I Am Zlatan Part 5

Peter Ijeh made it 10, and then in the 68th minute he made a nice through pa.s.s to Joseph Elanga, the other African recruit we'd made that year, and Elanga managed to see off a defender and shoot 20. The spectators booed hysterically, they yelled, and of course, I was useless, I was no good. I hadn't made any goals, just like those defenders had said I wouldn't, and sure, up to that point I hadn't been particularly good.

I'd done a few tricks and a backheel down by the corner flag, but otherwise it was more Ijeh and Majstorovic's match than mine, and there was no magic in the air when, two minutes later, I got the ball around the midfield. But things soon changed, because suddenly I drew a bloke, it just happened, and then another one, and I was like, wow, this is easy, I'm in control, and I carried on.

It was like a dance, and even though I wasn't conscious of it, I dribbled past every one of the defenders from that newspaper article and toed the ball into the goal with my left foot, and honestly, that feeling was not just joy. It was revenge. This is for you lot, I thought, this is for your chants and your hate, and I a.s.sumed my war with the spectators would continue after the final whistle went.

I mean, we had humiliated Djurgrden the final score was 40. But do you know what happened? I was surrounded by Djurgrden fans, and n.o.body wanted to fight or hate any more.

They wanted my autograph. They were crazy about me, and honestly, when I look back on that time, there's a lot of stuff just like that, about how I managed to turn everything round with a goal or a fancy move. You know, there was no movie I loved more than Gladiator in those days and there's a scene in it that everybody knows, right, where the emperor comes down into the arena and tells the gladiator to take his mask off, and the gladiator does it and says: "My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius ... And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next."

That was how I felt, or wanted to feel. I wanted to stand up to the whole world and show everybody who'd doubted me who I really was, and I couldn't imagine anyone who'd be able to stop me.

7.

IT WAS HIGH CHAPARRAL, as I like to say. It was a three-ring circus, and I said all kinds of stupid stuff, like how the Swedish national squad would have won the Euro 2000 champions.h.i.+p if they'd had me! It might have been c.o.c.ky and cool then, I dunno, but it didn't seem so funny when I really was called up.

That was in April as well. I'd just scored that goal against Djurgrden, and the papers were totally crazy. They had me in the headlines constantly, and I guess people who read them wouldn't exactly think I was the most humble guy in the world, and that made me a little worried. Would the big guys, like Patrik Andersson and Stefan Schwarz, think I was a c.o.c.ky little s.h.i.+t?

It was one thing to be a star at Malm FF. But come on, the national squad was something else! There were guys there who'd won the World Cup bronze, and believe it or not, I was well aware of the att.i.tude in Sweden that it's not a good idea to stick out and stuff, especially when you're the new kid on the block. G.o.d knows I'd come in for a lot of stick in the youth team, and I wanted to be liked.

I wanted to be part of the gang, but it didn't get off to a brilliant start. We headed off to a training camp in Switzerland, and all the journalists were just buzzing around me the whole time. It was almost embarra.s.sing. Come on, I wanted to say, Henke Larsson is standing over there, go over and talk to him instead, and yet I couldn't let it go. At a press conference in Geneva I was asked whether I thought I was similar to any other great player in the world.

"No," I replied. "There's only one Zlatan," and how humble was that on a scale from one to ten? I realised straight away I had to make amends. I tried to keep a low profile after that, and to be honest, I didn't need to make much of an effort. I felt shy around all the big names, and apart from Marcus Allbck, who I shared a room with, I didn't talk to many of them. I stood around on the sidelines. "He's a loner. He goes his own way!" the papers wrote, and sure, that sounded exciting. Like, Zlatan the intriguing artiste.

But in fact I was just awkward, and I didn't want to get anyone else worked up, especially not Henrik Larsson, who I know as 'Henke' he was like a G.o.d to me! He was playing for Celtic then, and it was that year 2001 he was awarded the Golden Boot as the top goal scorer in all the European leagues. Henke was awesome, and when I heard he and I would be in the starting line-up against Switzerland, it felt great.

That was another one of those surreal things, and several newspapers ran long stories about me before the match. They wanted to run a proper feature about me now ahead of my international debut, and there was some director of studies from Sorgenfri in those articles you remember, the school where they gave me a remedial teacher, and she said I was the most unruly pupil she'd had in thirty-three years of teaching or something like that: I was the hooligan at Sorgenfri School. A one-man show. It was a bunch of blah blah blah, but there was other stuff as well, loads of expectations that I would be a ma.s.sive success in the national side. People really wanted to see me as both a hooligan and a star, and I was feeling the pressure.

