Zlatan Ibrahimovic (4 Viewers)
- Thread starter Alex-444
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Don't know if this has been posted before - this is the link to his full book translated in English by some Milan fans, some spelling mistakes, but still reads pretty easy. The Juventus part starts at the middle of Chapter 11 and ends somewhere around Chapter 16. Although, Zlatan clearly ain't the brightest, still a lot of interesting things in it, like Trezeguet pushing him to drink vodka after our 2004/05 league triumph 
http://pdfepubebooks1.info/199/index_split_000.html
http://pdfepubebooks1.info/199/index_split_000.html
About Luciano Moggi: "The guy had turned Juventus around. The club had won the league time after time under him. But Luciano Moggi wasn’t exactly known to be Snowwhite. There had been some scandals around him with bribes, doping and trials and shit and rumours about him belonging to the Camorra from Naples. That was bullshit of course. But the guy really looked like a mafioso. He liked cigars and cocky suits and he had no limits as a negotiator. He was the master of deals, and definitely not a harmless counterpart".
"There’s something with Capello, especially when you’re alone with him, that makes you feel small. He grows. You shrink."
Don't know if this has been posted before - this is the link to his full book translated in English by some Milan fans, some spelling mistakes, but still reads pretty easy. The Juventus part starts at the middle of Chapter 11 and ends somewhere around Chapter 16. Although, Zlatan clearly ain't the brightest, still a lot of interesting things in it, like Trezeguet pushing him to drink vodka after our 2004/05 league triumph
http://pdfepubebooks1.info/199/index_split_000.html
http://pdfepubebooks1.info/199/index_split_000.html
never thought nedved was his favourite
Chapter 12
”Ibra, get in here!
Fabio Capello, maybe the most successful coach in Europe the last ten years, was calling for me, and I thought: What have I done now? All the anxiety from my childhood came back, and Capello could make anyone nervous. Wayne Rooney has said that when Capello walks past you in the hall, it kind of feels like you’re dead, and it’s true. He used to just take his coffee and pass you without a look, and it was almost scary. Sometimes he muttered “ciao”. Other times he just disappeared, and it felt like you hadn’t even been there.
I said that the stars in Italy don’t jump just because the coach says so. That doesn’t apply to Capello.
Every player stands in line when he shows up. You behave before Capello, and I know a journalist who asked about this:
“How do you get such a respect from everyone?”
“You don’t get respect. You take it”, Capello answers, and that’s something I’ve remembered.
When Capello got angry you hardly dared to watch him in the eyes, and if he gives you a chance and you don’t take it, you basically have to start selling hot dogs outside the stadium for a living. You don’t go to Capello with your problems, he’s not your friend. He doesn’t talk to the players, not like that. He is sergente di ferro, the sergeant of steel, and it’s not a good sign when he’s calling for you. On the other hand you never know. He breaks you down and builds you up. I remember a training session when we just had started doing some position play. Then Capello whistled his whistle, and shouted:
“Get in. Get out of the pitch”, and no one understood.
“You’ve been slow. You’ve been shit.”
We didn’t get to train more that day, and it felt confusing, but of course, he had a thought. He wanted us to come pumped as warriors the next day, and I liked that style, because like I said, I’m not raised with cutiecutie. I like guys with power and attitude and Capello believed in me.
“You don’t have anything to prove, and know who you are and what you can do”, he said in one of the first days, and that gave me security. I could loosen up a little bit. There had been a big amount pressure. Several papers had questioned the buy and written that I had scored to few goals. Many thought that I was going to be benched. How can Zlatan take place in a squad like this?
“Is Zlatan ready for Italy?” they wrote.
“Is Italy ready for Zlatan?” Mino countered, and that was correctly said.
You should answer with quotes like that. You had to play tough back, and sometimes I wonder: would I have made it without Mino? I don’t think so. If I had arrived to Juventus like I arrive to Ajax, the press would have eaten me. In Italy they’re crazy about football, and if we in Sweden write about the games the day before and after, they go on for the whole week in Italy. It just goes on, and you’re graded all the time. You’re inspected up and down, and before you get used to it it’s rough.
But I had Mino. He was like a wall of defence, and I called him all the time. I mean: Ajax, what was that? A small school in comparison! If I was going to score in training I didn’t have only Cannavaro and Thuram to get through, Buffon was in the goal as well, and no one treated me kindly just because I was new, it was the other way around.
Capello had an assistant named Italo Galbiati. Galbiati was an older man, I called him Old man. He was cool. He and Capello are a little bit of bad cop, good cop. Capello tells you the hard, tough things whilst Galbiati takes care of the rest, and already after the first training session Capello sent me to him:
“Italo, give the kid a hard time!”
