I Am Zlatan

by David Lagercrantz

  In the stadium, supporters waved signs saying ‘Ibra, stay!’ There was a lot of attention on me, of course. But it was mostly Ronaldinho’s match. Ronaldinho is like a god at Barcelona. He played for AC Milan, but he’d been at Barça before, and he’d been voted the World Player of the Year two years in a row. Before the match we were going to be shown clips of his best moments on the big screen, and he was supposed to run a lap of honour around the pitch. But, that bloke… well, he just does what he wants.

  We were sitting in the changing room, waiting to run out onto the pitch. It felt odd. I could hear the roar of the crowd outside. Obviously Guardiola wasn’t looking at me, and of course I was wondering, is this my last match with the team? What’s going to happen? I didn’t have a clue. Then everybody sat up. Ronaldinho looked in through the doorway – and Ronaldinho, he’s got charisma. He’s one of the true greats. Everybody was staring at him.

  “Ibra,” he shouted, grinning.

  “Yeah,” I replied.

  “Have you packed your bags? I’m here to take you along with me to Milan!” he said, and everybody laughed, like, typical Ronaldinho, sneaking into our changing room like that, and people looked at me.

  Of course everybody’d had their suspicions. But nobody’d heard it straight out like that before. Now it was being repeated over and over again. I got to play from the start. The match didn’t really mean anything, and just before kick-off Ronaldinho and I carried on joking about it, like, are you mad? Photos of us laughing on the pitch appeared everywhere. But the worst thing was in the players’ tunnel on our way out after half-time. All the big names were calling to me: Pirlo, Gattuso, Nesta and Ambrosini.

  “You have to come, Ibra! We need you!”

  AC Milan hadn’t been having an easy time recently. Inter had dominated the Italian league in recent years, and of course everyone at AC Milan was longing for a new era of glory, and I know now that many of the players, especially Gattuso, had put pressure on the club’s management.

  “For Christ’s sake, buy Ibra. We need somebody with a real winner’s mindset in the team.”

  But it wasn’t that simple. AC Milan didn’t have as much money as they used to, and no matter how desperate Sandro Rosell was, he carried on trying to extract as much money for me as possible. He wanted 50, 40 million euro. But Mino continued to play hardball.

  “You won’t get a damn thing. Ibra’s going to Real Madrid. We don’t want to go to Milan.”

  “How about 30?”

  Time was ticking away, and Rosell lowered his price again and again. Things were looking more and more promising, and Galliani came to visit Helena and me in our house in the hills. Galliani is a real heavyweight and an old mate and business partner of Berlusconi. He’s a bastard of a negotiator.

  I’d had dealings with him before. That was when I was leaving Juventus, and that time he’d said: “I’ll offer you this, or nothing!” Juventus was in crisis then, and he had the upper hand. Now the tables were turned. He was the one under pressure. He couldn’t go home without me, not after the promises he’d made and the pressure from the players and fans. Besides, we’d helped him. We’d made sure we got the transfer fee down. It was like he was getting me in the sales.

  “These are my conditions,” I said. “It’s this, or nothing,” and I could see how he was thinking things over and sweating.

  They were some pretty tough terms.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Okay.”

  We shook hands, and then the negotiations for my transfer fee continued. That was between the clubs and I wasn’t bothered, not really. But it was quite a drama, and there were a number of factors involved. Time was one. The clock was ticking. The seller’s unease was another. The fact that the manager couldn’t deal with me was another. With every hour, Sandro Rosell got more nervous, and my fee kept going down. Finally, I was sold for €20 million. Twenty million! Thanks to a single person, my price tag had gone down by 50 million euro.

  Because of Guardiola’s problem, the club was forced to do a disastrous deal – it was crazy, and I said all this to Sandro Rosell as well. Not that I really needed to. He knew it, and I’m sure he’d been kept awake at night, cursing the situation. I mean, I’d scored 22 goals and 15 assists during my season at Barcelona. Yet I’d lost nearly 70 per cent of my value. Whose fault was that? Sandro Rosell knew all too well, and I remember how we were all standing there in the office at Camp Nou: him, Mino, me, Galliani, my lawyer and Josep Maria Bartomeu. The contract was lying there in front of us. The only thing remaining was to sign it and then say thanks and goodbye.

