I Am Zlatan

by David Lagercrantz

  “I feel so rotten,” I said.

  “Poor thing!”

  “I can’t deal with this circus here at home!”

  “So come over here,” she said. “I’ll take care of you.” To be honest, that was kind of surprising.

  We’d mainly just had coffee together and texted each other before then. I still hadn’t spent the night at her place, but of course, that sounded perfect, so I headed out. I was like, “Sorry, Mum, gotta go.”

  “So now you’re not going to spend Christmas with us either?”

  “Sorry”, I said, and out in the country Helena put me to bed. It was silent and peaceful outside, which was exactly what I needed. It was really nice, and it didn’t feel at all strange to be with her instead of with my family. It was both natural and exciting. But I didn’t get any healthier.

  I was wiped out, and the next day was Christmas Eve. I’d promised Dad I’d pop by. My dad doesn’t celebrate Christmas. He sits on his own as usual and does his own thing. He and I had become very close since that day there on Pitch No. 1 in Malmö. All that stuff from my childhood when he didn’t really care was gone, and he’d been down several times to watch my matches, and partly in honour of him I’d had my Ajax shirt changed so it said Ibrahimović instead of Zlatan. But now he was drunk as a skunk again and I couldn’t deal with it, not for a second, and I went straight back to Helena’s place.

  “Back already?”

  “I’m back.”

  That was basically all I managed to say. I got so ill, with a temperature of about 41°C. I’m not joking. Never felt so lousy in my life. This was a superflu bug. I was completely out for three days, and Helena had to shower me and wipe my forehead and change the sheets because they were soaked through with sweat, and I was delirious and whimpering, and there was something about that. I dunno. Up until that time I’d basically been that strutting Yugo around her. The guy who played at being a mafioso in extravagant cars and who was a lot of fun, at least I hoped I was, but maybe wasn’t exactly the guy for her.

  Now I was completely broken, an absolute wreck, and she liked that in a way, she says. I became human. My whole exterior cracked, and afterwards when I got a little better, she went out and rented some videos, and that was the first time I’d seen any Swedish cop shows like the Beck series, and it was a bit of a revelation to me. It was like, wow, I didn’t know Sweden could do this sort of stuff! I became an instant fan, and we sat there together and watched one film after another and had a really nice time, not that we got together straight away, not at all.

  She was in and out during that time. She left for work and came back and looked after me, and sure, we didn’t always understand each other, and we still didn’t know what we wanted and we were still totally different and completely wrong, and all the rest. But it started there, I think, it felt good to hang out with her, and when I was back in the Netherlands I missed her, like, where is she? “Can’t you come down here?” I asked, and she did. She visited me in Diemen. That was nice. But you can’t say she was impressed by my terraced house. By then I’d started to like it out there, and I made sure the fridge was full.

  But she claims she had to scrub my floors, that the place was in a terrible state and that I had about three plates and none of them matched, and the walls were all a mess of purple, yellow and apricot, and the green carpets didn’t go with anything and everything was a disaster. Besides, my clothes were pathetic, and I just lay in bed with my video games, and there were cables and rubbish everywhere, and nothing was tidy. “Evil super bitch”, I said.

  Evilsuperbitchdeluxe, all in one breath.

  I missed her when she left, and I started phoning and texting more often, and I think I settled down a bit. Man, this was a classy girl. She taught me stuff, like, what fish knives look like, and how to drink wine! In those days I thought, like, you should gulp down vintage wines like a glass of milk. But oh no, you were supposed to sit there and sip it. I was starting to get it. But it didn’t come easily to me. I was still going back up to Malmö all the time, and not just for cuddles.

  One day me and some mates went out to Helena’s place and did some handbrake turns on her gravel paths, and she went spare and yelled that they’d been all raked and nice and everything was wrecked now, and of course, I felt guilty. I had to do something about it, I thought. I sent my little brother. He went out there and was handed a rake, but I mean, we haven’t got a clue about rakes and stuff in my family. My bro didn’t exactly do a brilliant job, and she told me again that I was a complete idiot, but fortunately a good laugh.