The rest of the team had hit the showers, and I was all done. I would have loved to follow the rest of the team. But from the side a goal keeper from the junior’s came, and I started to get it. Italo was going to feed me balls, bam, bam. They came against me from all different angles. There were crosses, passes, he threw the ball, he made one two’s, and I shot against the goal, and was never supposed to leave the box, the penalty area. It was my area, he said. That was the place I was supposed to be and make shots, shoot, and there wasn’t any talks of resting or taking it easy. It was a high tempo.
“Get them, harder, more determined, don’t hesitate”, Italo shouted, and that became a routine, a habit.
Sometimes Del Piero and Trezeguet came down also, but usually it was only me. It was me and Italo, and it was fifty, sixty, a hundred shots towards the goal. Sometimes Capello showed up, and he’s like he is.
“I’m going to beat Ajax out of your body”, he said.
“Alrigh, sure.”
“I don’t need that Dutch style. One, two, one, two, one two’s, make a trick and play technically. Dribble through the whole team. I can make it without all that. I need goals. You get that! I have to get the Italian way in you. You have to get more killer instinct.” It was a process that had already started in me. I had my talks with van Basten, and with Mino. But I still didn’t see me as a real goal getter, despite my place being up top. I was more the guy who should know everything, and there was still a lot of mom’s block and tricks in my head. But under Capello I changed. His toughness infected me and I became less of an artist and more of a slugger who wanted to win at all costs.
Not that I didn’t want to win before. I was born a winner. But still, don’t forget, football had been my way to show myself! The tricks had helped me become someone else than another kid from Rosengård.
It was all the “Oh, oh”, “Wow, look at that!” that had gotten me started. It was the applauses for the tricks that had made me grow, and for a long time I would have seen you as a stupid person if you’d said that an ugly goal was as important as a beautiful one.
But now I started to get it more and more, no one will thank you for your art and back heels if your team loses. No one even cares if you’ve scored a dream goal if your team don’t win, and slowly I became tougher and more of a warrior on the pitch. Of course I didn’t stop with that listen, don’t listen. Didn’t matter how strong and hard Capello was, I sticked to my own stuff. I remember the classes in Italian. It wasn’t always easy with the language. On the field it was never a problem.
Football has its own language. But outside I felt lost at times, and the club sent an Italian teacher to me. I was supposed to meet her two times a week and learn grammar. Grammar? Was I back in school, or what? I couldn’t do it. I told her:
“Keep the money and don’t tell anyone, no your boss, no one. But stay at home. Act like you’ve been here, and please don’t take it personally”, and sure enough, he did like I said. She went and acted. But don’t think that I didn’t care about learning Italian.
I really wanted to learn, and I got it in other ways, in the dressing room and at the hotels, and I could connect the dots easily. I learned fast and I was stupid and cocky enough to dare to talk even if the grammar came out wrong. Even before journalists I started with Italian before I started with English and I think that was appreciated. Here’s a guy, like, who maybe can’t, but he tries, and I did that with almost everything, I listened. I didn’t listen.
But still, in a short time I changed both in the head and body. I remember the first game in Juventus.
It was the twelfth September and we were facing Brescia, and I started on the bench. Up in the honorary section the owner family Agnelli sat and of course, they were checking especially me out: Like, is he worth the money? After the break I came in for Nedved, Nedved who was also Mino’s guy and had been chosen as the best player in Europe the year before and possibly was the biggest training addict I’ve ever met. Nedved was on the bike for an hour before practice on his own. And afterwards he ran as long. He was not an easy player to replace, and it’s true, it’s no catastrophe if the first game is bad. But it’s not going to help you either, and I remember that I ran on the left side and got two defenders against me. The situation seemed locked. But I rushed, and broke through and scored and heard the supporters scream from the stands: “Ibrahimovic, Ibrahimovic!” It was powerful, and it wasn’t going to be the last time.
I was started to get called Ibra then – and it was Moggi who came up with it – or even the Flamingo for a time. I was still kind of skinny. I was hundred ninety six centimetres long but weighed only eighty four kilo, and Capello saw it as to little.
“Have you ever worked out in the gym?” he asked.
“Never”, I said.
I had never even held a barbell, and he treated it as a minor scandal. He told the fitness coach to press me hard in the gym, and for the first time I started to care about what I put in me, alright, maybe it was still too much pasta, that would punish me later. But everything was more accurate in Juventus and I gained weight and became a heavier and stronger player. I Ajax they let the guys do kind of what they wanted. That’s really strange with all the talent in mind! In Italy we ate both before and after the practice and before the games we lived in hotels and had three meals together every day.
