I had Maxwell, of course, and a few others in the squad, but not really. There was so much compet.i.tion everywhere and I didn"t know who I could trust, especially when it came to agents and transfers. Every single player in the team wanted to move up to the big clubs, and it felt like I needed somebody from the outside. I thought of Thijs.
Thijs Slegers was a journalist. He had interviewed me for Voetbal International, and I"d liked him right away. We"d talked on the phone a bit after that interview. He became something of a sounding board, and even back then he had a good idea of what was what, I think. He knew what I was like and what kind of people I liked. I dialled his number and explained the situation: "I need to find a new agent. Who would be best for me?"
Thijs is cool. He said, "Let me think about it!" And, sure, I let him think about it, I didn"t want to rush into anything.
"Listen," he said later. "There are two agents I can think of. One is the firm that works for Beckham. They"re supposed to be terrific, and then there"s another guy. But, well ..."
"Well, what?"
"He"s a mafioso."
"Mafioso sounds good," I said.
"I suspected you would say that."
"Terrific. Set up a meeting!"
The guy wasn"t actually a mafioso. He just looked and acted like one. His name was Mino Raiola, and I"d actually heard of him before. He was Maxwell"s agent, and he"d tried to get in touch with me via Maxwell a few months earlier. Because that"s the way he works. Mino always goes via intermediaries. He always says, "If you approach them yourself, you don"t have the upper hand. You"re standing there with your cap in your hand." But it hadn"t worked too well with me I"d just acted c.o.c.ky, and I told Maxwell: "If he"s got something specific to bring to the table, he can show up, otherwise I"m not interested," but Mino just sent this message: "Tell this Zlatan to go and f.u.c.k himself." Although that had p.i.s.sed me off at the time, I was getting excited now that I found out a little about him. I had grown up with that att.i.tude, go f.u.c.k yourself and stuff. I feel comfortable with that council estate talk, and I suspected that Mino and I had similar backgrounds. Neither of us had been handed anything on a plate. Mino was born in southern Italy, in the province of Salerno. But when he was just a year old, his family moved to the Netherlands and opened a pizzeria in the city of Haarlem. Mino had to clean and wash dishes and help out as a waiter when he was a boy. But he worked his way up. He started looking after the books and that sort of thing.
He started making something of himself even as a teenager. He was involved in thousands of things; he studied law, made deals and learned languages. He also loved football and wanted to become an agent early on. In the Netherlands there used to be a really crazy system where players had to be sold according to a price that was based on their age and a bunch of statistical c.r.a.p, and he went against all that. He challenged the entire Dutch football a.s.sociation, and he didn"t start off dealing with small fry. Back in 1993 he sold Bergkamp to Inter, and in 2001 he got Nedvd to Juventus for 41 million euro.
Even so, Mino wasn"t all that big, not yet, but he was considered to be on his way up, and he was completely fearless and prepared to pull any number of tricks, and that sounded good. I didn"t want to have another nice boy. I wanted to be transferred and get a good contract, and so I decided to make an impression on this Mino. When Thijs set up a meeting for us at the Okura Hotel in Amsterdam, I wore my cool brown leather jacket from Gucci. I had no intention of being the idiot in the tracksuit who gets screwed over again. I put on my gold watch and drove there in my Porsche, and I parked right outside just to be safe.
It was like, here I come, and I went into the Okura, and, well, that hotel! It"s right alongside the Amstel Ca.n.a.l and is amazingly elegant and luxurious, and I thought, this is it, I"ve got to play it cool now, and I went into the sushi restaurant in the hotel. We"d booked a table there, and I didn"t really know what sort of person to expect, probably some sort of pinstriped fella with an even bigger gold watch. But who the h.e.l.l turned up? A bloke in jeans and a Nike T-shirt and that belly, like one of the guys in the Sopranos.
Was he supposed to be an agent, that weirdo? And then when we ordered, what do you think they brought us? A few pieces of sushi with avocado and prawns? We got a ma.s.sive spread, enough to feed five people, and he started stuffing himself. But then he started talking, and he was really sharp and to the point. There was no candy-coated c.r.a.p, and I knew immediately that this was going to work, it was sounding great, and I said to myself, I want to work with this guy. We think alike. I was all set to shake hands on a deal.
