?’ they asked.

“I told them I wasn’t the least bit interested. That was the end of that, but I found out later that they’d agreed a deal with Manchester City completely without my knowledge.

“Not only that, it was a higher fee than they ended up getting from Milan.”

Even though he scored 22 goals in 46 Barca games that season, Ibrahimovic says for the first time in his career he started to doubt himself.

He claims strict disciplinarian Guardiola ran Barcelona “like a school” and “restricted the players as individuals”.

The LA Galaxy star said: “For me, it all came down to Guardiola having a problem with me but never telling me what the problem was.

“Instead of us sorting it out, I wandered around thinking about it. Have I done something? Do I walk funny? Is my nose too big?”

In several meetings with Guardiola, Ibrahimovic was not prepared to let the Man City boss have the upper hand in negotiations – and even threatened physical violence!

He said: “So when I arrived for the meeting I was prepared. I’ll have him for breakfast, I thought to myself. Whatever he says, I’ll eat him up.

“At our third meeting, Rosell was getting desperate.

“‘Listen,’ he said, ‘you need to tell us where you want to go, because Guardiola doesn’t want you here.’

“Then I finally gave them an answer. ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘there’s one club I’d consider.’ His eyes lit up. ‘Great, which one?’

“‘Real Madrid,’ I replied. ‘Never going to happen,’.

“‘In that case you can stay here,' he added.

"You can do what you want with Guardiola, but I won’t be calling Real Madrid.’

“‘Fine,’ I said, ‘you can have an ambulance on stand-by at the training ground, in case something happens.’

“What he didn’t know then is that I was already lining up a move to Milan.

“The thing was, for Milan to be able to buy me and pay me the same wage, I was going to have to get the transfer fee down.

“If they paid top whack, it was going to be more difficult to negotiate my salary.

"And what am I interested in? My salary, of course.

"I wasn’t about to take a pay-cut just because Guardiola wanted rid of me.”

I AM FOOTBALL – Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Viking, £25, out now