"Then you can only be one guy."
"Who"s that?" I ventured.
"The one we were talking about."
"Maybe," I said, "maybe not," and we carried on playing, and when we weren"t playing we continued to talk, and I interrogated that guy a bit and found out he was a stockbroker.
It was easy to talk to him, we liked the same stuff. He didn"t ask any more about who I was. We talked about other stuff, and sure, I noticed he liked football and fast cars. But he was no tough guy, not at all, more of a sensitive, thoughtful guy, and one day we got talking online about watches, and watches are another thing I"m interested in. D wanted to get this very particular, expensive watch, and somebody else online said, "There"s a huge waiting list for it," and maybe there is, but not for me. Things are good if you"re a footballer in Italy. You can jump all sorts of queues and get a discount on anything, so I interrupted again and said: "I can get hold of one for you for such-and-such amount."
"Are you joking?"
"No way!"
"And how is that supposed to happen?"
"I"ll just phone a bloke," I said, thinking, what have I got to lose?
If D didn"t want the watch or if he was just talking s.h.i.t, I could keep it for myself. It was no big deal, and the guy seemed trustworthy, and sure, he talked about Ferraris and expensive stuff. But he didn"t seem like a show-off. He just seemed to like those things, so I said, "Listen, I"m coming to Stockholm soon and I"ll be staying at the Scandic Hotel."
"Okay," he said.
"And if you"re sitting in the lobby at four o"clock, you"ll get your watch!"
"Are you serious?"
"I"m a serious guy!"
Afterwards I phoned my contact and got hold of that unique watch, a nice little thing, and then texted my bank details to D via my Xbox account. Not long after that I flew to Stockholm. We were playing a qualifying match for the European Championship, and as usual we were staying at the Scandic Park Hotel. Lagerbck and I had reconciled, and I arrived at the hotel and said h.e.l.lo to the lads in the team. I had the watch in a box in my bag, and that afternoon I went down to the lobby with it, like we"d agreed. I felt totally relaxed. But I had Janne Hammarbck, the security guard, with me just to be on the safe side.
I had no idea what D looked like or who he was. No matter how nice he sounded, he could"ve been anyone, a nutter with ten aggressive mates not that that"s what I believed. But you never know, and so I looked round down there, left and right, and the only person I noticed was a slight, dark-haired guy sitting in a chair, looking shy.
"Are you here to collect a watch?" I asked.
"Er, yeah, I ..."
He got up, and I saw it straight away. He was confused. I think he"d already realised who I was, but still, only right then did it finally hit home: It"s you! I"d seen it before, of course. People feel awkward around me, and in those kinds of situations I become more open and friendly, so I asked a load of questions about the guy"s job and where he usually went out, that sort of thing. Eventually he loosened up too, and then we started talking Xbox. What can I say? It was nice. It was something new.
My mates from Rosengrd are lads from the street: they"ve got buckets of att.i.tude and adrenaline, and there"s nothing wrong with that, not at all, that"s what I grew up with. But still, this guy, he was intelligent and cautious, he had a different way of thinking, he wasn"t macho at all, didn"t need to play it c.o.c.ky, and normally I don"t let people get too close. I"ve learnt the hard way that people often want to use me for their own ends like, I know Zlatan, I"m so cool.
But I felt straight away that things just clicked with me and this guy, and I said to him, "I"ll leave the watch at the reception desk, and as soon as I"ve got the money in my account you can pick it up."
Half an hour later he"d transferred the cash, and we stayed in contact. We texted, we talked on the phone, and he came down to visit us in Milan. He was a well-brought-up Swedish guy who says things like, "nice to meet you". He didn"t fit in with my Rosengrd guys. But he did get on with Helena. He was more her type finally, a guy who doesn"t chuck firecrackers into kebab stalls! He became a new figure in my life, and Helena likes to call him my internet date.
Remember the Mile at Malm FF, the running route I used to bunk off by taking the bus or nicking a bike? That wasn"t all that many years ago, and I"d think about all that stuff sometimes, not only because it was when I"d just been taken up into the first team. So many things were different now. Take those fancy houses in Limhamnsvgen. They"d seemed so unattainable, especially that one pink house that was as big as a castle. In those days I couldn"t even imagine what kind of people lived like that. They must be amazingly well off.
