At first I was filled with hope, like, I wonder if he thinks I"m good? But that changed with all the c.r.a.p that was happening around me. When I saw him again one day on the sidelines, my only thought was, I bet he"s heard some grumbling! Some complaints. Around that time I was feeling even more disappointed about football, and I wasn"t having much success in other areas either, especially in school. I was still shy and lacking confidence, and I often only went to school to have lunch. I ate like a horse. But I basically didn"t care about the rest. I was doing less and less schoolwork, and finally I dropped out of school altogether, and there was a load of ha.s.sle and arguing at home.
It was like a minefield, and I kept out of the way and carried on with my tricks in the yard. I put up photos of Ronaldo in my room. Ronaldo was the man. Not only because of his stepovers and goals in the World Cup. Ronaldo was brilliant on every level. He was what I wanted to be. A guy who made a difference. The players in the Swedish national side who were they? There was no superstar, n.o.body that was talked about around the world. Ronaldo was my hero and I studied him online and tried to take in his movements, and I thought I was getting to be an awesome player. I danced down the pitch with the ball.
But what did I have to show for it? Nothing, I thought. The world was unfair. Guys like me didn"t have a chance, and I wasn"t going to be a star, no matter what I could do. That"s how it looked. I was finished. I wasn"t right, and I tried to find other paths. But I didn"t have the energy to go for it. I just carried on playing. The day when Roland Andersson stood there glowering, I was playing with the Under-20s on Pitch No. 1. Pitch No. 1 no longer exists. But it was a gra.s.s pitch, right next to Malm Stadium, and afterwards I heard that Roland Andersson wanted to speak to me. That was all I knew. I started to panic a little, to be honest, and started thinking: Have I nicked a bike? Have I headb.u.t.ted someone? I went over all the stupid stuff I"d done in my mind, and there was plenty of it. But I couldn"t figure out how any of it could have reached him, and I thought up about a thousand explanations.
Roland is a pretty loud guy with a deep voice. He"s nice, but strict. He dominates a room, and I think my heart was pounding a little.
Roland Andersson, I"d heard he played in the World Cup in Argentina. He wasn"t just one of the old Malm FF stars from the glory days. He had been in the national side as well. A bloke with respect, and there he was at his desk, not cracking a hint of a smile. He looked serious, like, get ready for the ultimate b.o.l.l.o.c.king.
"All right, Roland. How are things? Is there something you wanted?"
I always tried to play it c.o.c.ky like that. It"s something that had stayed with me since I was little. You couldn"t show any weakness.
"Sit down."
"Okay, take it easy. n.o.body died. I promise."
"Zlatan, it"s time for you to stop playing with the little kids."
With the little kids? What"s he on about, I thought, and what on earth have I done to the little kids?
"What do you mean?" I asked. "Are you talking about anybody in particular?"
"It"s time for you to start playing with the big boys."
I still didn"t get it.
"Huh?"
"Welcome to the first team, lad," he continued, and honestly, I cannot describe the feeling, not in a million years.
It was as if I"d been lifted up ten metres in the air, and I"m guessing I went out and nicked a new bike and felt like the coolest bloke in the city.
5.
AT MALM, we had a thing called the Mile.
The Mile was a b.l.o.o.d.y long course. We would run from the stadium out to the Water Tower, down along Limhamnsvgen, past all the millionaires" piles there with views out towards the sea especially one house I remember that was pink, and we were all like, wow, what kind of people live there? How many million must they have in the bank?
We"d continue towards the Kungsparken park, through a tunnel, and then up to the school I used to go to, in full view of all the girls and the rich kids. Man, what a buzz that gave me! That was my revenge. Me, the prat from Rosengrd who"d hardly dared to speak to a girl, and there I was running with all the top blokes from Malm FF, like Mats Lilienberg and the rest. It was the greatest thing, and I really made the most of it.
At the start, I followed the crowd. I was new in the first team and wanted to show that I was up to the task. But then I realised: the key thing was to impress the girls. So Tony, Mete and I employed some little tricks. We ran the first four kilometres. But when we reached Limhamnsvgen, we turned off by the bus stop. n.o.body saw us. We"d been bringing up the rear, so we could calmly wait around for the bus and climb aboard. Of course we were laughing our heads off. It was outrageous! Then we had to duck down like crazy when we rode past the rest of the team. I mean, that business with the bus didn"t really indicate the right att.i.tude. At the end of the road we got off, completely rested and far ahead of the others, and hid in a corner. When the rest of the team ran past, we dashed off and had plenty of power to show off in front of the school. Wow, the girls must have been thinking, those guys look like they could take anything.