But do you know what he did, that c.o.c.ky b.a.s.t.a.r.d? He took out four pages of A4 paper he"d printed off the internet. They had a bunch of names and numbers on them, like Christian Vieri, 27 matches, 24 goals. Filippo Inzaghi, 25 matches, 20 goals; David Trezeguet, 24 matches, 20 goals and finally, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, 25 matches, 5 goals.
"You think I"m going to be able to sell you with statistics like these," he said, and I thought, what is this, some kind of attack?
But I retaliated. "If I"d scored 20 goals even my mother could have sold me," and silenced him. He wanted to laugh, I know that now. But he carried on with his game. He didn"t want to lose the upper hand.
"You are right. But you..."
Now what? I thought. It felt like there was another attack coming.
"You think you"re pretty great, huh?"
"What are you talking about?"
"You think I"m going to be impressed by your watch, your jacket, your Porsche. But I"m not. Not at all. I just think it"s ridiculous."
"All right!"
"Do you want to become the best in the world? Or the one who earns the most and can swan around in this kind of gear?"
"Best in the world!"
"Good! Because if you become the best in the world, you"ll get the other stuff, too. But if you"re just after the money, you won"t end up with anything, you get that?"
"I get it."
"Think about it, and let me know," he said, and we concluded the meeting. I left and felt, okay, I"ll think about it. I can play it a little cool too and let him wait. But I"d hardly got into my car before I started feeling antsy. I phoned him up.
"Listen, I don"t like waiting, I want to start working with you right away."
He was silent.
"All right," he said. "But if you"re going to work with me, you have to do what I tell you."
"Sure, absolutely."
"You"re going to sell your cars. You"re going to sell your watches and start training three times as hard. Because your stats are c.r.a.p."
Your stats are c.r.a.p! I should have told him to go to h.e.l.l. Sell my cars? What did they have to do with him? He was going too far, no doubt about it. But still, he was right, wasn"t he? I gave him my Porsche Turbo. Not just to be a good boy, for its own sake. It was just as well I got rid of that car, to be honest. I was just going to kill myself in it. But things didn"t stop there.
I started driving around in the club"s lame little Fiat Stilo, and I put away my gold watch. I put on an ugly Nike watch instead, and went round in tracksuits again. Things were going to be tough now, and I trained for all I was worth. I pushed myself to the limit, and it struck me that all that stuff was true. I had been too pleased with myself, thinking I was all that. But it was the wrong att.i.tude.
It was true that I hadn"t scored enough goals and I"d been too lazy. I hadn"t been motivated enough. I was realising that even more, and began to give everything I had in training and matches. But it"s true, it isn"t easy to change overnight. You start off at full tilt, then you can"t be bothered. Fortunately I didn"t have a chance to slack off. Mino was on me like a leech.
"You like it when people tell you you"re the best, don"t you?"
"Yeah, maybe."
"But that"s not true. You"re not the best. You"re s.h.i.t. You"re nothing. You"ve got to work harder."
"You"re the one who"s s.h.i.t. All you do is nag. You should train yourself."
"Go f.u.c.k yourself."
"f.u.c.k you."
Things often got aggressive between us, or rather, it seemed aggressive. But that"s how we were brought up, and of course I got it, that whole att.i.tude, "you"re nothing" and all that, was just his way of getting me to change my att.i.tude, and I really think he succeeded. I started saying those things to myself.
"You"re nothing, Zlatan. You"re s.h.i.t. You"re not even half as good as you think you are! You"ve got to work harder."
It got me going, and a got more of a winner"s mindset. There was no more talk of getting sent home by the coach. I put everything into every situation and I wanted to win every little match or compet.i.tion, even in training sessions, and, sure, I had some pain then in my left groin. But I didn"t care. I just kept going. I had no intention of giving in. Didn"t even care that it was getting worse and worse. I gritted my teeth. Several other players in the squad were injured then. I didn"t want to give the manager any more problems, and I often played on painkillers. Tried to just ignore it. But Mino could see it he realised. He wanted me to work hard, not break myself.