I still sort of thought like that. I didn"t feel awkward around that sort of people any more, quite the opposite, but I remembered the pain the pain of standing outside that world, knowing that you don"t live on the same terms. You don"t forget those sorts of feelings, and I still dreamt of revenge of showing them all that I was no longer the kid with Fido Dido in Rosengrd. That I was someone who could own the wickedest house, and Helena and I really needed a home in Malm.
We couldn"t stay with Mum in Svgertorp any longer. We had another baby on the way. I wanted a fence of my own to wreck, so Helena and I would drive around here and there and rate the houses. It was this fun thing we did. We made Top 10 lists, and which house do you think came in at Number 1? The pink one in Limhamnsvgen of course, and it wasn"t just because of my old dreams. That house was really brilliant. It was the nicest one in Malm, but of course, there was one problem.
There were some people living there and they didn"t want to sell, and what can you do? That was the question. We decided not to give up. Maybe give them an offer they couldn"t refuse. Not that I was going to send some Rosengrd lads round their way, exactly. This had to be handled with style, but even so, we decided to go on the offensive, and one day Helena was at IKEA.
She b.u.mped into a friend there, and they got talking about the pink house.
"Oh, some good friends of mine live in that pile," her friend said.
"Set up a meeting. We want to speak to them," Helena told her.
"Are you joking?"
"Not at all," and so she did.
The friend rang and explained the situation, and was told that the couple really didn"t want to sell, no way. They liked living there and the neighbours were so nice and lovely and the gra.s.s was green, and the view towards Ribersborg Beach and the resund Strait was terrific, blah blah blah. But the friend had been given her instructions and told them that we weren"t going to take that as an answer from her. If they wanted to stay there, no matter what we were willing to pay, they"d have to tell us to our faces, and wouldn"t it be fun to meet Zlatan and Helena over a cup of coffee? Not everyone got to do that.
They clearly thought that would be fun, so Helena and I went over, and I knew straight away that I had the upper hand. I am who I am, we"ll sort it, but even so, I was in two minds. As I walked through those gates, I felt big and small at the same time, both the kid who gawked at those houses during the Mile and the guy who was a huge star. At first I just went round with Helena and checked it out, "Very nice, very nice, what a lovely place you"ve got here." I behaved and was polite and all that. But over coffee I couldn"t restrain myself any longer.
"We"re here because you"re living in our house," I said, and the man started laughing, like, how funny, and sure, I had a gleam in my eye. It was a sort of joke, a line from a movie. But I continued: "You can take it as a joke if you want. But I"m serious. I intend to buy this house, I"ll make sure you"re happy, but we"re going to have it," and then he went on, saying it wasn"t for sale, not under any conditions.
He was adamant, or rather, he pretended to be, but now I could hear it. It was like on the transfer market. It was a game. The house had a price for him. I could see it in his eyes and I could sense it in the atmosphere, and I explained my thinking: I don"t want to do things I don"t know how to do. I"m a footballer. I"m not a negotiator. I"ll send a guy to do a deal.
Not Mino, if that"s what you"re thinking. There"s got to be a limit somewhere. I sent a lawyer, and don"t think I"m a fool who just p.i.s.ses his money away. I"m a tactician. I"m careful. There was no, "Get it at any price," none of that. It was, "Make sure you get it for as little as possible." Afterwards, we sat at home waiting. It was a bit of a drama. But then the call came. "They"ll sell for thirty mil," and there was nothing to discuss. We bought it for thirty million kronor, and honestly, for that kind of money I bet that couple went skipping out of the house.
I"d done it. Sure, it wasn"t free. We"d paid to be able to kick them out. But this was just the beginning. We went mad with renovating the place. We didn"t cut any corners. We couldn"t make the garden wall higher. The council said no. What could we do? We wanted a higher wall so no fans or stalkers could stand out there and look in on us. So we dug ourselves deeper instead. We lowered the level of the plot. There were loads of things like that. We really went to town, and that wasn"t always popular.
The houses in that neighbourhood are usually pa.s.sed down as inheritances. Daddy"s money pays, and n.o.body from my sort of background had moved in before. It"s all posh people, and there"s n.o.body who speaks like me, who says stuff like "the wickedest house" and that. Here they use words like "distinguished" and "extraordinary".
But I wanted to show that a bloke like me could get in here with his own money. That was important to me right from the start, and I hadn"t expected everybody to give me a round of applause. But I was still surprised. What, they"re going to do this and that? They carried on like that constantly. They moaned. But we didn"t care, and made that house just the way we wanted it.
