Ibracadabra - Barca under striker's magic spell (News Feature)

By Duncan Shaw Sep 28, 2009, 10:59 GMT

Madrid - Barcelona coach Josep Guardiola raised many an eyebrow in July when he decided to throw out Samuel Eto'o, the club's top scorer for the previous five seasons.

Eto'o had just scored 35 goals while helping Barca to win an unprecedented 'treble' of league, cup and Champions League. Even so, Guardiola said, rather enigmatically, that he had to leave because of a 'lack of feeling.'

Even more eyebrows were raised when Guardiola insisted that Barca swap Eto'o for Inter Milan striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic - plus almost 50 million euros (73.47 million dollars).

The 'vox populi' in Barcelona was that Ibrahimovic would add even more elegance and artistry to Barca and score some handsome goals - but not as many as Eto'o.

Just two months later, however, the deal is looking surprisingly good from a Barca perspective.

Eto'o, who had refused to extend his Barca contact (which was due to expire in 2010), has struggled to fit in and score goals in Italy.

Ibrahimovic, in contrast, has looked sharp, fast and keen - and has scored in all five of Barca's Spanish league games.

Never before - not even with Johan Cruyff in 1973, Diego Maradona in 1982 or Ronaldo in 1986 - has a new Barca signing made such an immediate impact at the club.

Catalan television channel TV-3 commented on Sunday that 'no one really expected Ibrahimovic to settle in so quickly...Practically nobody is missing Eto'o at all now.'

Catalan daily Sport, for its part, claimed on Sunday that most Barca fans expected that Ibrahimovic would need 'a couple of months to settle in,' especially as he arrived with a broken left hand and could not play in friendlies until the end of August.

The tall Swedish striker, who will be 28 next week, has already become a new Barca idol and has been nicknamed 'Ibracadabra' by the local media.

The latest example of his magic came on Saturday, away to Malaga.

Guardiola had been planning to give Ibrahimovic a well-earned rest and so left him on the subs' bench. After half an hour, however, Thierry Henry limped off with a thigh strain.

On came 'Ibra' and within 10 minutes he had scored the first goal, after taking a clever pass from Xavi.

Now the elegant Swede is keen to score his first goals for Barca in the Champions League, at home to Dynamo Kiev on Tuesday.

'I am pleased that I came here,' he said last week, in his curious mix of English and Italian. 'Now I want to help Barca to continue being a successful team.'

Winning the Champions League is one of Ibrahimovic's priorities.

He won three Italian league titles with Inter but was clearly frustrated by the club's lack of European success, which was in fact one of his reasons for swapping san Siro for the Camp Nou.