Another day on the Mile, I said to Tony and Mete, "This is ridiculous. Let"s nick a bike instead." I think they were a bit sceptical. They didn"t have my level of experience in this area. But I convinced them, and so I nicked a bike and rode off with them on the rear parcel rack. Other times things went completely off the rails. I wasn"t exactly the most mature guy in town, and Tony was an idiot as well. That fool had got into p.o.r.n movies. He went into a shop and hired a video and bought some chocolate instead of going on the run, and we sat and ate the chocolate while the others in the team jogged their Mile.
I suppose I should be glad Roland Andersson believed our explanations. Or maybe he didn"t. He was nice. He understood us young guys. He had a sense of humour. But of course, there were rumblings elsewhere: what"s with that guy, Zlatan? Where"s his humility? I kept hearing the old c.r.a.p: "He dribbles the ball too much. He doesn"t think of the team." Some of it was perfectly true. Definitely! I had a lot to learn. The rest was jealousy. The players sensed the compet.i.tion, and I wasn"t really just a cheater.
I really put my all into it and wasn"t satisfied with just going to Malm FF"s training sessions. I also spent hours playing on the pitch at my mum"s as well. I had a trick. I"d head out to Rosengrd and shout to the kids, "You"ll get a tenner if you can get the ball away from me!" It wasn"t just a game. It polished my technique. It taught me to use my body to guard the ball.
When I wasn"t goofing around with the little kids, I"d play football videogames. I could go ten hours at a stretch, and I"d often spot solutions in the games that I parlayed into real life. It was football 24/7, you could say. But it wasn"t all smooth sailing in training sessions at Malm FF, and I might have messed about a bit too much. It was like they"d brought a completely irrational factor into the club, a bloke they couldn"t comprehend. I mean, any b.a.s.t.a.r.d will make a pa.s.s in this or that scenario and will say a given thing in a particular situation. But me ... I came from another planet. I just kept laying it on with all the mental Rosengrd stuff.
It was often the older players against the younger ones in the club. We younger ones were supposed to haul trunks and stuff and wait on the others. It was ridiculous, and the atmosphere was rotten right from the beginning. At the start of the season, Tommy Sderberg, the club"s captain, had predicted that Malm FF would win the whole league, but since then one thing after another had gone wrong, and now the club was in danger of being relegated to the second division. It was the first time in, like, sixty years, and the supporters were up in arms, and all the older players in the team had the world on their shoulders.
They all knew what it would mean for the city if they didn"t remain in the Allsvenskan League nothing short of a disaster. It was no time for partying or Brazilian footwork. But I was still elated at having been brought up into the first team and wanted to show them who I was. That might not have been the right att.i.tude to take.
But it was in my blood. I was in a new gang. I wanted to make people sit up and take notice, and I refused to bow and sc.r.a.pe. When Jonnie Fedel, the goalkeeper, asked, "Where the h.e.l.l are the b.a.l.l.s?" on the first day of training, I gave a little start, especially when I noticed that everybody was looking at me and appeared to be waiting for me to go and fetch them. But there was no way, especially when he put it like that.
"If you want them, you can go and get "em yourself!" I spat, and that was not the way people usually spoke at Malm FF.
That was the council estate talking again, and it didn"t go down well. But I had support from Roland and the a.s.sistant coach Thomas Sjberg, I knew that, even if they mostly believed in Tony, of course. He got to play and scored a goal in his debut match. I was on the bench, and tried to go for it even more in training. But that didn"t help, and I swore. Maybe I should have been satisfied and not in such a hurry. But that"s not how I work. I want to get in there and show what I can do straight away. But it looked like I wouldn"t get a chance. On September 19th we were going to be away against Halmstad at the rjans Vall stadium.
