I Am Zlatan Part 10

12.

"IBRA, COME IN HERE."

Fabio Capello, possibly the most successful European manager of the past 10 years, was calling me, and I thought: what have I done now? My whole childhood fear of meetings returned, and Capello could make anyone nervous. Wayne Rooney once said that when Capello walks past you in the corridor, it feels sort of like you're dead, and that's the truth. He would usually just pick up his coffee and pa.s.s by you without so much as a glance. It was almost creepy. Sometimes he'd mutter a brief 'ciao'. Otherwise he'd just disappear on his way, and it felt like you weren't even there at all.

I said that the stars in Italy don't jump just because the coach says so. That doesn't apply with Capello. Every single player toes the line when he shows up. People behave around Capello, and I know of a journalist who asked him about it: "How do you get that sort of respect from everyone?"

"You don't get respect. You take it," Capello replied, and that's something that's stuck with me.

When Capello gets angry, hardly anyone dares to look him in the eye, and if he gives you an opportunity and you don't take it, you might as well be selling hot dogs outside the stadium, basically. You don't go to Capello with your problems. Capello isn't your mate. He doesn't chat with the players, not like that. He's the sergente di ferro, the iron sergeant, and it's not a good sign when he calls for you. Then again, you never know. He breaks people down and builds them up. I remember one session where we'd just started on some positional training. Capello gave a blast on his whistle and yelled: "Get inside. Off the pitch," and n.o.body knew what was going on.

"What have we done? What's this about?"

"You've been slacking off. You've been s.h.i.+t!"

There was no more training that day, and it was confusing, but of course, he had something in mind. He wanted us to come back the next day all fired up like warriors, and I liked that style, because like I said, I didn't grow up with lots of cuddles. I like blokes with power and att.i.tude, and Capello believed in me.

"You have nothing to prove, I know who you are and what you can do," he said on one of my first days there, and that made me feel secure.

I could relax a little. The pressure had been terrible. A lot of newspapers had questioned the transfer, and they wrote that I didn't score enough goals. A lot of them thought I'd just be sitting on the bench: how can Zlatan make it in a team like that?

"Is Zlatan ready for Italy?" they wrote.

"Is Italy ready for Zlatan?" Mino countered, and that was exactly right.

You had to respond with c.o.c.ky retorts like that. You had to be tough back to them, and sometimes I wonder whether I would've made it without Mino. I don't think so. If I'd landed at Juventus the way I arrived at Ajax, the press would have eaten me alive. In Italy they're football-mad, and where Swedes write about a match the day before and the day after, they keep it up all week long in Italy. It just keeps going, and you're being judged constantly. They look you up and down, and until you get used to it, it's tough.

But now I had Mino. He was my protective wall, and I was on the phone to him constantly. I mean, Ajax, what was that? A nursery school in comparison! If I was going to score a goal in a training session I didn't just have to get past Cannavaro and Thuram, there was Buffon in goal as well, and n.o.body treated me with kid gloves just because I was new quite the opposite.

Capello had an a.s.sistant called Italo Galbiati. Galbiati is an older fellow I called him the Oldie. He was a good guy. He and Capello are a little like good cop, bad cop. Capello says the harsh, tough stuff, while Galbiati takes care of the rest, and after the very first training session Capello sent him over to me: "Italo, let him have it!"

All the others in the team had gone in to shower, and I was completely exhausted. I would have gladly called it a day as well. But a goalie from the youth team came over from the sideline, and I twigged what was going on. Italo was going to feed me b.a.l.l.s bam, bam. They came at me from all angles. There were crosses, pa.s.ses, he chucked the ball, he gave me wall pa.s.ses, and I shot at goal, one shot after another, and I was never allowed to leave the box the penalty area. That was my area, he said. That's where I was supposed to be and shoot, shoot, and there was no chance of taking a break or taking it easy. The pace was relentless.

"Go after them, harder, more determined, don't hesitate," Italo yelled, and the whole thing became a routine, a habit.

Sometimes Del Piero and Trezeguet came down as well, but most of the time it was just me. It was me and Italo, and there would be 50, 60, 100 shots at goal. Now and then Capello would turn up, and he's just the way he is.