  Another time I’d given her a Sony Vaio laptop. But then we had a bit of a falling out, and I didn’t want her to have that computer any more. So I gave Keki a new assignment. Go and get it back, I told him, and Keki usually does as he’s told, or at least some of the time. So he went out there, but what do you think happened? Helena said we could eat shit. She wasn’t going to give anything back, and soon after that we became friends again. But still, things were a mess. There was the matter of the firecrackers, for one thing. We bought them off a bloke who made them illegally at home – they were proper little bundles of power, and in those days we had a mate who owned a hot dog stall in Malmö. Nothing bad about him, quite the contrary. But we agreed that we’d set off a little explosion at his place, just for a laugh, and in order to do that we needed a vehicle that wasn’t linked to us, and since Helena had plenty of contacts, I asked her:

  “Can you sort out a Jeep?”

  Of course. She got us a Lexus. She must have believed we were going to do something pretty nice, in spite of everything.

  But we headed over to the hot dog stall and chucked a firecracker into the letterbox, and the letterbox went up into the air. It just rumbled and then exploded into seven million pieces, and that same night, when we were still out and about, we rang up Keki.

  “Wanna have a little fun?”

  He probably didn’t, but we drove over to his girl’s place, where they were in bed asleep, and chucked two firecrackers into her garden. There was a massive bang there too, and a ton of smoke and crap and clumps of grass flew up in the air, and of course the girl sat bolt upright: “What the hell was that?” and Keki just played dumb: “My God, what can it be? How strange! How annoying.” But of course he knew, and, well, you realise it was just laddish pranks, the sort of thing I’ve always needed and in fact, the sort of thing that still happens. But it’s true, my time with Ajax was my most out-of-control phase. That was before Mino Raiola and Fabio Capello got me to shape up.

  I remember when I bought my elder brother some furniture from IKEA. I let him pick out whatever he wanted. I’d already started helping my family out quite a bit. I bought my mum a terraced house in Svågertorp and eventually bought my dad a car, even though he was so proud and didn’t want to accept anything. But this time at IKEA I had a mate along with me, and we had all our stuff on those trolleys. One of the trolleys rolled forward a little too far. It happened to go past the checkout, and my mate noticed immediately – he was a smart guy – and I gave it another push.

  “Keep going, go, go!”

  So we ended up getting a load of the stuff for free, and of course we enjoyed that. But don’t think it was about the money. It was the buzz. It was the adrenaline. It was like when we were kids in the department store. But sure, of course, sometimes things turned out badly. Like that time with the Lexus. It was spotted in some dodgy location and it was reported all over, and that was embarrassing for Helena. It was like, “You know that car you rented, it was seen in connection with some explosion!” She got into hot water because of me. Sorry, Helena. And then there was a Porsche Cayenne.

  She’d sorted it out for us in the same way. But we happened to drive it into a ditch and had a minor crash on the way back from Båstad, and she went spare, and I can understand that. Then to cap it all, she was burgled. Helena had worked hard – not just in her marke
ting job, she’d also taken on extra work in a pub in order to buy her house in the country, and lots of nice stuff, furniture, a motorbike and stereo equipment. She’d worked hard to be able to afford that stuff, so it must have hurt when somebody broke in one day and nicked her Bang&Olufsen gear and a load of other things. I understand that.

  But Helena thought I knew who’d done it. She still does. But I haven’t got a clue. That’s the truth. Of course, news spread quickly in my old circles. We hear about all the dodgy stuff that goes on. One night when I was parked outside Mum’s place, some guy nicked the tyres from my Merc CL. I heard about it at five in the morning, and by then word had got out and there were police photographers out there and journalists, and I stayed indoors. But I started to put out feelers, and it didn’t take long before I knew who’d stolen them, and a week later I got the tyres back. But I never did find out who broke in to Helena’s place, and to be honest, sometimes I just don’t know how she managed to be so patient with me. She’d been lumbered with a little maniac. But she managed, she was strong, and I think she got to see some results, too.

