I Am Zlatan

by David Lagercrantz

  “Ibra,” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “I want to build the game around you. You’re my key player. You’re the future. You’ve got to help us get back.”

  “Thanks, but …”

  “No buts. You’ve got to stay with the club. I won’t accept anything else,” he added, and even though it didn’t feel nice – I mean, I heard how important I was to him – I stayed firm:

  “No, no, no. I’m leaving.”

  I was sharing a room at camp with Nedvěd. Nedvěd and I were friends. We both had Mino as our agent. But we were in different situations. Just like Del Piero, Buffon and Trézéguet, Nedvěd had decided to stay at Juventus, and I remember how Deschamps came up to us, maybe to play us off one another, I dunno. He clearly had no intention of giving up.

  “Listen,” he said. “I’m expecting great things from you, Ibra. You were one of the main reasons I took this job.”

  “Don’t give me that,” I replied. “You took it for the club, not for me.”

  “I mean it. If you quit, I quit,” he continued, and I couldn’t help smiling, in spite of everything.

  “Okay, pack your bags and I’ll ring for a taxi,” I said, and he laughed as if I was joking.

  But I’d never been so serious in my life. If Juventus was fighting for its life as a big club, I was fighting for mine as a player as well. A year in Serie B would make everything come to a halt, and one day Alessio Secco and Jean-Claude Blanc came up to me. Jean-Claude was a Harvard man, a bigwig the Agnelli family had brought in to save Juventus, and he’d been very thorough. He had his papers in order and had printed out a draft contract with various sums, and straight away I thought, don’t even read it! Argue instead! The more you argue, the more they’ll want to get rid of you.

  “I don’t even want to see it. I’m not going to sign,” I replied.

  “You can at least look at what we’re offering, can’t you? We’ve been bloody generous!”

  “How come? It won’t lead anywhere.”

  “There’s no way you can know that if you haven’t even looked at it.”

  “Of course I know. If you offered me 20 million euro, I wouldn’t be interested.”

  “That’s very disrespectful,” Blanc hissed.

  “You can take it however you want,” I said and walked off, and sure, I knew I’d insulted him, and that’s always a risk, and in the worst case I could be without a club come September.

  But I had to play a high-stakes game. I had to keep it up, and sure, I realised I no longer held the best cards for negotiating. I’d played badly in the World Cup, and hadn’t been particularly good the past season at Juventus. I was too heavy and hadn’t scored enough goals. But I hoped people recognised my potential. Only a year before I’d been awesome and was voted the best foreign player in the team! There should be some interest among the other clubs, I thought, and Mino was also working hard behind the scenes.

  “I’ve got Inter and AC Milan on the go,” he said early on, and that definitely sounded good. There was a light at the end of the tunnel.

  But it was still idle talk at that point, and we still didn’t know what the situation looked like with my contract at Juventus. What chances did I have to get away from the club if they refused? I wasn’t sure, and things were up and down every day. Mino was optimistic. It was his job to be, and I couldn’t do anything but wait, and fight. It was already known in the press that I wanted to get out at any price. Now there were also murmurings that Inter Milan were after me, and the Juventus supporters hate Inter, and as a footballer you’re constantly surrounded by fans. They hang around with their autograph books and flags outside the gates of the training grounds, and they’re often allowed to pay to come in and watch. There’s business everywhere in this sport, and there in the mountains outside Turin at our pre-season camp, they were standing by the pitch, screaming at me.

  “Traitor, swine,” they roared, and other stuff like that, and sure, it wasn’t nice.

  But honestly, as a player you get used to most of it, and those insults rolled off my back. We were going to play a friendly match against Spezia, and what had I said about matches? I wasn’t going to play them. So I stayed in my room and played on my PlayStation. Outside, the bus was waiting to take us to the stadium, and everybody was already down there, including Nedvěd, and as I understand it, the bus was waiting with its engine running. They were massively impatient: where the hell’s Ibra? They waited and waited, and finally Didier Deschamps came up to my room. He was furious.

  “Why are you sitting here? We’re supposed to leave.”

  I didn’t even look up. I just carried on playing.

  “Didn’t you hear what I said?”

  “Didn’t you hear what I said?” I retorted. “I’ll practise, but I’m not playing any matches. I’ve told you that ten times.”

  “You bloody well will play. You belong to this team. Now come on, right now. Get up.”

  He came up and stood right next to where I was sitting, but I carried on playing.

  “What the hell kind of respect is this, sitting here and playing?” he growled. “You’re going to get a fine for this, you hear me?”

  “Okay,”

  “What do you mean, okay?”

  “Go ahead and give me a fine. I’m staying here!”

  He finally left. He was absolutely furious, and I sat there with my PlayStation while all the rest of them drove off in the bus, and if the situation hadn’t been tense before, it certainly was now. The story was reported up the chain of command, of course. I got a fine, €30,000 I think. It was all-out war, and as in any war you had to think tactically. How was I going to strike back? What wasthe next move? My thoughts were fermenting inside me.