"I'm gonna knock Ajax out of your body," he said.

"Okay, sure."

"I don't need that Dutch style. One, two, one, two, play the wall, play nice and technical. Dribble through the whole team. I can get by without that. I need goals. You understand? I need to get that Italian mindset into you. You've got to get that killer instinct."

That was a process that had already started in me. I'd had my discussions with van Basten, and with Mino, but I still didn't see myself as a real goal-getter, even though my position was out there in front. I felt more like the guy who had to know everything, and there were still a lot of feints and tricks from Mum's yard in my head. But under Capello, I was transformed. His toughness was infectious, and I became less of an artiste and more of a bruiser who wanted to win at any price.

Not that I hadn't wanted to win before. I was born with a winner's mindset. But even so, don't forget football had been my way to get noticed! It was with all my moves on the pitch that I'd become something more than just another kid from Rosengrd. It was all the 'wow's and 'check that out!'s that got me going. I grew with the applause I got for my moves, and for a long time I'd probably have called you an idiot if you thought an ugly goal was worth just as much as a nice one!

But now I was starting to realise that n.o.body's going to thank you for your artistry and your backheels if your team lose. n.o.body even cares if you've scored a dream goal if you don't win, and gradually I got to be tougher and even more of a warrior on the pitch. Of course I didn't stop that 'listen, don't listen' business either. No matter how strong and tough Capello was, I held onto my own stuff. I remember my Italian lessons. It wasn't always easy with the language. On the pitch it was no problem. Football has its own language. But outside I was completely lost sometimes, and the club sent a tutor for me. I was supposed to meet with her twice a week and learn grammar. Grammar? Was I back at school here? I didn't need that. I told her, "Keep the money and don't say anything to anybody not your boss, n.o.body. Stay at home. Just pretend you've been here, and really, don't take it personally," and sure enough, she did as I said.

She took off and pretended. It was like, thanks, see ya, but don't think that means I ignored the Italian.

I really did want to learn, and I picked it up in other ways, in the changing room and at the hotel, and I found it easy to grasp. I learned fast, and I was dumb and c.o.c.ky enough to yak away even when my grammar was wrong. Even in front of journalists, I'd start off in Italian before switching to English, and I think they appreciated that. Like, here's a guy who might not be able to do it, but he's trying, and that's the way I did it with most things I listened. I didn't listen.

But still, I was soon transformed both in my head and my body. I remember my first match with Juventus. It was the 12th of September and we were playing against Brescia, and I started on the bench. The Agnelli family who own the team were up in the VIP section, and they were obviously checking me out, like, is he worth the money? After half-time I came on for Nedvd, who's one of Mino's guys as well and who'd been honoured as the European Player of the Year the previous year. He's probably the biggest training addict I've ever met. Nedvd would go cycling on his own for an hour before our training sessions. Afterwards he'd go running for another hour. He wasn't an easy guy to replace, and sure, it's no disaster if things go badly in your first match. But it doesn't help either, and I remember I was running along the left sideline and got two defenders on me. The situation felt deadlocked. But I made a burst, broke through and heard the supporters shouting from the stands: "Ibrahimovic, Ibrahimovic!" That was awesome, and it wouldn't be the last time.

People started calling me 'Ibra' then it was Moggi who thought of it and even 'Flamingo' for a while. I was still really skinny. I was six foot five but weighed only 84 kilograms, or 13 stone and 3 pounds, and Capello didn't think that was enough.

"Have you ever done any weight training?" he asked.

"Never," I said.

I'd never even picked up a barbell, and he regarded that as a minor scandal. He got the physio to drive me hard in the gym, and for the first time in my life I started to care about what I was stuffing into my face all right, maybe there was still too much pasta, and that would become apparent later on. But everything was more thorough at Juventus, and I put on weight and became a heavier, more powerful player. At Ajax the guys were sort of left to fend for themselves. Strange, really, with all those young talents! In Italy we ate both before and after our training sessions, and before our matches we stayed at a hotel and had three meals a day together. So it was no wonder I got bigger.