It was a make-or-break match. If we won or played to a draw, we would remain in the Allsvenskan League. Otherwise we would have to battle it out in the relegation playoffs, and everyone in the club was nervous and jittery. The teams were deadlocked. At the start of the second half, Niklas Gudmundsson, our striker, was stretchered off and I was hoping to get subst.i.tuted in. But no, Roland didn"t so much as glance at me, and time pa.s.sed. Nothing happened. It was 11 and that would have to do. But with only fifteen minutes remaining, our team captain Ha.s.se Mattisson was also injured, and Halmstad made it 21 right after that, and I watched as the entire team went pale.
That was when Roland put me in. While all the rest were having a nervous breakdown, I got kicking with a ma.s.sive adrenaline rush. I was seventeen. It was the Allsvenskan League, with 10,000 people in the stands. It said Ibrahimovic on my shirt. It was like, wow, this is big nothing can stop me now, and straight away I made a shot at goal that grazed the crossbar. But then something happened. We were awarded a penalty in the final minutes, and you know what that meant. There was a sense of life and death. If we made the penalty, the club"s honour would be secure, otherwise we risked disaster, and all the big guys hesitated. They weren"t willing to take the shot. There was too much at stake, so Tony, that c.o.c.ky b.a.s.t.a.r.d, stepped up.
"I"ll take it!"
That took some b.a.l.l.s. A Balkan thing to do like, don"t back down! But now, in hindsight, I think somebody should have stopped him. He was too young to take on something like that, and I remember how he took up his position and the whole team held their breath or looked away. It was horrible. But the goalkeeper saved it. I think he faked him out a bit. We lost, and afterwards Tony ended up in the freezer. That was a pity for him, and I know there are journalists who see that as a symbolic thing. That was the moment I overtook him. Tony never made it back into top-level football, and instead I got to play more. I got subst.i.tuted in six times in the Allsvenskan, and in some interview, Roland referred to me as a "diamond in the rough". Word got round, and it wasn"t long before kids started coming up after matches to ask for my autograph. Not that it was any big thing yet. But it got me pumped up, and I thought: I"ve got to get even sharper now! I can"t disappoint these kids!
Check this out! That"s I wanted to shout to them. Check out the most awesome thing in the world! Actually, that was a bit strange, wasn"t it? I hadn"t done anything yet not a lot, at any rate. Even so, young fans turned up out of nowhere, and it made me want to show off my moves even more. Those little squirts made me feel, like, I had a right to my game. They wouldn"t have come up if I"d been some boring team player! I started to play for those kids, and right from the start I signed every autograph. n.o.body was left out. I was young myself. I understood exactly what it would have felt like if my mates had got an autograph but I didn"t.
"Everybody happy?" I asked before I rushed off, and there was so much happening around me that I didn"t worry too much about the team"s setbacks.
It was bizarre, in a way. I was making a name for myself, all the while my club was going through its biggest crisis ever, pretty much. When we lost at home to Trelleborg, the fans wept in the stands and yelled "Resign!" at Roland. The police had to come in and protect him, and people threw rocks at the Trelleborg bus and there were riots and s.h.i.t. Things didn"t get any better a few days later, when we were humiliated by AIK and the disaster was real.
We crashed out of the Allsvenskan League. For the first time in 64 years, Malm FF would not be playing in the top division. Players sat in the locker room hiding under towels while the management tried to put a positive spin on things or whatever they were doing, and frustration and shame were bubbling to the surface everywhere. Some certainly thought I was a huge diva who"d been running around doing fancy tricks in all those serious matches. But I didn"t really care, to be honest. I had other things to think about. Something amazing had happened.
It was right after I had been taken up into the first team. We were out training on Pitch No. 1 and obviously we were Malm FF. We were or rather, had been the pride of the city. But there weren"t many people who came to watch our training sessions, especially in those days. But that afternoon, a bloke with dark greyish hair turned up. I spotted him from far away. I didn"t recognise him. I just noticed that he was staring at us from near a tree over there, and I felt a little strange. It was like I could sense something, and so I started to do even more tricks. But it took a while before the penny dropped.
I"d had to look out for myself when I was growing up, I hadn"t had much, and sure, Dad had done some totally amazing things as well. But he hadn"t been like the other dads I"d seen. He hadn"t watched my matches or encouraged me with my studies. He"d had his drinking and his war and his Yugo music. But now, I couldn"t believe it. That bloke really was my dad. He had come to watch, and I was completely blown away. It was as if I was dreaming, and I started to play with incredible strength. s.h.i.t, Dad"s here! This is mental. Look at me, Dad, I wanted to yell. Look at me! Check it out! Your son is the most amazing, awesome player!