I got up to ninety eight kilo at most, but that felt as too much. I became clumsy, and had to do a little less workout and more running. But on the whole I changed to a tougher, faster and better player, and I learned to be completely respect less towards the big stars. It doesn’t pay off to step aside. Capello made me understand that. You have to take your place. The stars shouldn’t hamper you, it’s the opposite. They should trigger you, and I started to grow. I got respect, or rather, I took it. Step by step I became who I am today, the one that steps out from a lost game angry as a mad man and no one dares to come close, and absolutely, it can seem negative. I scare a lot of young players. I scream. I rage.
But I bring that attitude with me since Juventus, and just like Capello I decided to not care about whom people were. Their name could be Zambrotta or Nedved, if they didn’t give it all in practice, they would hear about it. Capello didn’t just beat Ajax out of me. He made me the guy that comes to a club and demands that the league title should be won, no matter that, and that has helped me a lot, no doubt about it. It changed me as a football player.
But it didn’t make me calmer. We had a defender in the team, a French guy named Jonathan Zebina.
He had played in Roma with Capello and won the scudetto with the club in 2001. He was with us now. I don’t think he felt so good. He had personal problems and on training he played aggressively. One day in training he brutally tackled me. I stepped up to him and stood real close:
“If you want to play dirty, tell me, so that I can play dirty back!” Then he head butted me, just bam, and after that it went fast. I didn’t have the time to talk. It was a pure reflex. I hit him and it happened right away. He wasn’t even done with the head butting. But I must have punched hard. He went down in the grass, and I had no idea what I was expecting. A crazy Capello who maybe ran and yelled. But Capello just stood there a bit away from us just ice cold like it didn’t even have anything to do with him. Everyone else was talking: What happened? What is this?
There was buzzing everywhere, and I remember Cannavaro, Cannavaro and I always helped each other.
“Ibra”, he said. “What have you done?” For a moment I thought he was upset.
But then he blinked, like, Zebina deserved that. Cannavaro didn’t like the guy either, not like he had behaved lately, but Lillian Thuran, the French guy, did it in another style.
“Ibra”, he said. “You’re young and stupid. You can’t do that. You’re just dumb.” But he didn’t have the time to say more. A roar echoed over the whole pitch and there was only one person who could scream like that.
“Thuuuuuraaam”, Capello screamed. “Shut up and get away from there”, and obviously, Thuram got away, he became like a little child, and I got also out of there, I needed to cool down.
Two hours later I saw a guy in the massage room who had an ice bag pushed to his face. It was Zebina. I must have punched him really hard. He was still in pain. He was going to have a black eye for a long time, and Moggi fined the both of us. But Capello never did anything. He didn’t even call for a meeting. He just said one thing:
“It was good for the team!”
That was all. He was like that. He was hard. He wanted adrenalin. You were allowed to fight, and the pumped like a bull. But there was one thing you definitely weren’t allowed to do: challenge his authority or behaving with arrogance (ed note: problem with translating again. But we’re not talking about the type of arrogance Ibra is 'famous’ for. But the type of arrogance where you think you can win without giving your best). Then he flipped out. I remember when we were playing a quarter final against Liverpool in the Champions League. We lost by two-zero, and before the game Capello had made the tactics and decided who was going to cover who when Liverpool had a corner. But Lillian Thuram decided to change player. He covered another Liverpool player and on that occasion they scored. In the dressing room afterwards Capello made his ordinary walk up and down while we were all sitting there on the bench in a ring around him and wondered what was going to happen.
“Who told you to change player?” he said to Thuram.
“No one, but I figured it would be better that way”, Thuram answered.
Capello took a couple of breaths.
“Who told you to change player?” he repeated.
“I thought it would be better that way.”
It was the same explanation again, and Capello asked the question for a third time and got the same answer again. Then the outbreak came, the one that had been waiting in him like a bomb.
“Have I told you too change player or what? Is it me or someone else who’s in charge? It’s me, you hear that! I’m the one who tells you what to do. Do you understand that?” Then he kicked the massage bench towards us with a big fucking power, and in times like that no one dared to look up. Everyone is just sitting there around him and stare to the ground, everyone, Trezeguet, Cannavaro, Buffon, every single one. No one moved, and no one would ever think of doing what Thuram did again. No one wanted to meet those raging eyes again. There was a lot of that. It was tough. There weren’t small expectations. But I continued playing good.