I got up to 98 kilograms at my heaviest, and that felt like too much. I got a little clumsy, and had to ease up on the weight training and do more running instead. But overall I changed into a tougher, faster and better player, and I learned to be absolutely ruthless against the big stars. It's not worth it to step out of the way. Capello made me understand that. You've got to stand your ground. You can't let the stars hem you in the opposite, in fact. They've got to get you going, and I moved my positions forward. I grew. I got respect, or rather, I took it.

Step by step I became who I am today, the one who comes out of a loss so seething with rage that n.o.body dares come near, and sure, that can seem negative. I frighten a lot of younger players. I yell and make noise. I have outbursts of rage.

But I've retained that att.i.tude since Juventus, and just like Capello, I stopped caring about who people were. They could be called Zambrotta or Nedvd, but if they didn't give their all at a training session, they'd hear about it. Capello didn't just knock Ajax out of me. He made me into a guy who comes to a club and expects to win the league, no matter what, and that's helped me a lot, no doubt about it. It transformed me as a football player.

But it didn't make me any calmer. We had a defender in the team, a French guy called Jonathan Zebina. He'd played for Roma with Capello and had won the Scudetto with them in 2001. Now he was with us. I don't think he was doing very well there. He had personal problems, and he played aggressively at training sessions. One day he tackled me really violently. I went up to him, right in his face: "If you wanna play dirty, say so beforehand, and I'll play dirty too!"

Then he headb.u.t.ted me bang, just like that and things happened fast after that. I didn't have time to think. It was sheer reflex. I hit out at him, and it happened right away. He hadn't even finished headb.u.t.ting me. But I must have hit him hard. He dropped down onto the gra.s.s, and I have no idea what I expected to happen. Maybe a furious Capello running up, shouting. But Capello just stood there a little way away, totally ice-cold, as if the thing had nothing to do with him. Of course everybody was talking, like, what happened? What was that about? The whole place was buzzing, and I remember Cannavaro Cannavaro and I always helped each other out.

"Ibra," he said, "what have you done?" For a moment I thought he was upset.

But then he winked, like, that d.a.m.ned Zebina deserved it. Cannavaro didn't like the guy either, not the way he'd been behaving recently, but Lilian Thuram, a Frenchman, took a completely different att.i.tude.

"Ibra," he began. "You're young and stupid. You don't do stuff like that. You're crazy." But he didn't have a chance to continue. A roar echoed over the pitch, and there was only one person who could shout like that.

"Thuuuraaam," Capello screamed. "Shut your mouth and get out of there," and of course, Thuram made himself scarce, he was like a little kid, and I left as well. I had to cool down.

Two hours later I saw a guy in the ma.s.sage room who was pressing some ice against his face. It was Zebina. I must have hit him hard. He was still in pain. He would have a black eye for a long time, and Moggi slapped a fine on both of us. But Capello never did a thing. He didn't even summon us to a meeting. He said only one thing: "That was good for the team!"

That was it. That's what he was like. He was tough. He wanted adrenaline. You could get into fights, and be as tightly wound as an animal. But there was one thing you were definitely not allowed to do: question his authority or act recklessly. Then he'd go spare. I remember when we were playing in a Champions League quarter-final against Liverpool. We lost 20, and before the match Capello had explained our tactics and determined who would be marking who in Liverpool's corners. But Lilian Thuram decided he was going to mark another guy. He went for a different Liverpool player, and at that point they scored a goal. In the changing room afterwards, Capello did his usual round, back and forth, while the rest of us sat there on the benches in a circle around him, wondering what was going to happen.

"Who told you to mark a different player?" he asked Thuram.

"n.o.body, I thought it was better that way," Thuram replied.

Capello breathed in and out a couple of times.

"Who told you to mark a different player?" he repeated.

"I thought it was better that way."

It was the same explanation again, and Capello asked the question a third time and got the same answer once again. Then the outburst came it had been lying in wait inside him, like a bomb.

"Did I tell you to mark a different player, huh? Is it me who makes the decisions here or somebody else? It's me, you hear? It's me who tells you what to do. You got that?"

