Rarely has a game summed up a player so perfectly, encapsulating all the contradictions and painting him in black and white - and shades of grey.

Arsenal versus Barcelona was Zlatan Ibrahimovic in a nutshell. At half time, he was rubbish; at full time, he was a genius. Maybe he is actually both.

A tale of two Zlatans

After Ibrahimovic's two wonderful goals in Wednesday night's 2-2 Champions League draw at the Emirates, the Catalan newspaper Sport adopted a classic Spanish turn of phrase to insist: "No one can say 'moo' about the Swede now; there can be no questioning the effectiveness of the Swede."

Only there can and they did. Those that love him were vindicated; those that loathe him were too. Or at least thought they were. Ultimately, both were probably right. Or maybe neither of them were. Who knows? They were certainly confused. What to make of the man who cost 48 million pounds, plus Samuel Eto'o? Enigma 'aint the half of it.

When Leo Messi passed up on the chance to take a penalty against Real Zaragoza two weeks ago, instead giving the ball to Ibrahimovic, it made the Swede look like the ultimate charity case; a sadly pathetic specimen hands out, begging. "Well," Messi shrugged, "Zlatan needed it."

He certainly did: he had spent the entire game missing the unmissable and growing increasingly frustrated, burying his reputation still further with every wayward shot. There was more to it than just that game, too. When he smashed home the penalty it broke a terrible run: he had only scored once in three and a half months - and Barcelona had lost that match. Messi was right, he needed it.

He had been left out for the key match with Stuttgart and Barcelona had been far better in his absence. He was not playing well and everyone knew it. His agent admitted he wasn't happy. But things were about to get better.

Ibrahimovic scored the penalty. And then got the vital goal in the next two matches, against Osasuna and Mallorca. From one in three and a half months, he had got three in a week. Four days later, he would add two more. But if things were getting better, they would get worse first.

The Arsenal match was like the last three and half months condensed into ninety minutes.

A game of two halves

In fact, it was like his entire Barcelona career so far packed into a single match - a career in which he scored the winner against Real Madrid and was feted as the most brilliant striker ever, the man who had made them forget about Samuel Eto'o in record time, having scored eight in the opening twelve weeks ... and was derided as the man who slowed them down and couldn't score to save his life, the man who missed a sitter against Inter, the man who made them pine for the return of Samuel Eto'o.

By half time he had missed some of the easiest chances you could wish to see. It was, some said, yet more proof that when it came to the big games he just couldn't cut it. Those who thought Barcelona were mad when they swapped him for Samuel Eto'o and a huge bag of cash in the summer, appeared vindicated. If we'd had Eto'o rather than Ibrahimovic, we'd be two or three up at least, they said.

Then, less than a minute into the second half, he had lifted a lovely lob over Manuel Almunia to open the scoring. Soon after, he was smashing the ball beyond him to make it 2-0. In the first half, they had been appealing with Pep Guardiola to take him off; in the second half, when he did, things started to fall apart.

As Spanish sports daily Marca put it: "Ibrahimovic only scores the hard ones." He had been awesome and appalling; one of the very best, and one of the very worse. And all in just 90 minutes. It was only one game. It was also the story of his life.