  Before, I’d been fairly lonely and didn’t really have anybody to act as a sounding board for everyday things or stuff that was bothering me. But now I had some structure and something to look forward to, and Helena came down to the Netherlands more often, and we became a little like a family, especially when she got that fat little pug called Hoffa that we fed on pizza and mozzarella in Italy.

  But a lot of things happened before then. This was when my career took off, and I got my revenge.

  10

  THERE HAD BEEN A LOT of Marco van Basten in my life. I’d inherited his shirt number and I was supposed to resemble him on the pitch and all that, and sure, it was flattering. But I was starting to get tired of it. I didn’t want to be a new van Basten. I was Zlatan, nothing else. I wanted to scream, no, don’t bring that guy up again, I’ve heard enough about him. But sure, it was as cool as anything when he turned up in person, it was like, wow, is he talking to me?

  Van Basten is a legend, one of the best strikers ever, maybe not in the same class as Ronaldo, but still, he’d scored over 200 goals and completely dominated at Milan. That was just over ten years since he’d been voted the best player in the world by FIFA, and now he’d just completed a coaching course run by the football association and was going to be an assistant coach for the Ajax youth squad, his first step on that path. That’s why he was there with us at our training sessions.

  I was like a little boy around him, at least at first. But I got used to it. We spoke nearly every day, and we had some good times together. He would get me fired up before every match. We’d chat and make bets and joke around.

  “Well, how many goals are you gonna make this time? I say one.”

  “One? You’re having a laugh. I’ll get at least two.”

  “Bullshit. Wanna make a bet?”

  “How much are you willing to lose?”

  We kept it up, and he gave me lots of advice, and he was really a cool guy. He did things his own way and didn’t give a damn what the bosses thought. He was totally independent. I’d come in for criticism because I didn’t work enough to the rear, or even because I just stood around on the pitch while the opposing side were attacking, and I’d done some thinking about it of course and wondered what to do about it. I asked van Basten.

  “Don’t listen to the coaches!” he said.

  “So, what then?”

  “Don’t waste your energy defending. You’ve got to use your strength in attacking. You’ll serve your team best by attacking and scoring goals, not by wearing yourself out in the rear.” That became another one of the things I picked up: you’ve got to save your energy for scoring goals.

  We headed to a training camp in Portugal, and by that time that Beenhakker had resigned as director and was replaced by Louis van Gaal. Van Gaal was a pompous arse. He was a little like Co Adriaanse. He wanted to be a dictator, without a hint of a gleam in his eye. As a player he’d never stood out, but he was revered in the Netherlands because as a manager he’d won the Champions League with Ajax and received some medal from the government.

  Van Gaal liked to talk about playing systems. He was one of those in the club who referred to the players as numbers. There was a lot of, Five goes here and Six goes there, and I was glad when I could avoid him. But in Portugal I couldn’t escape. I had to go in for a meeting with van Gaal and Koeman and listen to how they viewed my contribution in the first half of the season. It was like a performance review with grades, the kind of thing they loved at Ajax. I went into an office there and sat down in front of van Gaal and Ronald Koeman. Koeman smiled. Van Gaal looked sullen.

  “Zlatan,” said Koeman, “you’ve played brilliantly, but you’re only getting an eight. You haven’t worked hard enough at the back.”

  “Okay, fine,” I said, wanting to leave.

  I liked Koeman, but couldn’t cope with van Gaal, and I thought, great, an eight will do me. Can a have a break now?

  “Do you know how to play in defence?”

  Van Gaal was sticking his oar in, and I could see that Koeman was getting annoyed too.

  “I hope so,” I replied.