  I had secret visitors. Ariedo Braida, a bigwig from AC Milan, came to meet with me during the camp. I just snuck out and met with him at another hotel nearby, and we talked about what it would be like to belong to AC Milan. But to be honest, I didn’t like his style. There was a lot of: Kaká is a star. You’re not. But Milan can make you into one. It was like, I needed AC Milan more than AC Milan needed me, and I didn’t feel particularly respected or sought-after, and I would have been happy to say thanks but no thanks straight away. But my negotiating position wasn’t exactly ideal. I was too desperate to get away from Juventus. I had no trump card, and I was forced to return to Turin with no concrete offers.

  It was hot. It was August and Helena was heavily pregnant, and she had some stress symptoms. The paparazzi were after us all the time, and I supported her as best I could. But I was in my no man’s land. I didn’t know anything about the future, and nothing was easy. The club had a new training facility. Everything from Moggi’s era was going to be cleaned out, including his grotty old changing rooms, and I continued to go to training sessions. I had to stick to my line. But it was strange. Nobody saw me as a part of the team any more, and I noticed at least one good thing: Juventus was no longer fighting for me as hard as before.

  Who wants a guy who doesn’t give a damn and just plays on his PlayStation?

  There was still a long way to go, and the question was still: AC Milan or Inter? It should have been an easy choice. Inter hadn’t won the league title in 17 years. Inter weren’t really a top team any more. AC Milan were one of the most successful clubs in Europe, in every table. Of course you should go to AC Milan, Mino said. I wasn’t so sure. Inter was Ronaldo’s old team, and the club seemed to really want me, and I thought about what Braida had told me up there in the mountains. “You’re not a real star yet!” AC Milan had the strongest team. But I was still leaning towards Inter. I wanted to join the underdogs.

  “Okay,” Mino said. “But remember, Inter will be a totally different challenge. You won’t get any championship titles for free there.”

  I didn’t want to get anything for free. I wanted challenges and responsibility. That f
eeling kept growing stronger, and even then I realised what it would mean if I went to a club that hadn’t won the league in 17 years and made sure they did it with me. It could raise stuff to a completely different level. But like I said, nothing was set yet, not at all, and first of all we had to get something lined up. We had to get off the sinking ship, and we’d have to take whatever came along.

  AC Milan were qualifying for the Champions League then. That was a consequence of the whole scandal. The club was really a shoo-in in the tournament, but because the court had penalised the team with minus points, AC Milan were forced to play a qualifier against Red Star Belgrade. The first match was at San Siro in Milan. It was an important match for me, too. If Milan made it into the tournament, the club would get more money to buy players, and Adriano Galliani, the vice president of AC Milan, had told me, “We’ll wait and see the result, and then we’ll be in touch again.”

  Up until then, Inter had been most keen, not that they had been easy to deal with either. Inter was owned by Massimo Moratti. Moratti is a big shot. He’s an oil magnate. He owns the club, and of course he could also sense my desperation. He had reduced his offer on four separate occasions. There was always something, and on the 18th of August I was sitting in our apartment on the Piazza Castello in Turin.

  Kickoff for AC Milan’s match against Red Star Belgrade at San Siro was at a quarter to nine. I wasn’t watching it. I had other stuff to do. But clearly Kaká played it right up to Filippo Inzaghi, who scored 1–0, and that eased some of the tension in the club. Soon after that, my mobile rang. It had been ringing all day, and it was usually Mino. He was telling me about every stage in the process, and now he informed me that Silvio Berlusconi wanted to meet with me, and that made me sit up, of course. Not just because it was him, but because it showed they really were interested. Still, I wasn’t sure. Inter was my first choice. But I realised that this conversation couldn’t exactly hurt us.

  “Can we exploit this?” I asked.

  “You bet we can,” Mino replied, and he phoned Moratti straight away, because if there’s anything that gets that man going, it’s a chance to give AC Milan a smack in the face.

  “We just wanted to let you know that Ibrahimović is going to be having supper with Berlusconi in Milan,” Mino told him.

  “Huh?”

  “They’ve booked a table at Ristorante Giannino.”

  “Like hell they will,” Moratti spluttered. “I’ll send a guy over at once.”

  Moratti sent Branca. Marco Branca was sporting director at Inter Milan. He was a really young, skinny guy, but when he knocked on our door just a couple of hours later, I learned another thing about him. He was one of the heaviest chain smokers I’d ever seen. He paced back and forth in our apartment and filled a whole ashtray with fag ends in no time at all. But he was stressed. He’d been tasked with getting the deal tied up before Berlusconi had a chance to do up his tie and head out for supper at Giannino. So of course he was worked up. He was going to screw the most powerful man in Italy out of a deal, no less, and Mino took advantage of that. He likes it when his opponents are under pressure. It softens them up, and there were various phone calls and figures being chucked back and forth. This was my contract. These were my terms, and during that time the clock was ticking, and Branca kept on smoking and smoking.

  “Do you accept?” he asked.

  I checked with Mino.

  Mino said: “Go for it!”

  “Okay, definitely.”

  Branca started smoking even more, and he contacted Moratti. I could actually hear the excitement in his voice.

  “Zlatan’s accepted,” he said.