Capello had substituted Del Piero to give me a place, and no one had benched Del Piero in ten years time. To bench Del Piero was like putting the symbol of the club on the bench, and that made the fans crazy. They booed Capello and yelled at Del Piero – “Il pinturicchio, il fenomeno vero.” Alessandro Del Piero had won the league seven times with Juventus and had been a key player every year. He had won the Champions League with the club and he was loved by the owners. He was the big star. No, no normal coach bench Del Piero. But Capello wasn’t normal. He didn’t care about history or status. He just picked his team, and I was grateful for that. But it also put pressure on me. I must play especially good when Del Piero was on the bench, and indeed, I heard less and less of his name from the stands. I heard “Ibra, Ibra”, and in December the fans chose me as the player of the month, and that was big.
I was really breaking through in Italy, but still, and I knew that of course, you need so little in football.
One moment you’re a hero, in the next you’re shit. The special training with Galbiati had given results, no doubt about that. By being fed with balls in front of the goal I had become more efficient and tougher in the box. I had a whole new set of situations in my blood, and I didn’t need to think as much, it just happened, bam, bam.
Still, and you don’t forget that: being dangerous in front of goal is a feeling, an instinct. You either have it or you don’t. You can conquer it, sure, but then lose it again when the feeling and the confidence disappears, and I had never seen myself as a goal scorer. I was the player who wanted to make a difference on the pitch. I was the one who wanted to know how to do everything, and sometime in January the flow disappeared.
I didn’t score in five rounds. In three months I only scored once, I don’t know why. It just became like that, and Capello started to attack me. As much as he had built me up before, he was putting me down now. “You haven’t done a shit. You’ve been worthless”, he said, but at the same time, he let me play.
He still had Del Piero on the bench and I guessed that he yelled because he wanted to motivate me, I was hoping that was the case at least. Capello wanted his player to believe in themselves, but they weren’t allowed to get too cocky. He hated that and that’s why he did stuff like that. He builds you up, and breaks you down, and I had no idea what was going on now.
“Ibra, get in here!”
The anxiety of being called to a meeting never end for me, and I started wondering: Have I stolen a bike again? Or head butted the wrong guy? On my way to the dressing room where he stood and waited I tried to think of smart excuses. But it’s hard when you don’t know what it’s all about. I just had to hope for the best, and when I came in Capello had only a towel around him. He had taken a shower. The glasses were fogy, and the dressing room was as worn out as usual. Luciano Moggi loved nice things. But the dressing rooms should be worn out. It was a part of his philosophy. “It’s more important to win than having it nice”, he used to say, and alright, sure, one can agree with that. But if we were four people in the shower at once the water rose on the floor up to the calves, and everyone knew that complaining wouldn’t do any good. Moggi would just see it as a confirmation to his theory:
“You see, you see, it doesn’t need to be fantastic for you to win”, and that’s why it was like it was and Capello came against me half naked in that worn out room, and I wondered once again: What is it?
What have I done to you? There’s something with Capello, especially when you’re alone with him, that makes you feel small. He grows. You shrink.
“Sit down”, he said, and alright, sure, of course, I sat down. In front of me there was an old television with an even older VHS-player and Capello put a video cassette in it.
“You remind me of a player I coached in Milan”, he said.
“I think I know who you’re talking about.”
“You do?”
“I’ve heard it many times.”
“Perfect, and don’t get stressed by the comparison. You’re not a new van Basten. You have your own style, and I see you as a better player. But Marco van Basten had better movement in the box. Here’s a movie where I’ve collected all his goals. Study his movements. Suck them in. Learn from them.” Then Capello got out of there, and I was alone in the dressing room and started to look, and really, it was really van Basten goals, from every corner and angle. The ball was just bombed in and Marco van Basten was there again and again, and I sat there ten minutes, fifteen and wondered when I could go.
Did Capello have anyone who was watching outside the door? It wasn’t impossible. I decide to look through the whole cassette. It was twenty five, thirty minutes long, and then, alright, I thought. Nu it’s enough. I got out of there. I snuck out, and honestly, I don’t have a clue if I had learned anything. But I got the message, it was the same old thing. Capello wanted to make me score goals. I was supposed to get it in my head, in the movements, in my whole system and I knew that it was serious.
We were at the top of the league, alongside Milan, we changed between the number one and two spot and for us to win I needed to continue scoring goals. That was the truth, nothing else, and I remember that I really worked hard up there in the box. Bu I was well marked as well.