But there was no great success. I was subst.i.tuted out at half-time, and I wasn't called up for the big World Cup qualifiers that year against Slovakia and Moldova. Lagerbck and Sderberg relied on Larsson and Allbck in front instead, and that should have given me a little more anonymity. I was hardly even a regular member of the squad.

But nothing worked out the way it should for me. I remember the first time I played with the national side in Stockholm. We were up against Azerbaijan at Rsunda Stadium, and I was still something like a fish out of water. Stockholm was a different world for me. It was like New York. I was lost and awkward, and there were loads of hot chicks in the city. I was just gawping at everything.

I was starting as a reserve, and there was a capacity or near-capacity crowd at Rsunda. There were 33,000 people there, and all the big guys seemed confident and used to the whole thing, and I sank down onto the bench and felt like a little boy.

But fifteen minutes into the match, something happened. The crowd started shouting. They were bellowing my name, and I can't describe it, I got so pumped up. I got gooseb.u.mps. All the big names were out there on the pitch. There was Henke Larsson, there was Olof Mellberg, there was Stefan Schwarz and Patrik Andersson. But they weren't shouting their names. They were shouting my name, and I wasn't even playing. It was almost too much, and I didn't get it. What had I done, exactly?

A few matches in the Allsvenskan League, that's all! And yet I was more popular than guys who'd played in big champions.h.i.+p games and won the World Cup bronze. It was completely nuts, and everybody in the team was looking at me. But whether they were happy or gutted, I haven't a clue. All I know is that they didn't get it either. This was something completely new. This hadn't happened before, and after a while the crowd went back to yelling the usual chant, 'Come on Sweden, come on!' and I bent over to do up my laces, just for something to do or because I was nervous. It was like an electric shock.

The spectators thought I was warming up, and they boomed, 'Zlatan, Zlatan' again, completely mental now, and of course I took my hands away from my boots. I mean, I was sitting on the bench and to take over the show like that would have completely overstepped the mark, so I tried to make myself invisible.

But secretly I was loving it. I felt a ma.s.sive rush. The adrenaline was pumping, and when Lars Lagerbck really did tell me to warm up, I rushed onto the pitch, absolutely delighted, no lie. I was soaring around, there was 'Zlatan, Zlatan' coming from the stands, and we were ahead 20. I lobbed the ball with my heel, a beautiful little move from the council estate, and I got the ball back and fired it at the goal, and all of Rsunda and the evening exploded, and even Stockholm felt like my town.

The only thing was, it was like I brought Rosengrd along with me. One time that year I was in Stockholm with the national squad. We went out to Undici, Tomas Brolin's nightclub, and we were just sitting there. Then one of my mates from the estate started talking: "Zlatan, Zlatan, can I have your hotel key?"

"What are you on about?"

"Just give it to me!"

"Okay, okay."

He got it, and I thought nothing more of it. But when I got in that night, my mate was there and he had shut the wardrobe and was acting all secretive and jumpy.

"What have you got in there?" I asked.

"Nothing special. And don't touch it," he replied.

"What?"

"We can make some cash from them, Zlatan!"

You know what it was? It was completely mental. It was a whole load of Canada Goose down coats he'd nicked from Undici. So I didn't always keep the most respectable company, to be honest, and things at Malm FF started to have their ups and downs. It was a funny thing to stay with a club when I'd already been sold to another one, and I wasn't the most well-balanced bloke. Sometimes I would go off on one.

I'd explode. Of course, I'd always done that, but now there was this whole situation surrounding me, and that 'bad boy' stuff was starting to bite. When we were playing away against Hcken, I'd got a warning in the previous match for shouting at the referee, and there was a certain amount of uneasiness in the air. Was that madman Zlatan going to do something again?

Hcken were coached by Torbjrn Nilsson, the former star player, and they had Kim Kllstrm, who I knew from the national Under-21 squad. There was some nasty play early on, and a little way into the match I took down Kim Kllstrm from behind. I elbowed another guy and was sent off, and then the real outburst came. On the way to the locker room I kicked over a loudspeaker and a microphone, and, well, the sound technician who'd set up that stuff didn't exactly appreciate it. He called me an idiot, and I turned round and went up to him, like, who the h.e.l.l are you calling an idiot?

But our equipment manager split us up, and there was a big to-do and newspaper headlines and about seven million pieces of advice from all quarters, like I had to change my behaviour and all that. Otherwise things could go badly at Ajax ... Bulls.h.i.+t. Bulls.h.i.+t! The Expressen tabloid even interviewed a psychologist who said I ought to seek help, and of course my immediate reaction was, who the f.u.c.k is he? What does he know?