I believe that was one of my greatest moments. I really do. I got him back. Not that I didn"t have him before. If there had been a crisis, he"d come rushing up like the Incredible Hulk. But this was something totally new, and afterwards I ran over and chatted to him a bit, just casually, as if it was totally natural that my dad was there.
"How"s it going?"
"Well played, Zlatan."
It was weird. Dad had got some sort of bug, I thought. I became his drug. He started following everything I did. He came to watch every training session. His flat became like a shrine to my career, and he cut out every article, every little piece, and he"s kept on with it. You can ask him today about any one of my matches. He"ll have it recorded, and he"ll have every single word that"s been written about it, and all the tops and boots I"ve worn and my trophies and Guldbollen awards for the best Swedish footballer of the year. You name it, it"s all there, and not all jumbled together either, like it used to be with his stuff. Everything is in its place. He can find anything in a second. He"s got it all under control.
From that day at Pitch No. 1 onward, he began to live for me and my football, and I believe it improved his health. He hasn"t had it easy. He was alone. Sanela had broken off all contact with him because of his drinking and his temper and his harsh words about Mum, and it had been very hard on him. Sanela was his beloved daughter, and she always will be. But now she was no longer there for him. She had cut off contact, and it was another of those harsh things in my family. Dad needed something new which he now got. We started to chat every day, and all that became a new impetus for me as well. It was like, wow, football can do amazing things, and I gave it even more. What was a relegation into the second division, when my Dad had just become my biggest fan?
I didn"t know what I should do. Should I start playing in the Superettan the "Super One", the ridiculous name given to the Swedish second division or aim higher? There had been talk that AIK, one of the big Stockholm clubs, were after me. But was it true? I didn"t have a clue. I didn"t know a d.a.m.n thing about how hot a property I was. I wasn"t even a regular member of the Malm squad. I was eighteen years old, and should have signed a first team contract. But I put it off. Everything felt up in the air, especially since Roland Andersson and Thomas Sjberg had got the sack. They were the ones who had believed in me when everybody else was complaining. Would I even get to play if I stayed? I didn"t know, and I was unsure. Both Dad and I were unsure, and how good was I, really?
I had no idea. I"d given a few autographs to kids. But of course that didn"t mean anything, and my self-confidence was up and down. The first rush of elation at having been called up into the first team was starting to fade away. But then I met a guy from Trinidad and Tobago. It was the pre-season. He was cool. He had a trial with us, and afterwards he came over to me.
"Hey, fella," he said.
"What?"
"If you"re not a pro within three years, it"s your own fault!"
"What do you mean?"
"You heard me!"
Too right I did!
But it took a while to sink in. Could it be true? If anyone else had said it, I would hardly have believed them. But this bloke, he seemed to know. He"d been around, and it hit me like a body blow. Was I really serious professional material? I started to think so. For the first time, I really did, and I buckled down even more.
Ha.s.se Borg, the old defender for the Swedish national side, was sporting director for Malm FF then. Ha.s.se noticed me right from the start. I guess he understood my talent, and he put word out among the journalists. Like, look here, you should check out this lad, and the following February Rune Smith, a reporter from Kvllsposten, one of the tabloid papers in Malm, came to a training session. Rune was cool. He would almost become a friend, and after he watched me train we chatted a bit, him and me nothing unusual, not at all.
I talked about the club and the Superettan League and about my dreams of becoming a pro in Italy, like Ronaldo, and Rune took notes and smiled, and I don"t really know what I expected to happen. I had no experience with journalists in those days. But it turned into a huge thing. Rune wrote something like, "Practise this name, you"ll be seeing it in the headlines: ZLATAN. It sounds exciting. And he is exciting. A different kind of player, a bundle of dynamite in the offensive line-up." Then he mentioned that bit about the diamond in the rough again, and I said a few things that sounded c.o.c.ky and un-Swedish in the article, I dunno.
There must have been something about that report. Now even more kids started coming up after the training sessions, and in fact, some teenaged girls as well, and even some adults. That was the launch of the whole hysteria, all that "Zlatan, Zlatan!" that would become my life, and which seemed so unreal at first like, what"s going on? Are they talking about me?
