I Am Zlatan

  This book is dedicated to my family and my friends, to all those who have followed me through the years and been by my side, good days as well as bad. I also want to send a thought to all the kids out there, all the kids who feel different, who don’t quite fit in and who are singled out for all the wrong reasons. It’s okay not to be like everyone else. Keep believing in yourselves. Things worked out for me, after all.

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  CO ADRIAANSE My first coach at Ajax.

  ALEKSANDAR, also known as KEKI My little brother, born in 1986.

  MASSIMO AMBROSINI AC Milan team captain. Midfielder.

  MICKE ANDERSSON My coach at Malmö FF, in the Superettan League and later in the Allsvenskan League.

  ROLAND ANDERSSON Former footballer and member of the Swedish national side. My coach when I joined Malmö FF.

  MARIO BALOTELLI Young talent with Inter Milan. Striker. Later with Manchester City.

  MARCO VAN BASTEN Striker, outstanding goal scorer. Totally dominated at AC Milan. Named World Player of the Year in 1992.

  LEO BEENHAKKER Football boss, previously managed teams including Real Madrid. Sporting director at Ajax when I joined the team.

  TXIKI BEGIRISTAIN Sporting director at Barcelona during my time with that club. Later resigned.

  SILVIO BERLUSCONI Owner of AC Milan. Former Italian prime minister.

  HASSE BORG Former player and defender with the Swedish national side. Sporting director at Malmö FF during my time with the club.

  FABIO CANNAVARO Arrived at Juventus at the same time I did. Defender. Named World Player of the Year in 2006. Won the World Cup with Italy.

  FABIO CAPELLO Demon manager. My coach at Juventus.

  ANTONIO CASSANO Striker at AC Milan. Member of Italian national side.

  TONY FLYGARE Childhood friend. Footballing talent at Malmö FF.

  LOUIS VAN GAAL Football boss. Former manager. Director of Ajax during the latter part of my time there.

  ITALO GALBIATI Capello’s right-hand man at Juventus.

  ADRIANO GALLIANI Football boss, vice-president of AC Milan.

  GENNARO GATTUSO Midfielder at AC Milan. A warrior. Won the World Cup with Italy in 2006.

  PEP GUARDIOLA Former midfielder, played for FC Barcelona. My coach at that club.

  HELENA My girlfriend, my partner. Mother of my children.

  THIERRY HENRY My friend at Barcelona. French superstar, formerly with Arsenal, where he became that club’s top goal scorer of all time. Won the World Cup and European Championship with France.

  ANDRÉS INIESTA Brilliant midfielder and winger with Barcelona. Won the World Cup and European Championship with Spain.

  FILIPPO INZAGHI Striker, leading goal-scorer. Star with AC Milan. I lived in his flat in Turin. Won the World Cup with Italy.

  JURKA My mum. Born in Croatia. Worked as a cleaner.

  KAKÁ attacking midfielder, global star. Named World Player of the Year in 2007. Transferred from AC Milan to Real Madrid.

  RONALD KOEMAN My coach during the latter part of my time at Ajax..

  JOAN LAPORTA President of Barcelona during most of my time with the club.

  HENKE LARSSON Legendary Swedish striker. Played for Celtic and Barcelona. Recipient of the European Golden Boot award in 2001. A mentor to me at the start of my career.

  BENGT MADSEN Chairman of the Board at Malmö FF during my time there.

  DANIEL MAJSTOROVIĆ Member of the Swedish national side, has played for various teams abroad. A good friend.

  ROBERTO MANCINI My coach during my first two years at Inter Milan.

  MARCO MATERAZZI Rock-solid defender who won the World Cup with Italy in 2006. Played with me at Inter Milan.

  HASSE MATTISSON Team captain at Malmö FF during my time with the club.

  MAXIMILIAN My eldest son, born in 2006.

  MAXWELL Brazilian player. Incredibly elegant defender. My mate ever since the early days at Ajax.

  We also played together at Inter Milan and Barcelona.

  OLOF MELLBERG Friend, member of Swedish national side, defender. Played for Aston Villa and Juventus, among others.

  LIONEL MESSI Global star. Focus of the game in Barcelona. Joined the club as a 13-year-old. Named World Player of the Year in 2009 and 2010.