It was Helena who worked at it. She was incredibly thorough and got help from various museums and whatever. I wasn"t as involved as she was. I don"t have the same instinct for those things, but there was one thing I contributed. On the red feature wall in the foyer I hung a big picture of two dirty feet. When my mates turned up, they were all like, awesome, wicked, cool place you"ve got here.
"But what are these disgusting feet doing here? How can you have this s.h.i.t on your wall?"
"You idiots," I said. "Those feet have paid for all of this."
18.
I REMEMBER WHEN I SAW HIM at the training ground. It was pretty nice, I have to say a sense that something was still the same, even after all the changes from one club to another. But I couldn"t come up with anything better than yelling: "Hey, you following me or something?"
"Of course. Somebody"s got to make sure you"ve got cornflakes in the fridge."
"But I refuse to kip on a mattress on your floor this time."
"If you"re nice, you won"t have to."
It felt good to have Maxwell there at Inter. He"d arrived a few months before me, but then he injured his knee and had to go through physio, so it was a while before I saw him. I don"t think I know of a more elegant player. He"s the aggressive Brazilian defender who dares to play beautifully far back in defence, and I often enjoy just watching him play. Sometimes, though, I"m surprised he got to be so good. Guys who are that nice don"t usually make it in football. You"ve got to be tough and hard, and I felt like that"s how I"d become after my years at Juventus, and now I"d been in the thick of things more than ever and contributed to the league t.i.tle my first year at Inter. Not just in matches, but generally as a result of my att.i.tude.
All that rubbish with the Brazilians in one corner and the Argentinians in the other was over, and every month my status in the club increased, and of course Moratti noticed that. He was good to me and made sure my family were doing well, and I continued to shine on the pitch. We were at the top of the league table again. The whole miserable "90s, when Inter never really succeeded, were gone. Things had turned out the way I"d hoped. The whole team got a boost when I came, and of course Mino and I realised we had were in a good bargaining position.
It was time to renegotiate my contract, and n.o.body does that better than Mino. He used all his tricks on Moratti. I"ve no idea how their discussions went. I was never there for the negotiations, but there was talk that Real Madrid wanted me then, and he drove at that one hard and put pressure on Moratti. But really, it wasn"t all that necessary. The situation was different now. When I signed with Inter, I was so desperate to leave Juventus that Moratti could easily exploit that. In this business, you always aim for your opponent"s weak points. That"s part of the game. You put a knife to their throat. During the negotiations, he reduced my pay four times. But we were going to get even with him. Mino and I were agreed on that, and Moratti was no longer as strong now. Given how important I"d become to the team, he couldn"t afford to lose me, and it didn"t take long for him to say: "Give the guy what he wants."
I got a brilliant deal. Later, when the details filtered out, there was even talk of me being the world"s highest paid footballer. But at the time, n.o.body knew about it yet. One of Moratti"s stipulations was that the negotiations had to remain secret for six or seven months, but we knew that sooner or later it was going to explode, and really, the big thing wasn"t the pay deal in itself, but the hype it generated.
If you"re seen as the highest paid in the world, people look at you differently. Another spotlight gets switched on. The public, other players, the supporters and sponsors start to view you in a new light, and what it is they say? Whoever has, will be given more. As you approach the top, you carry on upwards. It"s pure psychology. Everybody"s interested in the one who"s Number 1. That"s how the market works, and even though I don"t think anybody"s worth that kind of money, I knew my value on the market, and it was in my blood now: never get screwed over again like in the Ajax deal. But it"s true, with high salaries there comes a load of other stuff, like more pressure. You"ve got to deliver and continue to shine.
But I liked it, too. I wanted the pressure on me. It got me going, and midway through the season I"d scored 10 goals in the team, and there was hysteria everywhere. It was all, "Ibra, Ibra", and in February it looked like we"d secured the league t.i.tle again. People thought nothing could stop us. But then I started having trouble with my knee. I tried to ignore it, thought oh, never mind, it"s nothing. But it kept coming back and it got worse every time. We"d finished top of our group in the Champions League, and things were looking promising there as well.
But in the first knockout stage match we were up against Liverpool, and in that first match at Anfield I could feel the injury was restricting me. Our playing was a disaster, and we lost 20. I was in real pain afterwards, and I couldn"t put it off any longer. I went for an examination, and pretty soon the diagnosis came back. I had an inflamed knee tendon.