I didn't need any psychologist. I just needed peace and quiet. But it's true, it was no fun to be stuck on the bench and see IFK Gteborg humiliate us 60. Our flow from the season opener had vanished and our trainer, Micke Andersson, came under a fair amount of criticism as well. I really didn't have anything against him, and we didn't have much contact either. If I had a problem, I'd go to Ha.s.se Borg. But there was one thing that was starting to annoy me. I thought Micke had too much respect for the older players in the team. He was frightened, pure and simple, and he can't have been too happy with me since I'd been sent off again against rebro. There were some tensions, and we played a training match. It was summer. Micke Andersson acted as the referee, and there was some confrontation with Jonnie Fedel, the goalie, who was one of the eldest in the team, and of course Micke called it in Jonnie's favour. I saw red and went up to Micke.

"You're scared of the older guys. You're even f.u.c.king afraid of ghosts," I bellowed. There were a load of b.a.l.l.s lying on the pitch. I started kicking them, boom, boom, boom.

They went flying like missiles and landed on the cars outside, setting off the car alarms, and whistles and horns started and everything just came to a standstill, and I stood there with a fierce council estate att.i.tude, while my teammates were looking daggers at me. Micke Andersson tried to calm me down, and I screamed at him, "What are you, my mother?"

I was furious and headed off to the locker room, where I emptied my locker and ripped down my name, and declared that I would never come back. I'd had enough! Goodbye Malm FF, so long you idiots, and I drove off in my Toyota Celica and didn't turn up to any more training sessions, just played on my PlayStation and hung out with my mates instead. It was sort of like I was bunking off school, and of course Ha.s.se Borg rang me up, sounding absolutely hysterical.

"Where are you? Where are you? You've got to come back!"

And of course, I was reasonable. Four days later I turned up and was polite and charming again, and to be honest, I didn't think my outburst was really such a big thing. That stuff happens in football, it's part of it, there's a lot of adrenaline in the sport. Besides, I didn't have long left with the team, I was on my way to the Netherlands, and I didn't actually believe there would be any penalty or ridiculous consequences. I was thinking more about how they would see me off. Only a few months before, Malm FF had been in crisis. They had a ten million kronor hole in their finances and really couldn't afford to purchase any top players.

Now they were the richest club in Sweden, I'd given them a ma.s.sive amount of capital, and even Bengt Madsen, the chairman of Malm FF, had said in the papers: "There's only a player like Zlatan born every fifty years!" So no, it wasn't so strange to think that they were planning a big send-off, or at least a 'thanks for the 85 million', especially not when they'd said farewell to Niclas Kindvall in front of 30,000 spectators in the match against Helsingborg the previous week. But sure, I noticed that they were all a little scared of me. I was the only one who could scupper the deal with Ajax by doing something even crazier, and my last match in the Allsvenskan was approaching.

It was on the 26th of June away to Halmstad, and I was gearing up for a good farewell performance. It was no big thing for me, don't get me wrong. I was finished with Malm. In my mind I was already in Amsterdam. But even so, a period of my life was coming to an end, and I remember looking at the list of names on the wall who would be going along to Halmstad. Then I looked again.

My name wasn't there. I wouldn't even be sitting on the bench. I was going to stay at home, and of course, I realised. That was my punishment. That was Micke's way of showing who was in charge, and okay, I accepted it, what else could I do? I didn't even get angry when he told the press that I was "under pressure and out of balance," and "needed some rest", basically like he was dropping me because he was such a kind-hearted guy, and in fact, I was nave enough to believe that the club's management were still planning something, maybe some event with the supporters.

Soon afterwards I was summoned to Ha.s.se Borg's office, and as you know, I don't like that sort of thing. I think I'm going to get a talking-to or something. But there was so much going on then that I just went there without expecting anything, and there in the office stood Ha.s.se and Bengt Madsen, looking generally uptight and stuck-up, and I wondered, what's this all about, is this a funeral?

"Zlatan, our time together is drawing to a close."

"You don't mean ..."

"We'd like to say ..."

"So you're going to see me off in here?" I said, looking around.

We were in Ha.s.se's stupid, boring office, just the three of us in there.

"So you're not going to do it in front of the fans?"

"Well," said Bengt Madsen, "people say it's bad luck to do it before a match."

I just looked at him. It's bad luck?

"You said goodbye to Niclas Kindvall in front of 30,000 people, and that still went all right."

"Yes, but ..."

"Whaddaya mean, but?"

"We'd like to give you this gift."

"What the h.e.l.l is this?"

It was a ball, an ornament made out of crystal.