"This can"t go on, fella," he said. "You can"t play injured." I finally started taking it seriously and went to see a specialist, and it was decided that I would have an operation.
At the Rotterdam University Hospital they inserted a reinforcement in my left groin, and afterwards I had to rebuild my strength in the club"s training pool. That was no fun. Mino told the physio that I"d had it too easy.
"This guy has just been swanning around, having fun. Now he"s got to be made to fight and tire himself out! Really give it to him."
I had to wear a d.a.m.ned heartbeat monitor and some kind of life vest that held me up, and then I would run in the water until I reached my absolute maximum level, and afterwards I was ready to puke my guts out. I collapsed by the edge of the pool. I just had to rest. I couldn"t move. I was totally exhausted, and one time I needed to pee, it got worse and worse. But there was no way I"d make it to the toilet. There was a hole by the side of the pool so I p.i.s.sed into that hole. What else could I do? I was completely finished.
We had a disciplinary rule at Ajax: we weren"t allowed to go and eat until they said "Dismissed", and I would often make a break for it as soon as I heard the first syllable. I was always ravenously hungry. Now I couldn"t even raise my head. No matter how much they shouted, I just lay there like a wreck by the side of the pool.
I kept that up for two weeks, and the strange thing is, it wasn"t just hard work. There was something pleasant in that pain. I enjoyed the opportunity to exert myself to the point of exhaustion, and I started to understand what hard work means. I entered a new phase and felt stronger than I had for a long time. When I returned after my physiotherapy, I gave everything I had on the pitch, and now I started to dominate.
I gained self-confidence, and posters started appearing "Zlatan, the son of G.o.d", that sort of thing. People shouted my name. I became better than ever, and of course it was terrific, but it was also the same as always: when somebody shines, there are others who get jealous. There was already some tension in the squad, particularly among the younger players who also wanted to get noticed and get sold to the big clubs.
I imagine that Rafael van der Vaart was one who wasn"t entirely pleased about these developments. Rafael was probably one of the most popular players in the country then. He was certainly the favourite among those fans who didn"t really like foreigners on the pitch, and Ronald Koeman made him team captain, even though Rafael was no more than 21 years old. I"m sure it was a ma.s.sive ego boost for him, and he was also the main quarry for the tabloid press. He"d got together with some celeb chick, and maybe it wasn"t so easy for him to deal with my successes on the pitch in those circ.u.mstances. I bet Rafael saw himself as the big star and didn"t want to have a rival. I dunno. He was also desperate for a transfer, just like all the rest of us. He"d do anything to get ahead, I think. Then again, it"s true, I didn"t know him, and I didn"t care, either.
This was early summer in 2004, and the tensions between us didn"t really explode until August. In May and June things were still pretty cool. We"d secured the league t.i.tle again, and Maxwell, my mate, was voted the best player of the series, and I was happy for him. If there"s anyone I don"t begrudge anything, it"s him, and I remember we drove to Haarlem to eat at the pizzeria where Mino had grown up, and I talked to Mino"s sister there. There was one thing she said she was wondering about. It was about their father. "Dad"s started driving around in a Porsche Turbo," she said. "It"s a bit odd, really. It"s not exactly the sort of car he"s had in the past. Is it anything to do with you?"
"Your dad ..."
I missed that Porsche, but I hoped it was in safer hands now, and that summer I really wanted to stay away from crazy stuff and just focus on football. The European Championship tournament was coming up in Portugal. This was my first big international tournament where I was an established member of the Swedish national side, and I remember Henrik "Henke" Larsson rang me up. Henke was a role model for me. He was finishing up his time at Celtic then. He would be sold to Barcelona after that summer, and right after our loss to Senegal in the World Cup he"d declared, "I"m not going to play for the national side any longer. I want to focus on my family." Of course, you had to buy it, especially from a guy like him.