The knee tendon extends from the quadriceps, the thigh muscle. I sat out the league match against Sampdoria. That was no big deal, I thought, either for me or the team. Sampdoria weren"t Liverpool. The guys ought to be able to manage without me. We"d had an incredible run of victories in the league. We"d even broken the record for the number of consecutive matches won in Serie A. But it didn"t help.
Play was deadlocked against Sampdoria. That was one of the first signs that something had started to go wrong, and it looked like we were going to lose. Hernn Crespo rescued it for us with a header in the final minutes. We ended it 11 by the skin of our teeth, and things continued like that. After my injury, whether that was the cause of it or not, we lost our flow. We drew 11 against Roma as well and lost to Napoli, and I listened to Mancini and the others. They sounded worried. I had to play again. We couldn"t lose our advantage in the league, and so I was sent for treatment. I needed to get fit quickly, and soon thereafter, on the 18th of March 2008, I was put in against Reggina.
Reggina were second-bottom in the league, and it"s really debatable whether it was necessary to have me on the pitch. I was in pain. I was playing on painkilling injections, and Reggina shouldn"t have been a problem. But the nerves had spread throughout the team. Their confidence had vanished while I was away, and Roma and AC Milan had been creeping up on us week by week in the league table, so I guess Mancini didn"t want to risk it. We"d gone from being a winning machine to feeling unsure when we faced the bottom teams in the league, and I couldn"t say no, especially not when the doctor said it was okay, though under pressure. In a way, that knee didn"t belong to me.
The management owned my flesh and bones, in a sense. A footballer at my level is a bit like an orange. The club squeezes it until there"s no juice left, and then it"s time to sell the guy on. That might sound harsh, but that"s how it is. It"s part of the game. We"re owned by the club, and we"re not there to improve our health; we"re there to win, and sometimes even the doctors don"t know where they stand. Should they view the players as patients or as products in the team? After all, they"re not working in a general hospital, they"re part of the team. And then you"ve got yourself. You can speak up. You can even scream, this isn"t working. I"m in too much pain. n.o.body knows your body better than you yourself.
But the pressure is intense, and usually you want to play and not give a d.a.m.n about the consequences. It"s a risk you run. I might be able to be useful today, but ruin things both for myself and the club in the longer term. Those questions come up all the time. What should you do? Who should you listen to? The doctors, who are still more cautious, or the manager who wants to put you in and is often just thinking about the match at hand, like, who cares about tomorrow, make sure we win today?
I played against Reggina, and Mancini was proved right at least in the short term. I scored my 15th goal in that match and led us to victory, and sure, that was a relief. But it also meant that the club wanted me to play the next match and then the next, and I went along with it. What else could I do? I got more injections and more painkillers, and all the time I heard it, sensed it: We"ve got to have Ibra in there. We can"t afford to let him rest, and I don"t really blame any of them. Like I said, I wasn"t a patient. I was the one who"d been leading the team ever since I started at the club, and it was decided that I would also play in our second leg against Liverpool in the Champions League, which was really important, both to me and the team.
The Champions League had become something of a fixation. I wanted to win that d.a.m.ned tournament. But because we"d lost the first leg, we were fired up for a big win in order to go through, and of course we tried everything. We worked hard. But our game didn"t really gel now either, and I wasn"t on top form at all. I missed a load of chances, and in the 50th minute Burdisso got sent off.
It was hopeless. We had to struggle even harder. It wasn"t helping, and I was feeling it more and more: this isn"t working. I"m in too much pain. I"m destroying myself, and finally I limped off with pains shooting up my knee, and I will never forget that.
The away fans booed and jeered me, and you know, when you"re injured you"re constantly asking yourself, should I play or go off, and how much am I prepared to sacrifice for this match? Not because you know there"s no way of knowing. It"s like roulette. You have to place your bet and hope you don"t lose everything: an entire season, anything. I"d stayed on the pitch a long time because that"s what the manager wanted and because I thought I could do something for the team. But the only thing that happened was that my injury got worse and we lost, 10. I"d put my health on the line and hadn"t got a d.a.m.n thing in return, and the English fans were screaming at me. I"ve never really got on with the English spectators or the press, and now I was being called a "whingeing primadonna" and "Europe"s most overrated player". Normally that kind of stuff just gets me going. It"s like when those parents signed pet.i.tions to get rid of me I just fight harder to show those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. But now I didn"t have a body to fight back with. I was in pain and the mood in the team was miserable. Everything had changed. All the harmony and optimism was gone. Something is wrong at Inter, the journalists wrote, and Roberto Mancini announced that he was leaving the club. He was getting out, he said. Later he retracted it. Suddenly he wasn"t leaving at all, and people started to mistrust him. What did he want? As a manager you can"t flip-flop like that: I"m not staying. I"m staying. It"s unprofessional, and we kept losing points.