The opponent defenders were on me like wolves, and it started to get known that I have a temper. The players and the crowd tried to provoke me all the time with dirty tackles and taunts and shit. Gipsy, stuff about my mom and my family, they shouted everything, and sometimes it got to me. There were some head butts, or something of the kind where I tried to get even. But I play my best game when I’m angry, and everything just let go. The seventeenth April I scored a hattrick against Lecce, and the fans got wild and the journalists wrote:
“They said that he score to few goals. He’s already done fifteen now.” I went to the third spot amongst the top scorers in the league. They talked of me as the most important player for Juventus. There were accolades everywhere, it was “Ibra, Ibra”. But something else was in the air as well.
Catastrophes were luring around the corner.
”Ibra, get in here!
Fabio Capello, maybe the most successful coach in Europe the last ten years, was calling for me, and I thought: What have I done now? All the anxiety from my childhood came back, and Capello could make anyone nervous. Wayne Rooney has said that when Capello walks past you in the hall, it kind of feels like you’re dead, and it’s true. He used to just take his coffee and pass you without a look, and it was almost scary. Sometimes he muttered “ciao”. Other times he just disappeared, and it felt like you hadn’t even been there.
I said that the stars in Italy don’t jump just because the coach says so. That doesn’t apply to Capello.
Every player stands in line when he shows up. You behave before Capello, and I know a journalist who asked about this:
“How do you get such a respect from everyone?”
“You don’t get respect. You take it”, Capello answers, and that’s something I’ve remembered.
When Capello got angry you hardly dared to watch him in the eyes, and if he gives you a chance and you don’t take it, you basically have to start selling hot dogs outside the stadium for a living. You don’t go to Capello with your problems, he’s not your friend. He doesn’t talk to the players, not like that. He is sergente di ferro, the sergeant of steel, and it’s not a good sign when he’s calling for you. On the other hand you never know. He breaks you down and builds you up. I remember a training session when we just had started doing some position play. Then Capello whistled his whistle, and shouted:
“Get in. Get out of the pitch”, and no one understood.
“You’ve been slow. You’ve been shit.”
We didn’t get to train more that day, and it felt confusing, but of course, he had a thought. He wanted us to come pumped as warriors the next day, and I liked that style, because like I said, I’m not raised with cutiecutie. I like guys with power and attitude and Capello believed in me.
“You don’t have anything to prove, and know who you are and what you can do”, he said in one of the first days, and that gave me security. I could loosen up a little bit. There had been a big amount pressure. Several papers had questioned the buy and written that I had scored to few goals. Many thought that I was going to be benched. How can Zlatan take place in a squad like this?
“Is Zlatan ready for Italy?” they wrote.
“Is Italy ready for Zlatan?” Mino countered, and that was correctly said.
You should answer with quotes like that. You had to play tough back, and sometimes I wonder: would I have made it without Mino? I don’t think so. If I had arrived to Juventus like I arrive to Ajax, the press would have eaten me. In Italy they’re crazy about football, and if we in Sweden write about the games the day before and after, they go on for the whole week in Italy. It just goes on, and you’re graded all the time. You’re inspected up and down, and before you get used to it it’s rough.
But I had Mino. He was like a wall of defence, and I called him all the time. I mean: Ajax, what was that? A small school in comparison! If I was going to score in training I didn’t have only Cannavaro and Thuram to get through, Buffon was in the goal as well, and no one treated me kindly just because I was new, it was the other way around.
Capello had an assistant named Italo Galbiati. Galbiati was an older man, I called him Old man. He was cool. He and Capello are a little bit of bad cop, good cop. Capello tells you the hard, tough things whilst Galbiati takes care of the rest, and already after the first training session Capello sent me to him:
“Italo, give the kid a hard time!”
The rest of the team had hit the showers, and I was all done. I would have loved to follow the rest of the team. But from the side a goal keeper from the junior’s came, and I started to get it. Italo was going to feed me balls, bam, bam. They came against me from all different angles. There were crosses, passes, he threw the ball, he made one two’s, and I shot against the goal, and was never supposed to leave the box, the penalty area. It was my area, he said. That was the place I was supposed to be and make shots, shoot, and there wasn’t any talks of resting or taking it easy. It was a high tempo.
“Get them, harder, more determined, don’t hesitate”, Italo shouted, and that became a routine, a habit.
Sometimes Del Piero and Trezeguet came down also, but usually it was only me. It was me and Italo, and it was fifty, sixty, a hundred shots towards the goal. Sometimes Capello showed up, and he’s like he is.
“I’m going to beat Ajax out of your body”, he said.
“Alrigh, sure.”
“I don’t need that Dutch style. One, two, one, two, one two’s, make a trick and play technically. Dribble through the whole team. I can make it without all that. I need goals. You get that! I have to get the Italian way in you. You have to get more killer instinct.” It was a process that had already started in me. I had my talks with van Basten, and with Mino. But I still didn’t see me as a real goal getter, despite my place being up top. I was more the guy who should know everything, and there was still a lot of mom’s block and tricks in my head. But under Capello I changed. His toughness infected me and I became less of an artist and more of a slugger who wanted to win at all costs.
