I Am Zlatan

by David Lagercrantz

  24

  WE WERE GOING TO BE PLAYING against Real Madrid at home at Camp Nou. This was in November of 2009. I’d been out again for 15 days. I’d been having pains in my thigh and would be starting on the bench, which of course was no fun. There are few things like El Clásico. The pressure is enormous. It’s war, and the papers produce special supplements that are, like, 60 pages long. People talk about nothing else. These are the big teams, the arch-enemies facing one another.

  I’d had a good start to the season, despite the fracture in my hand and all the upheaval. I’d scored five goals in my first five league matches and was praised to the skies. That felt good, and it was clear La Liga was the place to be. Real and Barça had invested the equivalent of nearly two and a half billion Swedish kronor in Kaká, Cristiano and me, and the Italian Serie A and the Premier League were both worse off. La Liga was on top now. Everything was going to be brilliant. That’s what I thought.

  Even in the pre-season when I was running round in a plaster cast with pins in my hand, I’d become part of the gang. It wasn’t easy with the language, of course, and I hung around a lot with the ones who spoke English, Thierry Henry and Maxwell. But I got on well with everybody. Messi, Xavi and Iniesta are good, down-to-earth guys, awesome on the pitch and easy to deal with – there’s none of that, ‘Here I come, I’m the biggest and best’, not at all, and none of the fashion parades in the changing rooms that so many of the players in Italy got up to. Messi and the lads showed up in tracksuits and kept a low profile – and then of course there was Guardiola.

  He seemed all right. He’d come up to me and talk after every training session. He really wanted to bring me into the team, and sure, the club had a special atmosphere. I’d sensed that straight away. It was like a school, like Ajax. But this was Barça, the best team in the world. I’d been expecting a little more of an attitude. But here, everybody was quiet and polite and a team player, and sometimes I’d think, these guys are superstars. Yet they behave like schoolboys, and maybe that’s nice, what do I know? But I couldn’t help wondering: how would these guys have been treated in Italy? They would’ve been like gods.

  Now they toed the line for Pep Guardiola. Guardiola is a Catalan. He’s an old midfielder. He won the La Liga title five or six times with Barcelona and became team captain in 1997. When I arrived, he’d been managing the club for two years and had been very successful at it. He definitely deserved respect, and I thought the obvious thing to do was to try to fit in. That wasn’t exactly something I was unfamiliar with – I’d swapped clubs several times and never just barged straight in and started ordering people around. I sound out my surroundings. Who’s strong? Who’s weak? What’s the banter like, who tends to stick together?

  At the same time, I was aware of my qualities. I had concrete evidence of what I could mean for a team with my winner’s mindset, and I was usually back to taking up a lot of space quickly, and I joked around a lot. Not long ago I gave Chippen Wilhelmsson a playful kick at a session with the Swedish national team, and I couldn’t believe it when I opened the paper the next day. People saw it as this fierce attack. But it was nothing, nothing at all. That’s just what we do. It’s both a game and deadly serious at the same time. We’re a bunch of blokes who are together all day long and pull little stunts to keep ourselves going. Nothing more to it than that. We joke around. But at Barça I got boring. I became too nice, and I didn’t dare to yell or blow up on the pitch the way I need to do.

  The newspapers writing that I was a bad boy and stuff was definitely part of it. It made me want to prove the opposite, and of course it went too far. Instead of being myself, I was trying to be the super-nice guy, and that was stupid. You can’t let the rubbish from the media get you down. It was unprofessional. I admit it. But that wasn’t the main thing. This was:

  “We keep our feet on the ground here. We are fabricantes. We work here. We’re regular guys!”

  Maybe that doesn’t sound so strange, but there was something peculiar about those words, and I started to wonder: why is Guardiola saying this to me?

  Does he think I’m different? I couldn’t put my finger on it, not at first. But it didn’t feel quite right. Sometimes it was like in the youth squad at Malmö FF. Was this another coach who saw me as the kid from the wrong neighbourhood? But I hadn’t done anything, hadn’t headbutted a teammate, hadn’t nicked a bike, nothing. I’ve never been such a wimp in my life. I was the opposite of what the papers were saying. I was the guy who tiptoed around and always weighed things up beforehand. The old, wild Zlatan was gone! I was a shadow of my former self.