We"d had a big lead at the top of the league table, but it was shrinking all the time. We only managed a 11 draw against Genoa and lost at home to Juventus. I was there for that one as well. I was such an idiot, I couldn"t say no. But afterwards I was in so much pain I could hardly walk, and I remember coming into the changing room and wanting to tear every d.a.m.n thing off the walls, and I screamed at Mancini and was absolutely nuts. Enough was enough. I needed rest and some physio. Never mind the drama in the league I couldn"t help them. I had no choice. I was forced to step down. But believe me, it wasn"t easy. It was s.h.i.t.
You"re sitting there. The others go out and train. You trot off to the gym, and from the window you can see your teammates on the pitch. It"s like watching a film you should be in, but you"re not allowed. That hurts. That feeling is worse than the actual injury, and I decided to escape the whole circus. I headed to Sweden. It was spring, and beautiful. But I didn"t enjoy it, not in the slightest.
I had only one thought in my head, and that was to get fit again, and I had myself examined by the doctor for the Swedish national side, and I remember he was shocked. How had they let me play for so long on painkillers? There were only two months until the European Championships, hosted by Switzerland and Austria, and now that tournament appeared to be hanging in the balance.
I"d worked myself too hard, it was s.h.i.t, and I had to do everything I could to get fit again. I phoned Rickard Dahan. He was a physiotherapist at Malm FF, and we"d known each other since my time at the club. We started working hard together, and somebody told me about a doctor.
He was up north in Ume, so I flew up there and got some injections that killed some cells in my knee tendon, and I improved. But I was far from fit, and I still couldn"t play. It was hopeless, and I was furious and irritable and no fun to be around, and the lack of flow continued in the league. The lads could secure the Scudetto against Siena, just one win and everything would be over. Patrick Vieira made it 10, and the fans in the stands started dancing and singing. It looked like it would hold, in spite of everything, and Balotelli, a young talent who"d gone in instead of me, scored another goal. Things simply couldn"t go wrong, not against a club like Siena.
But Siena equalised, it was 22 and incredibly tense, with only 10 minutes left on the clock. Then Materazzi was brought down and the penalty whistle went, and people were trembling. We just had to have a goal. Everything was at stake, and in those times Julio Cruz, an Argentinian, normally took our penalties. But Materazzi, that guy is temperamental and has authority, everybody on the pitch knows it, and he was like, I don"t give a d.a.m.n. I"m taking the penalty. I guess people were comfortable with that, anyway. Materazzi was thirty-four. He was a veteran; he"d been part of a World Cup final and decided it. But he kicked a terrible penalty shot. The goalkeeper saved it, and the supporters screamed in anguish and fury, as I"m sure you can understand. It was a feeling of complete disaster, and sure, if anybody could handle that, I guess Materazzi could. He"s like me. Hatred and revenge are what get him going. But it can"t have been easy.
The Ultra fans were furious and aggressive and the press coverage was full of outrage, and n.o.body at the club was doing too well. While we"d missed our chance, Roma had beaten Atalanta and were closing in on us. Roma seemed to be on a roll now, and there was only one more round of matches in the league, and of course we were worried. We were b.l.o.o.d.y worried!
The Scudetto had been within our grasp. Most people had thought it was all over. But then I was injured and our nine-point lead had shrunk to just one, and it was no wonder so many people thought the odds were against us, and probably the G.o.ds as well. There were a lot of misgivings around. That didn"t feel good. What had happened to Inter? Why isn"t it working? That kind of talk was everywhere.
The fact was that if we lost or drew against Parma, and Roma beat Catania, which they definitely would do because Catania were at the bottom of the league, we"d fall at the finishing line and lose everything we thought we"d had sewn up. I was back in Milan then, still not recovered. But that didn"t help, I was hearing all that stuff again, more than ever: Ibra has to play, we"ve got to have him in there. The pressure on me was insane. I"d never experienced anything like it. I"d been away for treatment for six weeks and I was not match-fit. The last match I"d played had been on the 29th of March. Now it was mid-May, and everybody knew there was no way I"d be on brilliant form.