Not that I didn’t want to win before. I was born a winner. But still, don’t forget, football had been my way to show myself! The tricks had helped me become someone else than another kid from Rosengård.
It was all the “Oh, oh”, “Wow, look at that!” that had gotten me started. It was the applauses for the tricks that had made me grow, and for a long time I would have seen you as a stupid person if you’d said that an ugly goal was as important as a beautiful one.
But now I started to get it more and more, no one will thank you for your art and back heels if your team loses. No one even cares if you’ve scored a dream goal if your team don’t win, and slowly I became tougher and more of a warrior on the pitch. Of course I didn’t stop with that listen, don’t listen. Didn’t matter how strong and hard Capello was, I sticked to my own stuff. I remember the classes in Italian. It wasn’t always easy with the language. On the field it was never a problem.
Football has its own language. But outside I felt lost at times, and the club sent an Italian teacher to me. I was supposed to meet her two times a week and learn grammar. Grammar? Was I back in school, or what? I couldn’t do it. I told her:
“Keep the money and don’t tell anyone, no your boss, no one. But stay at home. Act like you’ve been here, and please don’t take it personally”, and sure enough, he did like I said. She went and acted. But don’t think that I didn’t care about learning Italian.
I really wanted to learn, and I got it in other ways, in the dressing room and at the hotels, and I could connect the dots easily. I learned fast and I was stupid and cocky enough to dare to talk even if the grammar came out wrong. Even before journalists I started with Italian before I started with English and I think that was appreciated. Here’s a guy, like, who maybe can’t, but he tries, and I did that with almost everything, I listened. I didn’t listen.
But still, in a short time I changed both in the head and body. I remember the first game in Juventus.
It was the twelfth September and we were facing Brescia, and I started on the bench. Up in the honorary section the owner family Agnelli sat and of course, they were checking especially me out: Like, is he worth the money? After the break I came in for Nedved, Nedved who was also Mino’s guy and had been chosen as the best player in Europe the year before and possibly was the biggest training addict I’ve ever met. Nedved was on the bike for an hour before practice on his own. And afterwards he ran as long. He was not an easy player to replace, and it’s true, it’s no catastrophe if the first game is bad. But it’s not going to help you either, and I remember that I ran on the left side and got two defenders against me. The situation seemed locked. But I rushed, and broke through and scored and heard the supporters scream from the stands: “Ibrahimovic, Ibrahimovic!” It was powerful, and it wasn’t going to be the last time.
I was started to get called Ibra then – and it was Moggi who came up with it – or even the Flamingo for a time. I was still kind of skinny. I was hundred ninety six centimetres long but weighed only eighty four kilo, and Capello saw it as to little.
“Have you ever worked out in the gym?” he asked.
“Never”, I said.
I had never even held a barbell, and he treated it as a minor scandal. He told the fitness coach to press me hard in the gym, and for the first time I started to care about what I put in me, alright, maybe it was still too much pasta, that would punish me later. But everything was more accurate in Juventus and I gained weight and became a heavier and stronger player. I Ajax they let the guys do kind of what they wanted. That’s really strange with all the talent in mind! In Italy we ate both before and after the practice and before the games we lived in hotels and had three meals together every day.
I got up to ninety eight kilo at most, but that felt as too much. I became clumsy, and had to do a little less workout and more running. But on the whole I changed to a tougher, faster and better player, and I learned to be completely respect less towards the big stars. It doesn’t pay off to step aside. Capello made me understand that. You have to take your place. The stars shouldn’t hamper you, it’s the opposite. They should trigger you, and I started to grow. I got respect, or rather, I took it. Step by step I became who I am today, the one that steps out from a lost game angry as a mad man and no one dares to come close, and absolutely, it can seem negative. I scare a lot of young players. I scream. I rage.
But I bring that attitude with me since Juventus, and just like Capello I decided to not care about whom people were. Their name could be Zambrotta or Nedved, if they didn’t give it all in practice, they would hear about it. Capello didn’t just beat Ajax out of me. He made me the guy that comes to a club and demands that the league title should be won, no matter that, and that has helped me a lot, no doubt about it. It changed me as a football player.
But it didn’t make me calmer. We had a defender in the team, a French guy named Jonathan Zebina.