Then he gave the ma.s.sage table a kick and it spun towards us with a h.e.l.l of a speed, and in situations like that n.o.body dares to look up. Everybody just sat there around him, staring at the floor Trezeguet, Cannavaro, Buffon, each and every one. n.o.body moved a muscle, and n.o.body would do something like what Thuram had done ever again. n.o.body wanted to meet those same furious eyes. There was a lot of that. It was tough. They were no mean expectations. But I continued to play well.

Capello had taken out Alessandro Del Piero to make room for me, and n.o.body had benched Del Piero in ten years. Putting Del Piero on the bench was like benching the club icon, and it outraged the fans. They booed Capello and screamed at Del Piero "Il pinturicchio, il fenomeno vero".

Alessandro Del Piero had won the league seven times with Juventus and had been a key player every year. He'd brought home the Champions League trophy with the club, and he was loved by the family that owned the team. He was the big star. No, no ordinary coach would put Del Piero on the bench. But Capello was no ordinary coach. He never cared about history or status. He just went out with his team, and I was grateful for that. But it also put pressure on me. I had to play especially well when Del Piero was on the bench, and in fact, I was hearing less and less of his name from the stands. I heard 'Ibra, Ibra', and in December the fans voted me Player of the Month, and that was big.

I was about to make a serious breakthrough in Italy, and yet, and of course I knew this, it takes so little in football. One minute you're a hero, the next you're s.h.i.+t. The special training with Galbiati had produced results, no doubt about that. By being fed b.a.l.l.s in front of the goal I'd become more effective and tougher in the box. I'd absorbed a whole range of new situations into my bloodstream, and I didn't need to think so much it just happened: bam, bam.

But don't forget: being dangerous in front of the goal is a feeling, an instinct. You either have it or you don't. You can conquer it, sure, but you can just as well lose it again when your confidence disappears, and I'd never seen myself as just a goal-scorer. I was the player who wanted to make a difference at every level. I was the one who wanted to be able to do everything, and sometime in January I lost my flow.

I failed to score a goal in five appearances. In three months I only scored one goal, I don't know why. It just happened that way, and Capello started going after me. As much as he'd built me up before, now he was putting me down. "You haven't done a d.a.m.n thing. You were worthless out there," he said, but still, he let me play.

He still had Del Piero on the bench, and I a.s.sumed he was shouting to motivate me, at least I hoped so. Surely Capello wanted the players to believe in themselves, but they couldn't be too sure and c.o.c.ky either. He hates overconfidence, so that's why he does that. He builds players up and knocks them down, and I had no idea where I stood now.

"Ibra, come in here!"

My fear at being summoned will never leave me, and I started to wonder: have I nicked a bike again? Headb.u.t.ted the wrong guy? On the way to the changing room where he stood waiting, I tried to come up with some smart excuses. But it's hard when you don't know what it's about. You can only hope for the best, and when I went in, Capello was wearing only a towel.

He'd taken a shower. His gla.s.ses had fogged up, and the changing room was in just as much of a state as usual. Luciano Moggi loved nice things. But the changing rooms were supposed to be grotty. That was part of his philosophy. "It's more important to win than to have a nice-looking place," he often said, and okay, I suppose I can go along with that. But if there were four of us showering at the same time, the water would rise up past our ankles, and everybody knew it was no use complaining. Moggi would just see it as a confirmation of his theory.

"You see, you see, it doesn't have to be pretty in order to win," so that's why the place looked the way it did, and Capello came up to me half-naked in that grotty room, and I wondered again: what is this? What have I done to you? There's something about Capello, especially when you're alone with him, that makes you feel small. He grows in stature. You shrink.

"Sit down," he said, and okay, sure, of course, I sat down. In front of me was an old TV with an even older VHS player, and Capello inserted a videoca.s.sette into it.

"You remind me of a player I coached at Milan," he said.

"I think I know who you mean."

"Do you?"

"I've heard it a lot of times."

"Excellent. Don't get stressed out by the comparison. You're not a new van Basten. You've got your own style, and I see you as a better player. But Marco van Basten moved more skilfully in the box. Here's a film where I've collected his goals. Study his movements. Absorb them. Learn from them."

