Zlatan Ibrahimovic will NOT play at World Cup with Sweden

The striker was expected to come out of international retirement for the finals in Russia this summer, but a press release from Sweden Football said that was not the case.

"I spoke to Zlatan on Tuesday. He said he has not changed his decision regarding playing in the national team. It is still a no," Lars Richt, head of the Swedish Football Federation, was quoted as saying.

In an exclusive interview with Eurosport earlier in April, Ibrahimovic hinted he would go to the World Cup.

However, the message coming out from the Sweden camp is that the 36-year-old rejected his country – and not the other way around.

Earlier this week, Sweden coach Janne Andersson urged Ibrahimovic to call him if he wanted to be part of his World Cup plans, saying: "If you want to be part of it, you must call me. Easy as that."

That prompted a typically Zlatan response, showing him ignoring a phone call from Andersson during a thinly-veiled sponsored post on Tuesday.

Talk of his return has caused issue with some national team-mates, who suggested they could deliver in Russia without him.

"It's up to the coach to see if he wants to bring him," goalkeeper Karl-Johan Johnsson said earlier this month. "We managed to qualify and go through to the World Cup without him, and I think we can manage to play well at the World Cup without him. I'm sure if he does join, he will play well.

"As a team, we play as a collective, all the players together. With Zlatan, as a person, as a player he's an individualist, and the play goes around him."