He had played in Roma with Capello and won the scudetto with the club in 2001. He was with us now. I don’t think he felt so good. He had personal problems and on training he played aggressively. One day in training he brutally tackled me. I stepped up to him and stood real close:
“If you want to play dirty, tell me, so that I can play dirty back!” Then he head butted me, just bam, and after that it went fast. I didn’t have the time to talk. It was a pure reflex. I hit him and it happened right away. He wasn’t even done with the head butting. But I must have punched hard. He went down in the grass, and I had no idea what I was expecting. A crazy Capello who maybe ran and yelled. But Capello just stood there a bit away from us just ice cold like it didn’t even have anything to do with him. Everyone else was talking: What happened? What is this?
There was buzzing everywhere, and I remember Cannavaro, Cannavaro and I always helped each other.
“Ibra”, he said. “What have you done?” For a moment I thought he was upset.
But then he blinked, like, Zebina deserved that. Cannavaro didn’t like the guy either, not like he had behaved lately, but Lillian Thuran, the French guy, did it in another style.
“Ibra”, he said. “You’re young and stupid. You can’t do that. You’re just dumb.” But he didn’t have the time to say more. A roar echoed over the whole pitch and there was only one person who could scream like that.
“Thuuuuuraaam”, Capello screamed. “Shut up and get away from there”, and obviously, Thuram got away, he became like a little child, and I got also out of there, I needed to cool down.
Two hours later I saw a guy in the massage room who had an ice bag pushed to his face. It was Zebina. I must have punched him really hard. He was still in pain. He was going to have a black eye for a long time, and Moggi fined the both of us. But Capello never did anything. He didn’t even call for a meeting. He just said one thing:
“It was good for the team!”
That was all. He was like that. He was hard. He wanted adrenalin. You were allowed to fight, and the pumped like a bull. But there was one thing you definitely weren’t allowed to do: challenge his authority or behaving with arrogance (ed note: problem with translating again. But we’re not talking about the type of arrogance Ibra is 'famous’ for. But the type of arrogance where you think you can win without giving your best). Then he flipped out. I remember when we were playing a quarter final against Liverpool in the Champions League. We lost by two-zero, and before the game Capello had made the tactics and decided who was going to cover who when Liverpool had a corner. But Lillian Thuram decided to change player. He covered another Liverpool player and on that occasion they scored. In the dressing room afterwards Capello made his ordinary walk up and down while we were all sitting there on the bench in a ring around him and wondered what was going to happen.
“Who told you to change player?” he said to Thuram.
“No one, but I figured it would be better that way”, Thuram answered.
Capello took a couple of breaths.
“Who told you to change player?” he repeated.
“I thought it would be better that way.”
It was the same explanation again, and Capello asked the question for a third time and got the same answer again. Then the outbreak came, the one that had been waiting in him like a bomb.
“Have I told you too change player or what? Is it me or someone else who’s in charge? It’s me, you hear that! I’m the one who tells you what to do. Do you understand that?” Then he kicked the massage bench towards us with a big fucking power, and in times like that no one dared to look up. Everyone is just sitting there around him and stare to the ground, everyone, Trezeguet, Cannavaro, Buffon, every single one. No one moved, and no one would ever think of doing what Thuram did again. No one wanted to meet those raging eyes again. There was a lot of that. It was tough. There weren’t small expectations. But I continued playing good.
Capello had substituted Del Piero to give me a place, and no one had benched Del Piero in ten years time. To bench Del Piero was like putting the symbol of the club on the bench, and that made the fans crazy. They booed Capello and yelled at Del Piero – “Il pinturicchio, il fenomeno vero.” Alessandro Del Piero had won the league seven times with Juventus and had been a key player every year. He had won the Champions League with the club and he was loved by the owners. He was the big star. No, no normal coach bench Del Piero. But Capello wasn’t normal. He didn’t care about history or status. He just picked his team, and I was grateful for that. But it also put pressure on me. I must play especially good when Del Piero was on the bench, and indeed, I heard less and less of his name from the stands. I heard “Ibra, Ibra”, and in December the fans chose me as the player of the month, and that was big.
I was really breaking through in Italy, but still, and I knew that of course, you need so little in football.
One moment you’re a hero, in the next you’re shit. The special training with Galbiati had given results, no doubt about that. By being fed with balls in front of the goal I had become more efficient and tougher in the box. I had a whole new set of situations in my blood, and I didn’t need to think as much, it just happened, bam, bam.
Still, and you don’t forget that: being dangerous in front of goal is a feeling, an instinct. You either have it or you don’t. You can conquer it, sure, but then lose it again when the feeling and the confidence disappears, and I had never seen myself as a goal scorer. I was the player who wanted to make a difference on the pitch. I was the one who wanted to know how to do everything, and sometime in January the flow disappeared.