I"d be lying if I said it wasn"t the most awesome thing in the world. I mean, what do you think? I had been trying to get attention my whole life, and now, suddenly, people were turning up, awestruck, asking for my autograph. Of course that was cool. It was a major buzz. I was pumped up. I was full of adrenaline. I was flying. You know, I"ve heard people go, oh, I"ve got it so tough, there are people screaming outside my window. They want my autograph, poor me. That"s bulls.h.i.t.
Those things get you going, believe me especially if you"ve had a life like mine, growing up as a snot-nosed kid on a council estate. It"s like a ma.s.sive spotlight has been switched on. But of course, there were certain things I didn"t understand yet, the jealousy thing, that psychological stuff about how a lot of people want to knock you down when you"re up, especially if you come from the wrong side of the tracks and don"t behave like a nice Swedish boy. I got some stick as well, like: "You"ve just been lucky!" and "Who do you think you are?"
I responded by getting even c.o.c.kier. What else could I do? I hadn"t been brought up to apologise. In my family, we didn"t say, "Oh, forgive me, I"m so sorry you"re upset!" We give as good as we get. We fight if we need to, and we don"t rely on people in general. Everybody in my family has taken their knocks, and my dad always said, "Don"t do anything too hasty. People only want to take advantage of you." I listened, and I thought it over. But it wasn"t easy. In those days, Ha.s.se Borg was running round after me, all suited up, trying to get me to sign a contract for the first team.
He was incredibly keen, and it was flattering. I felt important. But we had a new coach then Micke Andersson and I was still unsure how much I"d get to play. People thought Micke Andersson would want to focus on Niclas Kindvall and Mats Lilienberg up front and have me as a reserve, and I didn"t want to get into the Superettan League and sit on the bench. I talked it over with Ha.s.se Borg, and of course there are loads of things I could say about him. But I don"t think it was just by chance that he was a successful businessman. He gets straight to the point. He"s a b.l.o.o.d.y master at persuading people, and he drew on his own experiences as a player and went to town.
"This"ll be good, lad. We"ll invest in you, and the Superettan League will be the ideal incubator. You"ll have opportunities to develop. Just sign!"
I felt like I agreed. I was starting to trust the guy. He kept phoning me and giving me advice, and I thought, why not? He must know. He was a pro in Germany and all that, and he really seemed to care about me. "Agents are crooks," he said, and I believed him.
There was a bloke after me. His name was Roger Ljung. Roger Ljung was an agent, and he wanted to sign me up. But Dad was sceptical, and I knew nothing about agents myself. What is it they do? So I bought into Ha.s.se Borg"s line of thinking, that agents are crooks, and I signed his contract and got a flat in the Lorensberg neighbourhood in Malm a studio flat not far from the stadium and a mobile phone, which meant a lot to me, because I hadn"t been allowed to use the phone at Dad"s, and a salary of 16,000 kronor a month.
I resolved to really give it a go. But things started off badly. The first match of the season in the Superettan League, we were away at Gunnilse, who were a bunch of pushovers, and we should have had a big win. But the old enmities were still there in our team, and I stayed on the bench for a long time. b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, was this how it was going to be? There wasn"t much going on in the stands, it was windy and when I finally went in I got a nasty elbow in my back. I gave my opponent one in the back bam, just like that and then I had a go at the referee, who gave me a yellow card. There was a huge song and dance about it, both on the pitch and in the papers, and our team captain Ha.s.se Mattisson claimed that I was spreading negative energy.
"What do you mean, negative? I"m just psyched up."
"You don"t let things go." And then there was a load of rubbish about how I was nothing like the star I thought I was, and that others had ball skills just as good as mine. They just didn"t show off all the time, thinking they were the next Maradona. I got frustrated. There"s a photo of me where I was standing by the bus in Gunnilse, looking angry.
But it subsided. I started playing better, and I have to give Ha.s.se Borg credit: the Superettan gave me playing time and opportunities to improve. I should be thankful for the relegation, in a way. It wasn"t long before things started to happen.