  “I want you to know…” Rosell began.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m doing the worst deal in my entire life here,” he continued. “I’m selling you off dirt cheap, Ibra!”

  “You see how much rotten leadership can cost.”

  “I know it wasn’t handled well,” he said, and then he signed.

  Then it was my turn. I took hold of that pen and everybody was watching me, and I felt I ought to say something. Then again, maybe not. Maybe I should have kept quiet. But I had a few things I wanted to get off my chest.

  “I’ve got a message for Guardiola,” I began, and of course that made everybody nervous. What’s happening now? Hasn’t there been enough arguing? Can’t the guy just sign?

  “Do you have to?”

  “Yes. I want you to tell him …” I began, and then I told them exactly what I wanted them to say to him.

  Everyone in the room gulped, and I could tell they were thinking, how come he’s coming out with this stuff now? But believe me, I needed to say it. Something happened in my head then. I got my motivation back. Just the thought of being able to do my thing again got me fired up – that’s the truth.

  When I’d put my signature on that document and said those words, I became myself again. It was like waking up from a nightmare, and for the first time in a long while I was itching to play football. All those thoughts of quitting were gone, and after that I entered a phase when I played out of sheer joy. Or rather, I played out of sheer joy and sheer rage, joy at having escaped from Barça and rage that a single person had destroyed my dream.

  It was like I’d been set free, and I also began to see the whole thing more clearly. When I was caught up in the middle of it, I’d mainly tried to buck myself up: it’s not that bad, I’ll get back in, I’ll show them. I kept that up all the time. But then, when it really was over, I realised it had been tough. It had been hard. The person who was supposed to mean the most to me as a footballer had given me the cold shoulder, completely, and that was worse than most stuff I’d been through. I’d been under immense pressure, and in situations like that you need your coach.

  But what did I have? A guy who avoided me. A guy who tried to treat me as if I didn’t exist. I was supposed to be a huge star. But instead I’d gone round there feeling unwelcome. Bloody hell, I’d been with Mourinho and Capello, the two most disciplined managers in the world, and I’d never had any problems with them. But then this Guardiola … I was seething when I thought about it, and I’ll never forget when I told Mino:

  “He wrecked everything.”

  “Zlatan,” he replied.

  “Yeah?”

  “Dreams can come true and make you happy.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But dreams can also come true and kill you,” and I realised immediately that was true.

  A dream had both come true and been crushed at Barça, and I continued down the stairs towards the sea of journalists waiting outside, and that’s when it came to me: I didn’t want to call that guy by his real name. I needed something else, and I remembered all the drivel he’d spouted, and suddenly there outside Camp Nou in Barcelona, it came to me. The Philosopher!

  I would call him the Philosopher.

  “Ask the Philosopher what the problem is,” I said wi
th every scrap of pride and rage inside my being.

  26

  THERE WAS A HUGE UPROAR, and I remember something Maxi said afterwards – or two things, actually. The first thing was just funny. He asked, “Why is everybody looking at you, Daddy?” and I tried to explain the situation: “Daddy plays football. People see me on TV and they think I’m good,” and I felt proud afterwards – Daddy’s pretty cool. Then things took a different turn. It was our nanny who told us.

  Maxi had asked why everybody was looking at him, because of course, that was something he got a lot during those days, especially when he arrived with me in Milan – and worst of all, he added: “I don’t like it when they look at me like that.” I’m sensitive to stuff like that. Was he going to start feeling different now, too? I hate it when children feel they’re being singled out, also because it brings back so much of my own childhood: Zlatan doesn’t belong here. He’s this. He’s that. All that’s still inside me.