But he was missed. We were going to be playing in the same group as Italy and needed all the strong players we could get hold of, and I guess most people had lost hope in him then. But now he was saying he regretted his decision and wanted back in, and that made me perk up.
Now it would be me and him up front. That would make us stronger, and I could sense each day how the pressure on us was increasing, and there was more and more talk about how this could be my big international breakthrough, and I realised everybody was going to be watching me, including scouts and coaches from abroad. In the days before we left for the tournament, the fans and the journalists were swarming around me, and in situations like that it was nice to have Henke there. He"d been involved in some high-level uproar himself, but the commotion surrounding me was absolutely insane then, and I"ll never forget how I asked him later on, "b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, Henke, what should I do? If anybody should know, it"s you. How should I deal with all this?"
"Sorry, Zlatan. You"re on your own now. There"s no player in Sweden who"s ever experienced this kind of circus before!"
Like, there was a Norwegian who turned up one time with a d.a.m.n orange. People had been going on about oranges ever since John Carew, who was with Valencia, had criticised my playing, and I responded: "What John Carew does with a football, I can do with an orange," and now this Norwegian journalist was there and wanted me to show what I could do with a piece of fruit.
But, I mean, come on, why should I make that guy famous as well? Why should I perform his little trick?
"You can take your orange, peel it and eat it up. It"ll give you some good vitamins," I said, and of course, that became a thing in the media as well like, get a load of him, all c.o.c.ky and arrogant and there was more and more being said about how my relation with the media was so tense.
But really, was that so strange?
11.
n.o.bODY KNEW ABOUT HELENA and me, not even her mum. We"d made a huge effort to keep it a secret. The tiniest thing about me made headlines, and we didn"t want journalists to go digging around in our relationship before we even knew where it was going.
We did everything we could do throw them off our trail, and early on we benefited from our differences. n.o.body could believe I was with someone like her, a career woman eleven years older than me. If we were spotted in the same place, like a hotel or something, the penny still didn"t drop, and that was lucky. That helped us. But all that sneaking around had its price.
Helena lost some friends and felt isolated and alone, and I got more furious than ever with the media. The previous year I"d flown to Gothenburg to play in an international match against San Marino. Things had started to loosen up at Ajax by then, and I was in a good mood and was talking fairly freely, like in the old days, including with a journalist from the Aftonbladet tabloid. I really hadn"t forgotten what that paper did with the episode at Spy Bar. But I didn"t want to hold a grudge, so I was chatting away, even talking about starting a family in the future nothing unusual, not at all. It was just idle chat stuff like, it"d be nice to have kids sometime in the future. But do you know what that journalist did?
He wrote up his article in the form of a personal ad: "Who wants to win the Champions League with me? Sporty bloke, aged 21, 6 foot 4, 84 kg with dark hair and eyes, seeks woman of suitable age for a serious relationship," he wrote, and what do you think? Was I happy? I was outraged. I mean, what sort of respect did that show? A personal ad! I wanted to deck that b.a.s.t.a.r.d, so it wasn"t a very happy occasion when I encountered him the very next day in the dark tunnel in the stadium leading out to the pitch.
If I understood correctly, the paper had already heard I was furious. I think it was somebody from the national side who"d tipped them off, and now he wanted to apologise and get back to business as usual. There was already a load of money to be made off the back of my name in those days. But believe me, I wasn"t having any of it, and I guess I should be happy I restrained myself fairly well. I managed to restrict it to hissing, "What kind of clown are you? And what the f.u.c.k are you trying to say? That I"ve got problems with girls or something?" at him.
"I"m sorry, I just wanted to..." He was just spluttering. He couldn"t utter a coherent sentence.
"I"m never gonna speak to you again," I yelled and walked off, and honestly, I thought I"d frightened him, or at least got them at the paper to behave with more respect in the future. But it got worse. We won the international match 50 and I scored two goals. So what do you think Aftonbladet ran as a headline the next day: "Go Sweden"? "Next stop: the European Championships"? Not quite! They went with: "Shame on you, Zlatan!" although it wasn"t exactly as if I"d pulled my pants down or thrashed the referee.