  Then van Gaal started to explain, and believe me, I’d heard it all before. It was the same old stuff about how Number 9 – that is, me – defends to the right while 10 goes to the left, and vice versa, and he drew a bunch of arrows and finished with a really harsh, “Do you understand? Do you get all this?” and I took it as an attack.

  “You can wake up any of the players at three in the morning,” I said, “and ask them how to defend and they’ll rattle it off in their sleep, 9 goes here and 10 goes there. We know that stuff, and we know you’re the one who came up with it. But I’ve trained with van Basten, and he thinks otherwise.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Van Basten says Number 9 should save his strength for attacking and scoring goals, and to tell the truth, now I don’t know who I should listen to: van Basten – who’s a legend – or van Gaal?” I said, putting special emphasis on the name van Gaal, as if he were some completely insignificant figure. And what do you think? Was he happy?

  He was fuming. Who should I listen to: a legend or a van Gaal?

  “I’ve gotta go now,” I said and got out of there.

  There was more talk about how Roma were after me, and the manager at Roma was Fabio Capello, real tough, people said, he had no problem benching or bollocking any star at all. It was Capello who’d coached van Basten in Milan in the glory days and made him better than ever, so of course I talked it over with van Basten: “What do you think? Wouldn’t Roma be brilliant? Would I be able to cut it?”

  “Stay with Ajax,” he said. “You need to improve as a striker before you go to Italy.”

  “How come?”

  “It’s a lot tougher there. Here you might get five, six chances to score a goal in a match, but in Italy it might be only one or two so you’ve got to be able to take advantage of them,” he explained, and sure, in a way I agreed.

  Things hadn’t really loosened up for me yet. I wasn’t scoring enough goals, and I had loads to learn. I needed to become more effective in the goal area. But still, Italy had been my dream from the very beginning and I thought my playing style would fit in there. So I went to speak to my agent, Anders Carlsson.

  “What’s happening? What have you got in the works?”

  Of course, Anders meant well. He went off to make some enquiries and turned up again. But what had he come up with?

  “Southampton are interested,” he said.

  “What the fuck! Southampton! Is that my level?”

  Southampton!

  Around this time I’d bought a Porsche Turbo. It was amazing, but completely lethal, to be honest. It felt like a go-kart. I drove it like a maniac. Me and a friend had taken it out to Småland in south-eastern S
weden, near Växjö, and I’d stepped on the gas. I got it up to 250 km/hr. That was nothing unusual in those days. The only thing was, when I slowed down, we heard police sirens.

  The cops were after us, and I thought, okay, pull yourself together, what to do? I can stop and say sorry, here’s my licence. But come on, what about the headlines? Did I want them? Would a controversy about Zlatan the maniac on the roads help me in my career? Hardly! I looked behind us. We were on a single carriage road with oncoming traffic, and the police were about four cars behind us. They wouldn’t get anywhere, they were boxed in, and I had Dutch number plates. They couldn’t trace me, and I thought: they haven’t got a chance, and when we turned onto a bigger road I put it in second and accelerated. I floored it and got up to 300 km/hr, and I could still hear the sirens going wee, wee, but getting fainter and fainter. The police car vanished in the distance, and when we couldn’t see it in the rear-view mirror any more we nipped into an underpass and waited, it was like in a film, and we managed to get away.

  There were a number of those episodes with that car, and I remember I drove Anders Carlsson, my agent, in it. He needed to go to his hotel and then on to the airport, and we came to a bend in the road and there was a red light. But I wasn’t having any of that, not in that car. I gunned it – vroom – and he said, “I think that was a red light.”

  “Oh, was there?” I replied. “I must have missed it,” and then I gave it some more, left, right, into the city centre.

  I was really putting my foot down and could see that he was really sweating. When we reached the hotel he opened the door and got out of there without a word. The next day he phoned me, absolutely beside himself.

  “That was the worst bloody thing I’ve ever been through.”

  “Whaddaya mean?” I said. I pretended not to know what he meant.