  That had never happened before, but for now it wasn’t a major thing. Things will work out, I thought, I’ll soon be myself again. Things will loosen up, and maybe it’s just my imagination, some kind of paranoia. Guardiola wasn’t unpleasant, not at all. He seemed to believe in me. He saw how I scored goals and how much I meant to the team, and yet… that feeling wouldn’t go away: Did he think I was different?

  “We keep our feet on the ground here!”

  Was I the guy who didn’t keep his feet on the ground, is that what he thought? I didn’t get it. So I tried to brush it off. Told myself: focus instead. Just forget about it! But those bad vibes were still there, and I started to wonder more and more: Is everybody supposed to be the same in this club? It didn’t seem healthy. Everybody’s different. Sometimes people pretend, of course. But when they do, they’re just hurting themselves and harming the team. Sure, Guardiola had been successful. The club had won a lot under him. I’ve got to applaud that, and a win is a win.

  But looking back now, I think it came at a price. All the big personalities were chased out. It was no accident that he’d had problems with guys like Ronaldinho, Deco, Eto’o, Henry and me. We’re no ‘ordinary guys’. We’re threatening to him and so he tries to get rid of us, nothing more complicated than that, and I hate that sort of thing. If you’re not an ‘ordinary guy’ you shouldn’t have to become one. Nobody benefits from that in the long run. Hell, if I’d tried to be like the Swedish guys at Malmö FF I wouldn’t be where I am today. Listen, don’t listen – that’s the reason for my success.

  It doesn’t work for everybody. But it does for me, and Guardiola didn’t understand that at all. He thought he could change me. At his Barça, everybody should be like Xavi, Iniesta and Messi. Nothing wrong with them, like I said, absolutely nothing at all. It was terrific being in the same team as them. Good players get me fired up, and I’d watch them the way I’d always done with great talents, thinking, can I learn something? Can I make even more of an effort?

  But look at their backgrounds. Xavi joined Barça when he was 11 years old. Iniesta was 12, Messi was 13. They were moulded by the club. They knew of nothing else, and I’m sure that was good for them. That was their thing, but it wasn’t mine. I came from outside; I came with my whole personality, and there didn’t seem to be space for that, not in Guardiola’s little world. But like I said, this was just a feeling, back then in November. Back then, my problems were more basic:

  Was I going to get to play, and would I be sharp enough after my time out?

  The pressure was intense in the lead-up to El Clásico at Camp Nou. Manuel Pellegrini, a Chilean, was the Real Madrid manager then. There was speculation that he might get the sack if Real didn’t win. There was talk about me, Kaká, Cristiano Ronaldo, Messi, Pellegrini and Guardiola. There was a lot of this guy versus that guy. The city was simmering with anticipation, and I arrived at the stadium in the club’s Audi and walked into the changing room. Guardiola was starting with Thierry Henry up front, Messi on the right wing and Iniesta on the left. It was dark outside. The stadium was floodlit, and camera flashes were going off everywhere up in the stands.

  We sensed it right away: Real Madrid were more fired up. They created more chances, and 20 minutes in Kaká made this incredibly elegant, nimble dribble and played it up to Cristiano Ronaldo, who was completely
open. He had a brilliant position, but missed. Víctor Valdés, our goalkeeper, saved it with his foot, and only a minute later Higuaín was on his way through for Real. It was close, very close. There were a lot of chances, and we were playing too stationary and were having trouble with our passing game. Nerves spread through the team, and the home fans booed, especially at Casillas in goal for Real. He was taking his time with his goal kicks. But Real continued to dominate, and we were lucky to hold the score to 0–0 at half-time.