It was mental, really. I wasn"t exactly another Ronaldo yet, and Swedish national newspapers don"t generally get too worked up about second division football. But now the tabloids were producing centre spreads with t.i.tles like "The Super-Diva in the Superettan" and things like that, and the Malm FF Supporters" Club suddenly got a big influx of young female members, and all the older players in the club were wondering, like, what"s this all about? What"s going on? And it really wasn"t easy to understand, especially for me. People would sit in the stands waving banners that said, "Zlatan is the king" and would scream when I dribbled the ball like I was some rock star. What was happening? What was it all about? I didn"t know. I still don"t, really.
But I guess a lot of people were just excited about my tricks and my fancy moves, and I was hearing a lot of wows and check that outs now too, just like I had in Mum"s neighbourhood, and it got me going. I felt bigger when people recognised me around town, and girls would scream and kids would run up with their autograph books, and I did my thing even more. But sure, sometimes things went a little overboard. For the first time in my life I had some cash. I spent my first pay packet on an intensive driving course to get my licence. For a bloke from Rosengrd, a car is a basic requirement, you could say.
People in Rosengrd don"t boast about having a fancy apartment or a beachfront house. People brag about having flash cars, and if you want to show you"ve made something of yourself, the way to do it is with a wicked set of wheels. Everybody drives in Rosengrd, whether they"ve got a driving licence or not, and when I got my Toyota Celica on lease, me and my mates were constantly out in it. By that time, I"d calmed down a bit. The whole uproar in the media made me want to keep a low profile, or at least a bit lower, and when my mates started nicking cars and that sort of thing, I said to them, "That stuff isn"t for me any more."
But even so, I still needed to get a little buzz once in a while, like when I drove with a friend up along Industrigatan, the street where all the prost.i.tutes in Malm wait for punters. Industrigatan isn"t far from Rosengrd, and I"d been round there quite a bit as a kid, up to no good. One time I even chucked an egg at one of the women, hit her right in the head not very nice, I admit. But in those days I didn"t really think things through, and now when my mate and I came there in the Toyota, we saw a prost.i.tute leaning over one car, just like she was talking to a client, and we said, "Let"s have some fun with the punter there," and so I slammed on the brakes right in front of him and we rushed out and yelled, "Police. Put your hands up!"
It was completely insane. I had a bottle of shampoo in my hand, like a really lame pretend handgun, and that punter, some old man, got totally scared and tore out of there. We didn"t think any more of it, it was just a thing we did. But when we drove a little further, we heard sirens, and the old man from Industrigatan was sitting in a police car, and we thought, what"s going on? What"s this all about? And it"s true, we could have just ga.s.sed it and got out of there. I was no stranger to things like that, after all. But oh, we had our seat belts on and everything and we hadn"t done anything, not really. So we stopped politely.
"It was just a joke," we said. "We pretended to be police. No big deal, is it? We"re sorry," and the cops mostly laughed, like it was no big deal.
But then a b.a.s.t.a.r.d turned up, one of those photographers who sit and listen to the police radio all the time and he snapped a photo, and I, idiot that I was, I put on a huge grin, because the whole media thing was new to me in those days. It was still great to be in the papers, regardless of whether I"d scored an awesome goal or been stopped by the police. So I grinned like a clown, and my mate took it even further. He had the newspaper story framed and hung it on the wall. And that old codger, you know what he did? He gave some interviews and said he was an upstanding church member and was just helping the prost.i.tutes. Give me a break! But it"s true, that story stuck around, and people even said that certain big clubs decided not to buy me because of it. That was probably just gossip.
But the press got even more out of control after that, and some members of the team had a go at me and talked behind my back. "He"s got a lot to learn," "He"s very rough," and really, I can understand them. It can"t have been easy. They probably needed to put me down a bit. There I came waltzing in from nowhere, and got more attention in one week than they"d had in their entire careers, and to cap it all, a load of blokes in sharp suits and bling watches turned up in the bleak stands in the provincial towns we played in that season blokes that didn"t belong there at all, and everybody was staring at me.
Looking back, I don"t know when I first grasped it, or even sat down and thought about it. But people started saying that those blokes were football scouts from European clubs, and they were there to check me out. They guy from Trinidad and Tobago had certainly warned me about this, but it still felt completely unreal. I tried to talk about it with Ha.s.se Borg. He avoided the subject. He didn"t seem to like that topic of conversation at all.