But n.o.body took any notice of that, and I"m not blaming anyone, not at all. I was seen as Inter"s most important player, and in Italy football is more important than life itself, especially in situations like this. It was years since there"d been so much excitement in the league right down to the wire, and it was Milan against Rome, the two major cities, facing one another, and people barely talked about anything else. If you switched on the TV it was wall-to-wall sports programmes, and my name was mentioned constantly. Ibra, Ibra. Is there any chance he"ll play? Will he manage it? Is he fit, even after being away? n.o.body knew. Everybody was talking about it, and the fans were screaming, like, help us, Ibra!
It really wasn"t easy to think about my health and about the upcoming European Championship. The match against Parma was going round and round in my head all the time, and if I went out, I saw myself on the front pages of the newspapers with headlines like, "Do it for the team and for the city", and I remember Mancini. He came up to me. It was only a few days before the team were due to head out. Roberto Mancini is a bit of a sn.o.b. He likes flash suits and handkerchiefs and that sort of thing, and I"d never had anything against him, not at all. But since his U-turn about his job, his status at the club had crumbled. I mean, either you"re leaving or you"re not. You don"t say, "I want to go", and then stay. That annoyed a lot of people. The club needed stability, not uncertainty about where the h.e.l.l the coaches were going. But now Mancini was fighting for his place. He b.l.o.o.d.y well had to. The most important day in his life as a manager was approaching, and nothing could go wrong. So it wasn"t exactly surprising that he was looking grave.
"Yeah?" I said.
"I know your injury isn"t completely better."
"No."
"But I don"t give a d.a.m.n, to be honest," he said.
"I suppose that"s the right thing."
"Good! I intend to put you in against Parma, no matter what you say. Either you play from the start, or you start off on the bench. But I"ve got to have you there. We"ve got to bring this home."
"I know. I want to play, too."
That"s what I wanted, more than anything. I didn"t want to be out when the Scudetto was going to be decided. That"s the kind of thing you wouldn"t want to live with. Better to be in pain for weeks and months than miss a fight like that. But it was true that I didn"t know anything about my form. I didn"t know how my knee would respond in a match situation or if I"d be able to give it my all, and maybe Mancini sensed my doubts, and he didn"t want his message to be misunderstood.
He sent Mihajlovic after me as well. You remember him. Me and him had had it out between us when I was playing at Juventus. I"d headb.u.t.ted him, or mimed a headb.u.t.t, and he"d yelled all kinds of s.h.i.t at me. But all that was ancient history. What happens on the pitch stays on the pitch, and often I"ve gone on to become mates with guys I"ve fought with, maybe because we"re similar, I dunno. I like being around warriors, and Mihajlovic was a bruiser. He always did everything to win. Now he"d retired from playing and was an a.s.sistant coach under Mancini, and honestly, there are few blokes who"ve taught me as much about taking a free kick as Mihajlovic.
He was a master at it. He"d made upwards of 30 free kick goals in Serie A. He was a good bloke. He was big and rumpled and came straight to the point.
"Ibra", he said.
"I know what you want," I said.
"Okay, but there"s one thing you need to know. You don"t need to train. You don"t need to do a d.a.m.n thing. But you"re going to be there against Parma and you"re going to help us bring home the Scudetto."
"I"ll try," I said.
"You won"t try. You"ll do it," he said, and then we headed out on the bus.
19.
SOMETIMES THINGS CAST a long shadow. There are memories within clubs that can be toxic, like the entire decade of the "90s at Inter Milan. Even though the team had Ronaldo then, they didn"t win a single league cup. The club always stumbled at the finishing line. Take the 199798 season, for example.
I was 16, 17 years old and knew nothing of Ravelli and the gang, or anything much about Sweden in general. But I knew all about Inter Milan. I knew all about Ronaldo. I studied his feints and his acceleration. A lot of us did, like I said. But n.o.body took it as far as I did. I didn"t miss a single detail. Without him, I believe I would"ve been a different kind of player, and I"m not a guy who"s easily impressed. I"ve met all kinds of people. I once sat next to the king of Sweden at a dinner in Barcelona, and okay, maybe I did think, am I holding my fork wrong, or am I saying "you" when I should be saying "your majesty"? But it was cool. I"m me. I just go for it. But it was different with Ronaldo. When I was with Inter he was playing for AC Milan, and there"s a video on YouTube where I"m chewing some gum and just watching him and watching him, as if I can"t believe that he and I are on the same pitch.