I"d hit a penalty which went in. The score stood at 40, and I"d been fouled inside the penalty area. Okay, sure, Lars Lagerbck had his list of penalty kickers and Kim Kllstrm was at the top of that list, but he"d just scored a goal and I thought, this is my thing, I"m really on form, I"m up for it, and when Kim came up I moved the ball to the other side of my body, like, don"t take my toy away, and he put out his hand like, give it here! I slapped his hand, gave him five instead, placed the ball on the penalty mark and shot, no more than that it wasn"t the best thing I"ve ever done and I did apologise afterwards, but come on: it wasn"t the Balkan War. It wasn"t a council estate riot. It was a goal in a football match. Even so, Aftonbladet got six pages out of it, and I didn"t get it. What the h.e.l.l, coming out with personal ads and "shame on you, Zlatan" when we won 50?
"If anybody should be ashamed, it"s Aftonbladet," I said at a press conference the following day.
After that, I boycotted that paper, and when the European Championship tournament got underway in Portugal, there wasn"t exactly cause for a thaw in relations. I continued the war, but I was running a risk. If I didn"t talk to them, they had nothing to lose, and the last thing I wanted was for the relationship between Helena and me to get out. That would be a disaster for our final preparations, so we had to be careful. But what could I do? I missed her. "Can"t you come down here?" I asked. She couldn"t. She had too much to do. But then some of her bosses had bought tickets to the championship and couldn"t go. They asked, "Does anybody else want to go instead?" and she thought, it"s a sign, I"ll go and she came along for a few days. But as usual, we snuck around, and not even anybody in the national squad took any notice of her. The only one who seemed to suspect something was going on with her was Bert Karlsson, a Swedish media figure and businessman who b.u.mped into her at the airport and wondered what a girl like her was doing among all the football fans in their replica shirts and silly hats. But we still managed to keep it under wraps, and I could focus on the football.
We were a great bunch in the national side. We were all good blokes well, there was one prima donna among us. The prima donna was all like, "At a.r.s.enal, you know, this is how we do it. That"s how you ought to do it. Because they know about that stuff at a.r.s.enal, and I play for them." Pretty much like that.
That made me furious. "My back is killing me," he said. Oh dear, oh dear. "I can"t go in the regular bus. I need my own bus. I need this, I need that." I mean, who the h.e.l.l did he think he was, coming along and lording it over us? Lars Lagerbck talked things over with me about him.
"Please, Zlatan, try to handle this professionally. We can"t have any conflicts in the squad."
"Listen," I said. "If he respects me, I"ll respect him. Full stop," and there was a fair amount of fuss about that.
But otherwise, my G.o.d, the atmosphere was incredible. When we came on for our first match against Bulgaria in Lisbon it was like the whole stadium was in yellow, and everybody was singing Markoolio"s Euro 2004 song, it was all so awesome and we totally annihilated Bulgaria.
It was 50, and people"s expectations for us were ratcheted up. But it was like the championships hadn"t properly got underway yet. The big match everybody was waiting for was the one against Italy on the 18th of July in Porto, and it was no secret that the Italians were out for revenge. They"d only managed a draw in their first match against Denmark, and of course none of them had forgotten their defeat to France in the previous European Championship finals in Rotterdam. Italy were dead set on winning and they had an incredible team with Nesta, Cannavaro and Zambrotta at the back, Buffon in goal and Christian Vieri out in front, and sure, Totti, the big star, was out, having spat on an opponent in the match against Denmark, but still, I admit I was nervous, meeting these blokes.
This was my most important match up to that point, and my dad was sitting in the stands and it was a major occasion. Right from the start I sensed that the Italians respected me. It was like, what"s that guy gonna come up with next, and I battled with their defence. We weren"t playing around. The Italians put on a fierce offensive, and just before halftime Ca.s.sano, a young guy who"d taken Totti"s place, made it 10 on a cross from Panucci, and n.o.body can say they didn"t deserve it. The Italians pressed us hard. But we worked our way into the match and had some chances in the second half. Still, the match belonged to the Italians, and getting a draw against them is no game. Italy are often said to have a crazy defence. But with just five minutes remaining, we got a corner from the left.