  At the start of the second half, Guardiola asked me to warm up, and that was a good feeling, I’ve got to say. The spectators shouted and cheered. The roar enveloped me, and I returned the applause as thanks, and in the 51st minute Thierry Henry came off and I went in. I was desperate to play. I hadn’t been away for all that long. But it felt like it, maybe partly because I’d missed a Champions League match in the group stage against my old side, Inter Milan. But now I was back, and after only a few minutes Daniel Alves, the Brazilian, got the ball over on the right. Alves is quick on the ball, and the offensive was swift. There was some confusion in Real’s defence, and in those situations I don’t think. I just rush towards the penalty area, and then a cross ball came. I powered ahead.

  I broke free and made a volley shot with my left foot – bang, boom – into the goal, and the stadium erupted like a volcano and I felt it in my whole body: nothing could stop me now. We won, 1–0. I was the match winner, and there was praise from all quarters. Now no one was questioning that I’d cost 700 million kronor. I was on fire.

  Then came the Christmas break. We headed up to northern Sweden and I drove my snowmobile, like I said, and had fun. But it was also the turning point. After New Year’s everything that had been difficult in the autumn got even worse, and I was no longer myself. That’s how it felt. I’d become a different, uncertain Zlatan, and every time after Mino had a meeting with the management at Barça I’d ask him:

  “What do they think of me?”

  “That you’re the world’s best striker!”

  “I mean personally. As a person.”

  I’d never worried about that before. I never used to care about that sort of thing. As long as I got to play, people could say whatever they wanted. But now it was important all of a sudden, and it showed that I wasn’t doing well. My confidence took a nosedive and I felt inhibited. I hardly celebrated when I scored. I didn’t dare to be angry, and that’s not a good thing, not at all. I was bottling things up, and I’m really not over-sensitive. I’m tough. I’ve been through a lot. But still, getting looks and comments day after day that I wasn’t fitting in or that I was different, it gets under your skin. It was like going back in time, to the years before my career took off. A lot of it isn’t worth mentioning, just little things like looks, comments, turns of phrase, stuff I’d never cared about before. I’m used to hard knocks. That’s what I’d grown up with. But now I was getting this feeling, like, am I the foster kid in this family, the guy who doesn’t belong? And how messed-up was that?

  The first time I’d really tried to fit in I was given the cold shoulder, and as if that wasn’t bad enough, there was the thing with Messi. You remember from the first chapter. Messi was the big star. In a way, it was his team. He was shy and polite, definitely. I liked him. But now I was there, and I’d also dominated on the pitch and caused a massive uproar.

  It must have been a bit like I’d gone round to his place and got into his bed. He told Guardiola he didn’t want to play on the wing any more. He wanted to be in the centre, and I was locked in up there and didn’t get any balls, and the situation from back in the autumn was now reversed. I was no longer the one who scored goals. Messi was, and so I had that conversation with Guardiola. The directors had been pressuring me.

  “Speak to him. Sort it out!”

  But how did it go? It started a war, and I got the silent treatment. He stopped speaking to me. He stopped looking at me. He said good morning to all the others. He didn’t say a damn thing to me, and it got uncomfortable, I’m sad to say, it really did. I would’ve liked to say I didn’t care. What do I care about a bloke who resorts to bullying? In another situation I’m sure that’s what I would have done. But I wasn’t strong then.

  The situation broke me down, and that wasn’t easy. Having a boss with such power over you, who consciously ignores you, it ends up getting under your skin, and now it wasn’t just me who noticed it. Others saw it, and they wondered: What’s going on? What’s this about? They told me:

  “You’ve got to speak to him. This can’t go on.”

  No, I’d spoken to that guy enough. I had no intention of crawling to him, so I gritted my teeth and started playing well again, despite my position on the pitch and the disastrous mood in the club. I got into a groove where I scored five, six goals. But Guardiola was just as distant, and it was no wonder, I realise now.

  It was never about my game. It was about me as a person. Thoughts were whirling in my head, day and night: Is it something I said, something I did? Do I look strange? I went over everything, every little episode, every encounter. I couldn’t find anything. I’d kept quiet, been a massive bore. But I carried on, asking, is it this, is it that? So no, I didn’t just respond with rage.