  This was good news. This was big. I could tell from his tone of voice. But it wasn’t finished yet. Now the clubs had to negotiate their terms. How much would I be sold for? This was a new game, and sure, if Juventus lost me, at least they’d get a hefty sum. But before anything was settled, Moratti rang me.

  “Are you happy?”

  “I’m happy,” I said.

  “Then I’d like to welcome you,” and you can understand I let out a sigh of relief.

  All the uncertainty of that spring and summer vanished in an instant, and the only thing left was for Mino to phone the management of AC Milan. Berlusconi would hardly want to eat supper with me now. We weren’t exactly going to chat about the weather, and if I understood correctly, the AC Milan crew had just had the rug pulled out from under them, like, what the hell happened? Is Ibra going to Inter now?

  “Things can happen fast sometimes,” Mino said.

  In the end, I was bought for €27 million, which is around 270 million kronor. It was the biggest transfer fee that year in Serie A, and I even got out of paying the fines I’d got for playing on my PlayStation at the training camp. Mino magicked them away, and Moratti was quoted in the press saying my transfer was just as significant as when the club had bought Ronaldo, and of course that went straight to my heart. I was ready for Inter. But first I had to go to a meeting for the Swedish national side in Gothenburg, and I was expecting a nice, easy trip before things got serious.

  16

  WE PLAYED AGAINST Lithuania and won, 1–0. Kim Källström scored for us, and the day after we had a day off. It was the third of September and Olof Mellberg’s 29th birthday. He was captain at Aston Villa. We’d met in the national side, and at first I thought he was really uptight, a little like Trézéguet, but he loosened up and we got to be friends. Now he wanted me and Chippen to hang out and celebrate his birthday – sure, why not?

  We ended up in a place with photos on the walls on Avenyn, the main drag in Gothenburg. The papers called it a trendy hangout. Every bar I go to becomes a trendy hangout. But it was useless. It was nearly empty. We were virtually the only ones there, and we sat and had a drink, totally relaxed. It didn’t get much more exciting than that, and soon it was 11 p.m. We were supposed to be back at the hotel by 11, according to the rules of the national squad. But we said, what the hell. They can’t be that strict, can they? We’d been out and come back late before without getting into hot water. Besides, it was Olof’s birthday and we were sober and well-behaved. At a quarter past midnight we got back to the hotel and went to bed like good boys. That’s all there was to it. My mates from Rosengård would hardly have bothered to listen if I’d told them about it. It was nothing, honestly.

  The only problem is, I can’t even go out and buy milk without the papers getting wind of it. I’ve got spies on my trail wherever I go. People send texts and photos. I saw Zlatan at such-and-such a place, woo-hoo, and in order to make it not sound too dull they exaggerate and tell their mates, who exaggerate a little more. It’s got to be cool, at least a tiny bit. That’s part of the deal, and most of the time I’ve got people who stick up for me – like, what kind of rubbish is that? Zlatan hasn’t done a damn thing. But this time the papers were cleverer.

  They turned the tables and phoned our team manager, asking not about us and what time we got back to the hotel, but about what sort of rules the national squad had. He told them the truth: everybody was supposed to be at the hotel by 11 o’clock.

  “But Zlatan, Chippen and Mellberg got in later than that. We’ve got witnesses,” the journalists said, and sure, the team manager is a good bloke, he normally defends us. But this time he wasn’t quick enough on the uptake, and I suppose you can’t blame him. Who says the right thing every single time?

  But if he’d been clever and done what the blokes in the Italian clubs do, he’d have asked if he could get back to them and then rang up and given them a good explanation for why we’d been out a bit later, like saying we’d had permission to be out, something along those lines. That’s not to say that we’d get out of being punished, not at all. But the basic principle should always be that you maintain a united front. We’re a team, we’re a unit, and then they can punish us internally as much as they like.

  But the team manag
er told them that nobody was allowed to stay out past 11, and we must have broken the rules. All hell broke loose. People rang me up in the morning, saying, “You’ve been summoned to a meeting with Lagerbäck,” and of course, I don’t like meetings. Then again, I know the ropes. I’d been getting summoned in ever since day care. It was business as usual for me. It was my life, and this time I knew what it was about. It was nothing, and I didn’t get worked up about it. I rang up one of the security guys I knew, who usually knew what was going on.

  “How’s it looking?”

  “I think you can pack your bags,” he said, and I didn’t understand what he meant.

  Pack my bags? Because I got in a little late? I refused to believe it. But then I accepted the situation. What else could I do? I packed my stuff and didn’t even invent any excuses. The whole thing was too ridiculous for that. The truth would have to do for once. I wasn’t even going to blame my brother. I just strolled in, and there was Lagerbäck with the whole crew, and then Mellberg and Chippen. They weren’t as cool about it as me, they weren’t used to it like I was. But I felt right at home. It was almost like I’d been missing this, like I’d been too well-behaved and should’ve been living more on the edge!

  “We have decided to send you home immediately,” Lagerbäck began, and everybody cringed. “What have you got to say to that?”

  “I apologise,” said Chippen. “It was a really stupid thing to do.”