  I tried to spend a lot of time with Maxi and Vincent during that time. They’re terrific, wild kids. But it wasn’t easy. Things were going crazy. After I spoke to the journalists outside Camp Nou I drove home to Helena.

  She probably hadn’t been expecting to have to move house again so soon, and I bet she would’ve liked to stay. But she knew better than anyone that if I’m not doing well on the football pitch, I just wilt. It affects everybody in the family, so I told Galliani: I want to go to Milan with the whole gang – Helena, the boys, the dog and Mino. Galliani nodded, si, si. Everybody come along! He’d clearly organised something really special, so we all hopped on one of the club’s private planes and left Barcelona. I remember when we landed at Milan Linate airport. It was like Obama was coming or something. There were eight black Audis lined up in front of us and a red carpet was rolled out, and I went out carrying Vincent in my arms.

  For a couple of minutes I was interviewed by a few selected journalists, guys from the Milan Channel and Sky and some others, and on the other side of the fence there were hundreds of screaming fans. It was great. I could feel it in the air. The club had been waiting a long time for this. Five years earlier, when Berlusconi had booked a table for me and him at Ristorante Giannino, people had thought everything was done and dusted and they’d made all sorts of preparations, including putting a thing on the website, an elaborate thing that first was black, and then there was a light in the centre, and it went boom, boom, like serious sound effects, just before my name appeared – Ibrahimović, like a flashing, thundering streamer, and then the words ‘Finally ours’.

  It was crazy, and they put that thing up now, and clearly nobody was prepared for the level of interest. The website crashed. It totally went down, and I remember walking past the fences at the airport where the fans stood shouting my name, ‘Ibra, Ibra’.

  Then I got into one of the Audis and we drove through the city. It was chaos, I’m telling you. It was like, Zlatan has landed. There were cars and scooters and TV cameras after us, and sure, I got a buzz out of it. The adrenaline was pumping, and I realised even more the kind of black hole I’d been living in at Barça. It was like I’d been locked up in jail and then greeted by a festival outside the prison walls, and everywhere I sensed one thing: all of Milan had been waiting for me, and they wanted me to take charge. I was going to lead them to trophies again, and honestly, I liked it.

  The street outside the Boscolo Hotel where we were going to be staying was cordoned off. All around Milan residents were shouting and waving, and inside the hotel, the management stood in a row and bowed. In Italy, footballers are like gods, and we were given the deluxe suite. We could tell straight away: everything was really well organised. This was a solid club with traditions, and honestly, my body was trembling. I wanted to play football. That same day, AC Milan were playing against Lecce in the Serie A season opener and I asked Galliani if I could play.

  It wasn’t possible. My papers hadn’t been finalised. But I still went to the stadium. I was going to be introduced at half-time, and I’ll never forget that feeling. I didn’t want to go into the changing room. I didn’t want to disturb the players as they regrouped. But there was a lounge just next door, so I sat in there with Galliani and Berlusconi and some other bigwigs.

  “You remind me of a player I used to have,” Berlusconi said.

  Of course I could guess who he was talking about, but I wanted to be polite.

  “Who’s that?” I said.

  “A guy who could take care of situations on his own.”

  He was talking about van Basten, of course, and then he welcomed me into the club: “It’s a great honour,” and all that stuff, and then we went up into the stands. I had to sit two places away from him for some political reason or other. There’s always loads going on around that guy. But it was pretty calm then, at least compared to what followed. Two months later the whole circus surrounding Berlusconi blew up, with rumours of young girls and court cases. But now he sat there and seemed pleased, and I started to feel the vibes. People were screaming my name again and I went down onto the pitch, and they rolled out a red carpet and put up a little stage down there, and I waited on the sideline for a long time, at least that’s what it felt like. The stadium was at boiling point. San Siro was full to capacity even though it was August and the holiday season, and I stepped out onto the pitch. There was a roar all around me, and I was like a little boy again. It wasn’t long since I’d stood in Camp Nou in the same situation, and then I went out to all the cheering and applause, and there were a load of kids standing by the red carpet. I gave them all high fives, and stepped up onto the stage.