"This is a memento."

"So this is how you're thanking me for the 85 million kronor?"

What were they thinking? That I would take it along to Amsterdam and, like, weep when I looked at it?

"We'd like to express our grat.i.tude."

"I don't want it. You can keep it."

"You can't just ..."

Yes, I could. I put the crystal thing on the table. Then I got out of there. That was my farewell from the club no more, no less and sure, I wasn't happy about it. Nevertheless, I shook it off. I mean, I was on my way out of there, and really, what was Malm FF anyway? My real life was about to start now, and the more I thought about it, the bigger it got.

I wouldn't just go to Ajax. I was the club's most expensive player, and while Ajax might not be Real Madrid or Manchester United, it was definitely a big club. Only five years earlier, Ajax had played in the Champions League final. Six years ago they'd won the whole tournament, and Ajax had had blokes like Cruyff, Rijkaard, Kluivert, Bergkamp and van Basten especially van Basten, he'd been absolutely brilliant, and I was going to be wearing his number. It was mental, really. I was going to score goals and make a difference, and sure, that was awesome, but it was also beginning to dawn on me that it meant incredible pressure.

n.o.body spends 85 million kronor without expecting something in return, and it had been three years since Ajax had won their league. For a club like Ajax, this was a minor scandal. Ajax are the finest team in the Netherlands, and their supporters expect the team to win big. You had to deliver the goods, not go round all c.o.c.ky and do things your own way from the start, definitely not start off by going, "I'm Zlatan, who the h.e.l.l are you?" I would fit in and learn the culture. The only thing is, stuff continued to happen around me.

On the way home from Gteborg, in a little place called Bottnaryd near Jnkping, I got stopped by the police. I'd been going 110 kilometres an hour in a 70 zone, not exactly flooring it when you consider what I would get up to later on. But I lost my licence for a while, and the press didn't just print ma.s.sive headlines. They made sure they dredged up the business from Industrigatan as well.

They compiled entire lists of all my scandals and all the times I'd been sent off, and of course it all made its way to the Netherlands. Even though the club's management was already aware of most of it, now the journalists in Amsterdam got in on it as well. No matter how much I wanted to be a good lad, I was labelled a bad boy even before I started. There was me and one other new guy, an Egyptian called Mido who'd been a success with KAA Ghent in Belgium. We both got reputations as being out of control, and to cap it all I was hearing more and more about the coach I'd met in Spain, Co Adriaanse.

He was supposed to be like a b.l.o.o.d.y Gestapo officer who knew everything about his players, and there were some crazy stories about the punishments he dished out, including one about a goalkeeper who happened to answer his mobile during a tactics session. He had to spend a whole day on the club's switchboard, even though he couldn't speak a word of Dutch. It was like, "h.e.l.lo, h.e.l.lo, don't understand" all day long, and then there was one about three guys in the youth squad who'd been out partying. They had to lie on the pitch while the others walked on top of them in their studded boots. There were quite a few of those stories, not that they worried me.

There's always a load of talk about the coaches, and in fact I've always liked blokes with discipline. I get on well with blokes who keep their distance from their players and don't get too close. That's how I'd grown up. n.o.body went like, "Poor little Zlatan, of course you'll get to play." I didn't have a dad who came to training sessions and sucked up to everyone and insisted that people should be nice to me, no way. I've had to look out for myself, and I'd much rather get a b.o.l.l.o.c.king and be on bad terms with a coach and get to play because I'm good, rather than get on with him and be allowed to play because he likes me.

I don't want to be mollycoddled. That just messes me up. I want to play football, nothing else. But sure, I was still nervous as I packed my bags and headed off. Ajax and Amsterdam were something completely new. I didn't know a thing about the city, and I remember the flight and landing and the woman from the club who came to meet me.

Her name was Priscilla Janssen. She was a gofer at Ajax, and I really made an effort to be nice, and I greeted the guy she had with her. He was around my age and seemed shy, but he spoke really good English.

He said he was from Brazil. He'd played for Cruzerio, a famous team I knew that because Ronaldo had played there. Just like me, he was new at Ajax, and he had a long name I didn't really catch. But apparently I could call him Maxwell, and we exchanged phone numbers and then Priscilla drove me in her Saab convertible out to the little terraced house the club had arranged for me in Diemen, a small town far away from the city. There I sat with a posh brand-name bed and a 60-inch TV and nothing else, playing on my PlayStation and wondering what was going to happen.

8.

IT WAS NO BIG DEAL to be on my own. If there was one thing I'd learnt growing up, it was to look after myself, and I was still feeling like the coolest bloke in Europe.