  GUDMUNDUR METE A good friend. We played together at Malmö FF.

  MIDO Egyptian. A good friend at Ajax.

  LUCIANO MOGGI Football boss, legendary sporting director at Juventus during my time with the club.

  MASSIMO MORATTI Oil magnate, owner of Inter Milan.

  JOSÉ MOURINHO Legendary manager. My coach at Inter Milan. Later went to Real Madrid.

  PAVEL NEDVĚD Midfielder with me at Juventus. Named European Player of the Year in 2003.

  ALESSANDRO NESTA Star defender with AC Milan. Won the World Cup with Italy in 2006.

  ALEXANDRE PATO Keen young striker at AC Milan. Brazilian.

  ANDREA PIRLO Midfielder at AC Milan, later sold to Juventus. Won the World Cup with Italy in 2006.

  MINO RAIOLA My agent, my friend, my adviser.

  ROBINHO Amazing talent from Brazil. Second striker at AC Milan, previously with Real Madrid and Manchester City.

  RONALDINHO Superstar. Named World Player of the Year in 2004 and 2005. We played together at AC Milan

  RONALDO One of the greatest players of all time. Brazilian. Striker. Named World Player of the Year in 1996, 1997 and 2002. My idol as a kid.

  CRISTIANO RONALDO Striker, global star. Named World Player of the Year in 2008. Played for Manchester United. Transferred to Real Madrid for a record sum. (Usually referred to as ‘Cristiano’ in this book to distinguish him from the player who will always be the one true Ronaldo for me.)

  SANDRO ROSELL Joan Laporta’s successor as president of Barcelona.

  SANELA My older sister, born in 1979.

  SAPKO My older brother, born in Bosnia in 1973.

  ŠEFIK My dad. Born in Bosnia. Has worked as a bricklayer and property caretaker

  THOMAS SJÖBERG Former footballer and member of the Swedish national side. Assistant coach during my early days with Malmö FF.

  THIJS SLEGERS Dutch journalist and friend.

  RUNE SMITH Journalist who wrote the first major article about me.

  JOHN STEEN OLSEN Agent who discovered me at Malmö FF. Managed to sell me to Ajax. One of my close friends today.

  LILIAN THURAM Defender. Played with me at Juventus. Won the World Cup and European Championship with France.

  DAVID TRÉZÉGUET French goal-scorer and star. We played together at Juventus. European champion and World Cup winner with France.

  RAFAEL VAN DER VAART Midfielder during my time at Ajax.

  PATRICK VIEIRA Midfielder, played with me at Juventus and Inter Milan. Superstar. Friend. Brilliant player. Won the World Cup and European Championship with France.

  CHRISTIAN WILHELMSSON, CHIPPEN Midfielder, member of Swedish national side, friend.

  VINCENT My second son, born in 2008.

  XAVI midfielder at Barcelona. Joined the club as an 11-year-old. Won the European Championship and World Cup with Spain.

  GIANLUCA ZAMBROTTA Legendary defender, played with me at both Juventus and AC Milan. Won the World Cup with Italy in 2006.

  ALEXANDER ÖSTLUND Friend, former member of the Swedish national side. Played for clubs including Southampton.

  1

  PEP GUARDIOLA – the Barcelona manager, with his grey suits and brooding expressions – came up to me, looking a little self-conscious.

  I thought h
e was all right in those days, not exactly another Mourinho or Capello, but an okay bloke. This was long before we started to do battle with each other. It was the autumn of 2009, and I was living my boyhood dream. I was playing with the best team in the world and had been welcomed by 70,000 people at Camp Nou. I was walking on air – well, maybe not completely. There was a certain amount of rubbish in the papers. That I was a bad boy and all that: that I was difficult to manage. Even so, I was there. Helena and the boys liked it. We had a nice house in Esplugues de Llobregat, and I was ready. What could possibly go wrong?

  “Listen,” Guardiola said. “Here at Barça, we keep our feet on the ground.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Fine!”

  “So we don’t turn up to training sessions in Ferraris or Porsches.”