Then Capello cleared off, and I was left alone in the changing room and started watching, and, well, it really was all van Basten goals, from every angle and direction. The ball just thundered in and Marco van Basten came up again and again, and I sat there for 10, 15 minutes and wondered when I could go.

Did Capello have somebody keeping watch outside the door? It wasn't out of the question. I decided to watch the whole tape. It ran for 25, 30 minutes, and then I thought, okay. This ought to be enough. I left. I snuck out, and to be honest, I have no idea whether I learned anything. But I got the message. It was the usual: Capello wanted to get me to score goals. I had to get that into my head, into my movements, into my whole system, and I knew it was serious.

We were leading the league, jockeying for the top spot with AC Milan, and in order to win I needed to keep scoring goals. That was the truth, nothing else, and I remember I was really working hard up there in the box. But I was being guarded as well. The opposing defenders were on me like wolves, and word had got round that I had a temper. The players and spectators tried to provoke me all the time with insults and abuse and s.h.i.+t. Gypsy, vagrant, stuff about my mum and my family, they'd shout all kinds of c.r.a.p, and from time to time I blew up. There were some headb.u.t.ts, or markings in that direction. But I play best when I'm angry, and things really loosened up. On the 17th of April I scored a hat trick against Lecce, and the fans went crazy and the journalists wrote, "They said he wasn't scoring enough goals. Now he's already made fifteen."

I was the third-highest goal scorer in the Italian league. People were saying I was Juventus' most important player. There was praise everywhere, it was all, 'Ibra, Ibra'. But there was something else in the air as well.

There were disasters lurking around the corner.

13.

I HAD NO IDEA the police and prosecutors were bugging Moggi's telephone, and that was probably a good thing. We and AC Milan were battling it out at the top of the league table, and for the first time in my life I was living together with someone. Helena had been pus.h.i.+ng herself too hard. She'd been working for Fly Me in Gothenburg during the daytime and in a restaurant in the evenings, while she was also studying and commuting to Malm.

She'd been working too hard and her health was suffering, and I told her, "Enough now. You're moving down here with me," and even though it was a major adjustment, I think she thought it was nice. It was like she finally had time to breathe.

I'd moved out of Inzaghi's place into an amazing apartment with high ceilings in the same building on the Piazza Castello. It looked a little like a church, and there was a cafe called Mood on the ground floor where some guys who later became our friends worked. They sometimes served us breakfast, and although we didn't have kids yet, we had Hoffa the pug, and that chubby little guy was great. We'd buy three pizzas for dinner one for me, one for Helena and one for Hoffa, and he'd eat it all up except for the crusts, which he'd just dribble on and fling around the apartment thanks a lot! That dog was our fat baby, and we had a good time. But we were definitely from different worlds.

On one of our holidays with my family we flew business cla.s.s to Dubai, and Helena and me knew all about how you're supposed to behave on flights and stuff. But my family are a bit different, and at six in the morning my little bro wanted a whisky, and Mum was sitting in the seat in front of him, and Mum is great of course, but she's not one for messing around. She doesn't like it when we drink alcohol, and you can understand that when you think about what she's been through. So she took off her shoe. That was just her way of dealing with the issue, she took her shoe and whacked Keki right over the head with it. Just bang, boff, and Keki went nuts. He hit back. There was a huge commotion in business cla.s.s at six o'clock in the morning, and I looked at Helena. She wanted to sink down into the floor.

I usually headed to the training ground around a quarter to ten in Turin, but one day I was running late, and I was rus.h.i.+ng around in the apartment and I think we could smell smoke. That's what Helena says, anyway. I dunno. What I do know is that when I opened the door to leave, there was a fire outside the front door. Somebody had gathered up some roses and set fire to them. We all had gas cookers in the building, and in the stairwell nearby there was a landing with a gas pipe along the wall. Things could have turned out really badly. There could have been an explosion. But we fetched water in buckets and put out the fire, and I just wished I'd opened the door thirty seconds sooner. I would've caught that idiot red-handed and ma.s.sacred him. Starting a fire right outside our door? That's sick! And with roses, too. Roses!