  “Now we’re going to win everything,” I said in Italian, and the roar got even louder.

  The stadium was shaking, and afterwards I got a match shirt. It had my name on it, but no number. I didn’t have a number yet. I’d been given a few to choose from, but none of them were any good and I there was a chance I could get the 11, which Klaas-Jan Huntelaar currently had. Huntelaar was on the transfer list, but because he hadn’t been sold yet, I’d have to wait. In any case, it was starting now. Now I was going to make sure AC Milan won their first Scudetto in seven years. A new era of glory was about to begin. That’s what I’d promised.

  Both me and Helena had bodyguards, and some people might think, what kind of luxury is that? But it’s no luxury. In Italy, football stars are surrounded by hysteria, the pressure is terrible and some bad things had happened, not just that fire outside our door in Turin. When I was at Inter and was going to play a match at San Siro, Sanela came to visit us. She and Helena drove to the stadium in our big new Mercedes. There was chaos and traffic jams outside the stadium. Helena could only inch forwards in the car, and people around her had plenty of time to gawp in and see who she was. Then a guy on a Vespa drove past a little too fast and a little too close and clipped her wing mirror.

  In that situation, Helena couldn’t tell whether it was intentional or not. It was more like, oh no, what’s he done? She opened the window to adjust the mirror and saw something out of the corner of her eye: another guy in a cycle helmet was rushing towards her and then she realised: this is something dodgy – a trap. She tried to close the window, but it was a new car and she wasn’t familiar with all the controls so she didn’t manage to get the window up in time. The guy came up and punched her in the face.

  It turned into a vicious scuffle and the Merc crashed into the car in front, and the guy tried to pull her out through the window. But fortunately Sanela was there. She grabbed hold of Helena’s body and held her in – it was completely crazy. It was a tug-of-war for life or death, that’s what it felt like, and finally Sanela was able to drag Helena back inside the car, and then Helena managed to turn herself round somehow.

  She landed a kick in the bastard’s face from an impossible angle, and she had on, like, four-inch heels. That must have hurt like hell, and the guy ran off. People had started to gather round the car. It was absolute
chaos, and Helena was bruised.

  It could have ended really badly. There have been a few things like that, unfortunately. That’s the truth. We needed protection. Anyway, my bodyguard, a good guy, drove me out to Milanello, the club’s training facility, on the first day.

  I was getting all the usual medical exams. Milanello is nearly an hour’s drive from Milan, and of course there were fans waiting down by the gates when we drove in. I felt the weight of all the traditions at Milan, and I greeted all the legends in the squad: Zambrotta, Nesta, Ambrosini, Gattuso, Pirlo, Abbiati, Seedorf, Inzaghi, Pato the young Brazilian, and Allegri, the coach, who’d just arrived from Cagliari and didn’t have much experience, but who seemed good. Sometimes when you’re new in the gang, you’re called into question. There’s a fight for your place in the pecking order, like, you think you’re the star here? But here, I could sense it immediately. I got respect straight away. Actually, maybe I shouldn’t say this, but a number of players told me afterwards: We got a 20 per cent boost when you came. You brought us out of the shadows. AC Milan hadn’t just been having a tough time in the league the last few years. The club hadn’t been the best side in the city for a long time, either.

  Inter had dominated. Inter had dominated ever since I arrived at the club in 2006 with all that attitude I’d got from Capello, which somehow said: training sessions are just as important as matches. You can’t train soft and play aggressive. You’ve got to do battle every minute, otherwise I’ll come after you. I went round trying to give encouragement and joke around with the guys, everything that had come naturally to me everywhere except at Barcelona. In a way, it reminded me of my early days at Inter. Lead us, lead us, the guys seemed to be saying, and I thought: now the balance of power is going to wobble a little again. I went into every training session incredibly fired up, and just like I’d done before Barcelona I screamed at people. I made noise and I yelled. I made fun of the ones who lost, and people said to me, what’s going on? We haven’t seen the guys this fired up in ages.