  I nodded, didn’t go off on one, like, what the hell business is it of yours what cars I drive? But I was thinking, what does he want? What kind of message is he sending here? Believe me, I don’t need to make a big deal of looking tough any more and drive up in some flash car and park it on the pavement or anything. That’s not what it’s about. But I love cars. They’re my passion, and I could sense something else behind what he was saying. It was like, don’t think you’re anybody special!

  I’d already got the impression that Barcelona was a little like school, or some sort of institution. The players were cool – nothing wrong with them, and Maxwell was there, my old mate from Ajax and Inter. But to be honest, none of the lads acted like superstars, which was strange. Messi, Xavi, Iniesta, the whole gang – they were like schoolboys. The best footballers in the world stood there with their heads bowed, and I didn’t understand any of it. It was ridiculous. If the trainers in Italy say jump, the stars will look at them and go: what are they on about, why should we jump?

  But here everyone did as they were told. I didn’t fit in, not at all. But I thought: Just enjoy the opportunity! Don’t confirm their prejudices! So I started to adapt and blend in. I became way too nice. It was mental. Mino Raiola, my agent and good friend, said to me:

  “What’s up with you, Zlatan? I don’t recognise you.”

  Nobody recognised me – none of my mates, no one at all. I started to feel down, and here you have to know that ever since my days at Malmö FF I’ve had the same philosophy: I do things my way. I don’t give a damn what people think, and I’ve never enjoyed being around uptight people. I like blokes who go through red lights, if you know what I mean. But now, I wasn’t saying what I wanted to say.

  I said what I thought people wanted me to say. It was completely messed up. I drove the club’s Audi and stood there and nodded my head like when I was at school, or rather like I should have done when I was at school. I hardly even yelled at my teammates any more. I was boring. Zlatan was no longer Zlatan, and the last time that had happened was when I went to school at the posh Borgarskolan, where I saw girls in Ralph Lauren sweaters for the first time and nearly shat myself when I tried to ask them out. Even so, I started the season off brilliantly. I scored one goal after another. We won the UEFA Supercup. I was amazing. I dominated on the pitch. But I was a different person. Something had happened – nothing serious, not yet, but still. I grew quiet, and that’s dangerous – believe me. I need to be angry to play well. I need to shout and make some noise. Now I was keeping it inside. Maybe it had something to do with the press. I dunno.

  I was the second-most expensive transfer in history, and the papers wrote that I was a problem child and had a flawed character, all the rubbish you can imagine, and unfortunately I was feeling the pressure of everything – that here at Barça we don’t make a show, and stuff, and I guess I wanted to prove that I could do it too. That was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. I was still awesome on the pitch. But it wasn’t as much fun any more.

  I even thought about quitting football – not walking out on my contract, after all, I’m a professional. But I lost my enthusiasm, and then it was the Christmas break. We headed back to Sweden, to a ski resort up north, and I rented a snowmobile. Whenever life’s at a standstill I need some action. I always drive like a maniac. I’ve done 325 kilometres an hour in my Porsche Turbo and left the cops eating my dust. I’ve done so much mental stuff I don’t even want to think about it, and now in the mountains I was ripping it up on my snowmobile. I got frostbite and had the time of my life.

  Finally an adrenaline rush! The old Zlatan was back and I thought, why should I stick it out? I’ve got money in the bank. I don’t need to slave away with that idiot of a manager. I could just have fun instead, and look after my family. It was a great time. But it didn’t last long. When we returned to Spain, disaster hit – not straight away, it was more like it crept up, but it was hanging in the air.

  There was a massive blizzard. It was like the Spaniards had never seen snow before, and in the hills where we lived there were cars left all over the place. Mino, that fat idiot – that wonderful, fat idiot, I should say, just to prevent any misunderstanding – was shivering like a dog in his street shoes and his summer jacket, and convinced me to take the Audi. That turned into a complete and utter shambles. We lost control on a downhill slope and crashed into a concrete wall, wrecking the car’s entire right axle.