Kim Kllstrm hit it, and things started to get messy in the penalty area. Marcus Allbck was on the ball, then Olof Mellberg as well and there was general chaos. But the ball was still up in the air and I rushed towards it, and at that moment I saw Buffon running up and Christian Vieri standing on the goal line, so I leapt up and gave it a kick. It was a bit like kung fu. In the photos, my heel is level with my shoulder, and the ball flew in a perfect arc over Christian Vieri who tried to head it, and there wasn"t much room to spare between his head and the crossbar. But it went in, right in the top corner, and that was against Italy.
It was the European Championship. It was a backheel with just five minutes left, and I ran out, completely mental, and the whole team came after me, just as crazy, all of them except one, who was running in the other direction. But who cares? I threw myself onto the pitch and everybody piled on top of me, and Henrik Larsson yelled, "Enjoy it!" Just like that! As if he immediately grasped the magnitude of it, and okay, the match ended in a draw. But it felt like we"d won, and we made it into the quarter-final against the Netherlands, and of course that one was tense as well.
The Dutch fans in their orange outfits and hats were booing and jeering at me, as if I were playing in the wrong team, and the match was incredibly close with loads of chances. But it was still 00 at full time, and we went into extra time. We had shots that hit the crossbar and the goalposts. We should have scored several times over. But we ended up having to go into a penalty shootout, and the entire stadium was, like, praying to G.o.d.
There were nerves on all sides, and as usual, many couldn"t even bear to look. Others booed and tried to psych us out. The pressure was incredible. But things got off to a good start. Kim Kllstrm landed his penalty, and so did Henke Larsson. It was 22, and I was up next. I was wearing a black hairband. I had long hair, and gave a little smile, I dunno why. But I felt pretty cool, in spite of everything I was nervous, but even so, there was no sense of panic, nothing like that, not at all, and Edwin van der Sar was in goal. It really should have gone in.
Nowadays when I take a penalty, I know precisely where it"s going to go, and it"s in the goal. But that day I had such a strange feeling, and that feeling hit me just as I approached the ball. It was as if I was just going to shoot, and I did. I just shot, as if it would be a surprise where the ball ended up, and I completely missed. I was completely off target. It was a disaster, and we were out of the tournament Olof Mellberg missed, too and believe me, that"s not a happy memory. It was s.h.i.t. We had a good team. We should have gone much further. But still, those matches set off an entire course of events.
August is an uncertain time. The transfer window closes on the 31st, and there are rumours of transactions buzzing all over the place. People talk about the "silly season". It"s still the pre-season, and the papers haven"t got much else to write about. Is he going to this team? Or that one? How much are the clubs willing to spend? Things get blown out of proportion, a lot of players get stressed out, and it was particularly evident with us at Ajax.
All the young guys at the club wanted to get sold, and people were casting nervous glances at each other. Has he got something in the works? What about him? And why isn"t my agent ringing me? There was a lot of tension and jealousy, and I was waiting and hoping myself, but I still tried to concentrate on football. I remember we played a match against Utrecht, and the last thing I thought would happen was that I"d get subst.i.tuted. But that"s what happened. Koeman waved me over, and I got so furious I even kicked an advertising sign by the side of the pitch, like, what the h.e.l.l are you doing, putting me on the bench?
Even in those days I was in the habit of phoning Mino after matches. It was nice to be able to talk everything over with him and have a little moan about things in general, but this time I really let loose.
"What kind of idiot takes me out of the game? How can he be so stupid?" and even though Mino and I were rough with each other, I was expecting some support in this situation, like, yeah, I agree with you, Koeman must have suffered a brain haemorrhage, poor you.
What Mino said was: "Of course he took you off. You were the worst one on the pitch. You were s.h.i.t."
"What the h.e.l.l are you saying?"
"You were useless. He should"ve put you on the bench sooner."
"Listen," I said.
"What?"
"You can go to h.e.l.l. Both you and the coach."