"Is it true, Ha.s.se? Are there foreign clubs checking me out?"
"Take it easy, lad."
"But which ones are they?"
"It"s nothing," said Ha.s.se Borg. "And we aren"t going to sell you." I thought, sure, fine, there"s no rush, in spite of everything, and so I tried to renegotiate my contract instead.
"Play five good matches in a row and you"ll get a new deal," said Ha.s.se Borg, and so I did. I played an awesome five, six, seven matches, and then we sat down and discussed terms.
I managed to get another ten thousand kronor or so on my salary, with another ten thousand to come later, and I thought that was all right. I didn"t have a clue, and I went to visit my dad and proudly showed him my contract. He wasn"t too impressed. He"d changed beyond all recognition. He was the most committed supporter now, and instead of burying himself in the war or something else, he sat at home all day and investigated things concerning football, and when he read the clause about sales to foreign clubs, he stopped short.
"What the h.e.l.l," he said. "There"s nothing here about how much you"ll get."
"How much I"ll get?"
"You should get ten per cent of the transfer fee if you"re sold. Otherwise they"re just exploiting you," he said, and I thought I"d happily take 10 or 20 per cent. But I couldn"t figure out how we would work it. If there had been a chance of something like that, Ha.s.se Borg would have mentioned it, wouldn"t he?
Even so, I asked him. I didn"t want to look like a pushover, after all. "Erm, Ha.s.se," I said. "Can"t I get a percentage if I get sold?" But of course, I didn"t expect anything else. "Sorry, lad!" he said. "That"s not how it works," and I told my dad. I a.s.sumed he would accept it. If it doesn"t work, it doesn"t work. But that"s not what happened. He went ballistic and asked me for Ha.s.se Borg"s number. He phoned once, twice, three times, and finally got hold of him, and wouldn"t be satisfied with a "no" over the phone. He demanded a meeting and it was decided, we would meet with Ha.s.se Borg at ten o"clock the following morning in his office, and you can imagine. I was nervous. Dad was Dad, and I was worried things might get out of control, and to be honest, it wasn"t the calmest meeting either! Dad went off on one pretty fast. He started sputtering and pounding his fist on the desk.
"Is my son a horse?"
No, of course I wasn"t a horse, Ha.s.se Borg said.
"So why are you treating him like one?"
"We"re not treating him..."
It carried on like that, and finally Dad declared that Malm FF would not see hide nor hair of me any longer. I would not play another second unless my contract was rewritten, and then Ha.s.se Borg began to turn pale, which I could understand, to be honest. My dad is not to be toyed with, like I said. He"s a lion, and we got that bit about the ten per cent into the contract, and that would turn out to mean a lot. All respect to my dad for that, and that whole thing should have been a lesson, food for thought. But agents were still crooks and I still relied on Ha.s.se Borg. He was my mentor, sort of another father figure. He invited me out to his place in the country, his half-timbered house in Blentarp, where I got to meet his dogs, his kids and wife and the animals, and asked him for advice when I bought my Mercedes convertible on hire purchase.
But still, how can I put it? The situation was getting tougher. My confidence was growing, and I was becoming more daring. I made a number of brilliant goals, and all the Brazilian skills I"d spent hour upon hour practising were starting to take hold. All the effort with that stuff was finally paying off. In the junior squad I"d mainly got a load of c.r.a.p for it and heard the parents moaning. Oh, he"s dribbling again! He"s not playing for the team, and all that. But now there were cheers and applause coming from the stands, and I realised immediately that this was my chance. There might still be a lot of people complaining. But it"s not nearly as easy when we"re winning matches and the fans love me.
The autograph-seekers and the fans" roars and banners in the stands gave me strength, and I was really vibing. Away against Vsters, I got a pa.s.s from Ha.s.se Mattisson. It was during injury time. The match was pretty much over. But I spotted a gap and chipped the ball over myself and a couple of opposing players, including Majstorovic that was a nice little one, and I could land the ball into the goal.
I scored twelve goals in the Superettan League, more than anyone else at Malm FF, and we qualified for the Allsvenskan League again. I was undoubtedly a big guy in the team. I wasn"t just an individualist, as some were saying. I was starting to make a difference, and the hysteria surrounding me kept growing, and in those days I didn"t just say a load of boring c.r.a.p.