  A lot of guys in the team had crashed their cars in the storm, but nobody did it quite as massively as I did. I won the crashing-your-car tournament, and we all had a good laugh about that, and I was still actually myself once in a while. I still felt pretty good. But then Messi started saying things. Lionel Messi is awesome. He’s totally amazing. I don’t know him all that well. We’re very different people. He joined Barça when he was 13 years old. He’s been brought up in that culture and doesn’t have a problem with that school crap. Within the team, the play centres around him, which is entirely natural – he’s brilliant. But now I was there, and I was scoring more goals than him. He went up to Guardiola and told him, “I don’t want to be on the right wing any more. I want to play in the centre.”

  I was the striker. But Guardiola didn’t give a damn about that. He changed the tactical formation. He swapped the 4-3-3 for a 4-5-1 with me at the front and Messi right behind me, and I ended up in the shadows. The balls passed through Messi, and I didn’t get to play my game. On the pitch I’ve got to be as free as a bird. I’m the guy who wants to make a difference at every level. But Guardiola sacrificed me. That’s the truth. He locked me in up front. All right, I can understand his dilemma. Messi was the star.

  Guardiola had to listen to him. But come on! I had scored loads of goals at Barça and I’d been pretty awesome as well. He couldn’t change the whole team to conform to one bloke. I mean, why the hell had he bought me, anyway? Nobody pays that kind of money to strangle me as a player. Guardiola had to take both of us into consideration, and of course, the atmosphere among the club’s management grew tense. I was their biggest investment ever, and I wasn’t happy in the new set-up. I was too expensive to be left unhappy. Txiki Begiristain, the sporting director, insisted that I had to go and speak to the manager.

  “Sort it out!”

  I didn’t like that. I’m a player who accepts circumstances. “All right, fine, I’ll do it!” One of my mates told me, “Zlatan, it’s as if Barça had bought a Ferrari and was driving it like a Fiat,” and I thought, yeah, that’s a good way of looking at it. Guardiola had turned me into a simpler player and a worse player. It’s a loss for the whole team.

  So I went over to him. It was on the pitch, during a training session, and I was careful about one thing. I wasn’t going to get into an argument, and I told him that.

  “I don’t want to fight. I don’t want to have a war. I just want to discuss things,” and he nodded.

  But he might have looked a little scared, so I repeated what I’d said.

  “If you think I want to have a row, I’ll clear off. I just want to have a word.”

  “That’s fine! I like to talk to the players.”

 
; “Listen,” I continued. “You’re not making use of my capacity. If it was just a goal-scorer you were after, you should have bought Inzaghi or somebody else. I need space, I need to be free. I can’t just run straight up and down the pitch the whole time. I weigh 98 kilos. I’m not built for that.”

  He mulled it over. He always mulled everything right into the goddamned ground.

  “I think you can play like this.”

  “No, it’d be better if you put me on the bench. With all due respect, I get where you’re coming from, but you’re sacrificing me in favour of other players. This isn’t working. It’s like you bought a Ferrari, but you’re driving it like a Fiat.”

  He mulled it over a bit more.

  “Okay, maybe that was a mistake. This is my problem. I’ll sort it.”

  I was happy. He was going to sort it. I went out with a spring in my step, but then came the cold shoulder. He hardly looked at me, and I’m not somebody who gets worked up about that sort of thing, not really, and in spite of my new position, I carried on being brilliant. I scored new goals – not as pretty as the goals I’d scored in Italy. I was too far up front. It wasn’t the same old “Ibracadabra” any more, but even so …. Playing against Arsenal in the Champions League over in the new Emirates Stadium, we totally outplayed them. The atmosphere was intense. The first 20 minutes were absolutely unbelievable: I scored 1–0 and 2–0, both beautiful goals again, and I thought, “Who cares about Guardiola? I’m just gonna go for it!”

  But then I was substituted out, and then Arsenal came back and made it 1–2 and 2–2, which was rubbish for us and afterwards I had an injured calf muscle. Normally the managers are worried by something like that. An injured Zlatan is a properly serious thing for any team. But Guardiola was cold as ice. He didn’t say a word, I was out for three weeks, and not once did he come up and ask me, “How are you doing, Zlatan? Will you be able to play the next match?”

  He didn’t even say good morning. Not a single word. He avoided eye contact with me. If I went into a room, he would leave. What’s going on? I thought. Is it something I did? Do I look wrong? Am I talking funny? All these things were buzzing around in my head. I couldn’t sleep.