  I was searching for faults with myself just as much. I thought about it all the time. But the guy didn’t give in, and that wasn’t just nasty. It was unprofessional. The whole team suffered as a result, and the management were getting more and more worried. Guardiola was about to wreck the club’s biggest investment, and there were important matches coming up in the Champions League. We were going to be facing Arsenal away. Meanwhile the stalemate between the manager and me continued and I’m sure he would’ve preferred to drop me completely. But he probably didn’t want to go that far, so I started up front with Messi.

  But did I get any instructions? Nothing! I just had to go for it on my own. We were at the Emirates Stadium. This was big, and as usual in England I had the spectators and the journalists against me, and there was a load of rubbish, like: he never scores against English teams. I gave a press conference. I tried to be myself, in spite of everything. I was like, “Wait and see. I’ll show you.”

  But it wasn’t easy, not with that manager. I stepped onto the pitch and things started off tough. The pace was blinding, and Guardiola vanished from my mind. It was nothing short of magic. Never played a match as good as that, I don’t think. But it’s true, I did miss some chances. I shot right to Arsenal’s goalie, or in front of him. I should’ve made that one, but it didn’t happen and we went into half-time on 0–0.

  Guardiola is sure to pull me out, I thought. But he let me play on, and the second half had barely started before I got a long ball from Piqué and rushed in deep. I had a defender close on me and the goalkeeper ran out and the ball bounced, and then I lobbed it. I lobbed it over him and into the goal. That made it 1–0, and just over 10 minutes later I got a nice pass off Xavi and I ran off like an arrow. But I didn’t lob it this time. I thundered in there. I shot with tremendous force to score 2–0, and we seemed to have the match in the bag. I’d been brilliant. But what did Guardiola do? Was he applauding? He substituted me out. Smart move! After that, the team fell apart and Arsenal managed to equalise, 2–2 in the final minutes.

  I hadn’t felt anything during the match. But afterwards my calf hurt, and it got worse, and that was shit. I’d regained my form. But now I was going to be out of the return leg at home against Arsenal and the El Clásico that spring, and I didn’t get any support from Guardiola. I got more knock-backs. If I went into a room, he’d leave. He didn’t even want to be near me, and now when I look back on it, it feels completely messed up.

  Nobody understood what was going on, not the management, not the players, nobody. But there’s something strange about that man. Like I said, I don’t begrudge him his successes and I’m not saying he’s not a good coach in other respects. But he must have some serious problems.
He doesn’t seem able to handle guys like me. Maybe it’s something as simple as a fear of losing his authority. That sort of thing isn’t too unusual, is it? Managers who probably have certain qualities but who can’t deal with strong personalities, and solve it by shutting them out. Cowardly leaders, in other words!

  Anyway, he never asked me about my injury. He didn’t dare to. Well, actually, he did speak to me before the Champions League semi-final away against Inter Milan. But he was acting strange and it all went wrong, like I said. Mourinho was right. It wasn’t us, but him who won the Champions League, and afterwards Guardiola treated me like it was all my fault, and that’s when the real storm started brewing.

  It was scary in a way, the feeling that everything you’ve been keeping bottled up needs to come out, and I was happy I had Thierry Henry. He understood me, and we’d joke around, like I said. That eased the pressure, and at some point I stopped letting the whole thing get to me. What else could I do? For the first time, football didn’t seem so important. I focused on Maxi, Vincent and Helena, and I became closer to them during that time. I’m grateful for that. My kids mean everything to me. That’s the truth.

  But I still couldn’t shake off the atmosphere at the club, and that outburst that had been smouldering inside me finally came out. In the changing room after the match against Villarreal, I screamed at Guardiola. I screamed about his balls and how he’d been shitting himself in front of Mourinho, and you can just imagine. It was war, and it was me against him. Guardiola, the frightened little over-thinker who couldn’t even look me in the eye or even say good morning, and me, who’d been quiet and cautious for such a long time, but who finally blew up and became myself again.

  This was no game. In another setting, with another person, it wouldn’t have been so bad. Outbursts like that are no big deal to me, whether I’m on the giving or receiving end. They’re something I grew up with. They’re run of the mill to me, and things like that have often actually turned out well. The outburst clears the air. Vieira and I became friends after an almighty row. But with Pep… I could tell straight away.