The police never found out who did it, and in those days the clubs weren't as careful about security as they are now, so we forgot about it. You can't go round worrying all the time. There are other things to think about. There was new stuff all the time, and lots had happened. Early on in Turin I'd had a visit from two clowns from Aftonbladet.

That's when I was living at the Meridien hotel. Aftonbladet wanted to patch up our relations.h.i.+p, they said. I meant money to them, and Mino thought it was time to bury the hatchet. But remember, I don't forget. Stuff gets etched in my memory. I remember and I get my own back, even if it's ten years later.

When the guys from the paper arrived, I was up in my hotel room, and I think they'd been chatting with Mino for a while when I came down, and I immediately sensed: this isn't worth it. A personal ad! A fabricated police report! 'Shame on you, Zlatan!' all across the country! I didn't even say h.e.l.lo. I got even more furious. What were they playing at? So I bossed them around, and I think I scared them out of their wits, to be honest. I even chucked a bottle of water at their heads.

"If you were from my 'hood, you wouldn't have survived," I said, and maybe that was harsh.

But I was sick of it and furious, and it's probably impossible to explain to all of you what kind of pressure I was under. It wasn't just the media. It was the fans, the spectators, the coaches, the club management, my teammates, the money. I had to perform, and if there weren't any goals, I had to hear about it from every level, and I needed to vent. I had Mino, Helena, the lads in the team, but there was also other stuff, simpler things, like my cars. They gave me a sense of freedom. I got my Ferrari Enzo around this time. The car was part of my terms in the contract negotiations. There had been me, Mino and Moggi and then Antonio Giraudo, the chief executive, and Roberto Bettega, the club's international guy, and we were sitting in a room discussing my contract when Mino said, "Zlatan wants a Ferrari Enzo!"

Everybody just looked at each other. We hadn't expected anything else. Enzo was Ferrari's latest bad boy: the most awesome car the company had ever manufactured, and only 399 of them were ever made, and we thought we might have asked for too much. But Moggi and Giraudo seemed to view it as a reasonable request. After all, Ferrari is owned by the same corporate group as Juventus. It was like, of course the guy should have an Enzo.

"No problem. We'll sort one out for you," they said, and I thought, wow, what a club!

But of course, they didn't get it. When we had signed, Antonio Giraudo said in pa.s.sing, "And that car, that's the old Ferrari, right?"

I was startled. I looked at Mino.

"No," he said, "the new one, the one they only made 399 of," and Giraudo gulped.

"I think we have a problem," he said, and we did.

There were only three cars left, and there was a long waiting list for them with loads of heavyweight names on it. What were we going to do? We phoned the Ferrari boss, Luca di Montezemolo, and explained the situation. It was difficult, he said, virtually impossible. But he finally gave in. I'd get one if I promised never to sell it.

"I'll keep it until the day I die," I replied, and honestly, I love that car.

Helena doesn't like to ride in it. It's too wild and b.u.mpy for her liking. But I go nuts in it and not just for the usual reasons. It's cool, awesome, fast: here I am, the guy who made it in life. The Enzo gives me a feeling that I've got to work harder in order to deserve it. It prevents me becoming complacent, and I can look at it and think: If I don't make the grade, it'll be taken away from me. That car became another driving force, a trigger.

Other times when I needed a boost I'd get a tattoo done. Tattoos became like a drug for me. I always wanted something new. But they were never impulsive things. They were all thought through. Even so, I was against them in the beginning. Thought they were, like, bad taste. But I got tempted anyway. Alexander stlund helped me find my way, and the first tattoo I got was my name across my waist in white ink. You can only see it when I have a tan. It was mainly a test.

Then I got more daring. I heard the expression, 'Only G.o.d can judge me'. They could write whatever they wanted in the papers. Scream anything at all from the stands. They still couldn't get at me. Only G.o.d could judge me! I liked that. You have to go your own way, so I got those words tattooed on me. I got a dragon as well, because in j.a.panese culture the dragon stands for a warrior, and I was a warrior.