I'd turned pro and been sold for crazy amounts of money. But my terraced house was bare inside. It felt very remote, and I didn't even have any furniture or anything else that made it feel like a home, and to be honest, the fridge started to get bare pretty soon, too. Not that I was gripped by panic and relived my childhood or anything. It was okay. I'd had an empty fridge in my flat in Lorensborg as well. I could cope with anything. But then again, in Malm I'd never had to go hungry not least of all because I would stuff myself at Kulan, the restaurant at Malm FF, and I'd often sneak out a little something extra hidden in my tracksuit, a yoghurt or something to keep me going in the evenings, but also because I'd had Mum over in Cronmans Vg and my mates.

In Malm I usually didn't need to cook or worry about empty fridges. But now in Diemen I was back at square one. It was ridiculous. I was supposed to be a professional guy. But I didn't even have a packet of cornflakes at home, and I hardly had any cash, and I sat there in my terraced house on my fancy bed and rang round to pretty much everyone I knew: my mates, Dad, Mum, my sister and my little brother. I even rang Mia, even though we'd broken up. Like, can you come here? I was lonely, restless and hungry, and finally I got hold of Ha.s.se Borg.

I thought he could cut a deal with Ajax, like, he'd lend me a little money and make sure Ajax reimbursed him later. I knew Mido had done something similar with his previous club. But it didn't work. "I can't do that," Ha.s.se Borg said. "You'll have to look after yourself." That made me go spare.

He'd sold me. Couldn't he help me in a situation like this?

"Why not?"

"I can't do that."

"And where's my ten per cent?"

I got no answer and got angry all right, I admit I had only myself to blame. I hadn't realised it takes a month before you get your wages, and then I'd had a problem with my car. It was my Merc convertible. It had Swedish number plates. I couldn't drive it in the Netherlands. I'd only just got it, and the whole idea had been to cruise round Amsterdam in it, but now I'd had to sell it and order another Mercedes an SL 55 and that hadn't exactly helped my finances.

So there I sat in Diemen, skint and hungry, and got an earful from my dad about how I was an idiot who'd bought a car like that when I didn't have any money, and of course that was true. But it didn't help. I still didn't have any cornflakes at home, and I still hated empty fridges.

That's when I happened to think of the Brazilian guy from the airport. There were a few of us new players that season. There was me, there was Mido, and then there was him, Maxwell. I'd hung out a bit with both of them, not only because we were all new. I felt most comfortable among the black guys and the South Americans. It was more fun, I thought: more relaxed and not so much jealousy. The Dutch guys wanted nothing more than to get out of there and end up in Italy or England, so they were constantly eyeing each other up like, who's got the best prospects whereas the Africans and the Brazilians were mostly glad to be there. It was like, wow, we get to play for Ajax? I felt more at home with them, and I liked their sense of humour and their att.i.tude. Maxwell was certainly nothing like the other Brazilians I'd meet later. He was no party animal, not a guy who needed to go nuts on a regular basis not at all, he was really sensitive, close to his family and was constantly phoning home. But he was a nice guy through and through, and if I have anything bad to say about him, it's that he's too nice.

"Maxwell, I'm in a crisis here," I said over the phone. "I haven't even got any cornflakes at home. Can I come and stay at your place?"

"Sure," he said. "Come right over."

Maxwell lived in Ouderkerk, a small town with a population of only seven or eight thousand, and I moved in with him and slept on a mattress on the floor for three weeks until I got my first pay packet, and it wasn't a bad time. We cooked together and chatted about our training sessions, the other players and our old lives in Brazil and Sweden. Maxwell spoke good English. He'd tell me about his family and his two brothers who he was very close to I remember that in particular, because one of those brothers died in a car crash not long after. That was terribly sad. I really liked Maxwell.

I got myself sorted out a bit while I was at his place, and things started to loosen up a little. I got back that feeling that this was something really brilliant, and I got off to a good start in the pre-season. I landed goals against the amateur teams we played, and I did a load of tricks, just like I thought I would. Ajax was known for playing fun, technical football, and the newspapers wrote stuff like, well well well, looks like he's worth those eighty-five million kronor, and, sure, I noticed that Co Adriaanse, the manager, was tough on me. But I thought that was just his style. I'd heard so much about him.

After every match he'd give us marks out of ten, and one time when I'd scored a bunch of goals he said, "You made five goals, but you made two bad pa.s.ses as well. That's a five." I was like, okay, I get it, the standards here are tough. But I kept at it, and in fact, I didn't think anything could stop me now. For one thing, I remember meeting a guy who had no idea who I was.

"So, are you any good?" he asked.