I didn’t score in five rounds. In three months I only scored once, I don’t know why. It just became like that, and Capello started to attack me. As much as he had built me up before, he was putting me down now. “You haven’t done a shit. You’ve been worthless”, he said, but at the same time, he let me play.
He still had Del Piero on the bench and I guessed that he yelled because he wanted to motivate me, I was hoping that was the case at least. Capello wanted his player to believe in themselves, but they weren’t allowed to get too cocky. He hated that and that’s why he did stuff like that. He builds you up, and breaks you down, and I had no idea what was going on now.
“Ibra, get in here!”
The anxiety of being called to a meeting never end for me, and I started wondering: Have I stolen a bike again? Or head butted the wrong guy? On my way to the dressing room where he stood and waited I tried to think of smart excuses. But it’s hard when you don’t know what it’s all about. I just had to hope for the best, and when I came in Capello had only a towel around him. He had taken a shower. The glasses were fogy, and the dressing room was as worn out as usual. Luciano Moggi loved nice things. But the dressing rooms should be worn out. It was a part of his philosophy. “It’s more important to win than having it nice”, he used to say, and alright, sure, one can agree with that. But if we were four people in the shower at once the water rose on the floor up to the calves, and everyone knew that complaining wouldn’t do any good. Moggi would just see it as a confirmation to his theory:
“You see, you see, it doesn’t need to be fantastic for you to win”, and that’s why it was like it was and Capello came against me half naked in that worn out room, and I wondered once again: What is it?
What have I done to you? There’s something with Capello, especially when you’re alone with him, that makes you feel small. He grows. You shrink.
“Sit down”, he said, and alright, sure, of course, I sat down. In front of me there was an old television with an even older VHS-player and Capello put a video cassette in it.
“You remind me of a player I coached in Milan”, he said.
“I think I know who you’re talking about.”
“You do?”
“I’ve heard it many times.”
“Perfect, and don’t get stressed by the comparison. You’re not a new van Basten. You have your own style, and I see you as a better player. But Marco van Basten had better movement in the box. Here’s a movie where I’ve collected all his goals. Study his movements. Suck them in. Learn from them.” Then Capello got out of there, and I was alone in the dressing room and started to look, and really, it was really van Basten goals, from every corner and angle. The ball was just bombed in and Marco van Basten was there again and again, and I sat there ten minutes, fifteen and wondered when I could go.
Did Capello have anyone who was watching outside the door? It wasn’t impossible. I decide to look through the whole cassette. It was twenty five, thirty minutes long, and then, alright, I thought. Nu it’s enough. I got out of there. I snuck out, and honestly, I don’t have a clue if I had learned anything. But I got the message, it was the same old thing. Capello wanted to make me score goals. I was supposed to get it in my head, in the movements, in my whole system and I knew that it was serious.
We were at the top of the league, alongside Milan, we changed between the number one and two spot and for us to win I needed to continue scoring goals. That was the truth, nothing else, and I remember that I really worked hard up there in the box. Bu I was well marked as well.
The opponent defenders were on me like wolves, and it started to get known that I have a temper. The players and the crowd tried to provoke me all the time with dirty tackles and taunts and shit. Gipsy, stuff about my mom and my family, they shouted everything, and sometimes it got to me. There were some head butts, or something of the kind where I tried to get even. But I play my best game when I’m angry, and everything just let go. The seventeenth April I scored a hattrick against Lecce, and the fans got wild and the journalists wrote:
“They said that he score to few goals. He’s already done fifteen now.” I went to the third spot amongst the top scorers in the league. They talked of me as the most important player for Juventus. There were accolades everywhere, it was “Ibra, Ibra”. But something else was in the air as well.
Catastrophes were luring around the corner.
No 
Because in the 80's the gypsies from Yugoslavia "occupied" Italy and the Italians used the word zingaro for every Yu guy. After Romania was accepted to EU, it was the Romanian gypsies who emigrated to Italy and filled the country so the Romanians became zingari in Italy.
It actually borders racism when fans at the stadiums call Mutu or Zlatan zingari.
Because in the 80's the gypsies from Yugoslavia "occupied" Italy and the Italians used the word zingaro for every Yu guy. After Romania was accepted to EU, it was the Romanian gypsies who emigrated to Italy and filled the country so the Romanians became zingari in Italy.
It actually borders racism when fans at the stadiums call Mutu or Zlatan zingari.
i liked that chapter.. i really did.
---------- Post added 09.04.2012 at 17:41 ----------
13
CHAPTER 13
I had no idea about the cops and the district attorneys listening in on Moggi’s phone, and I guess that was a good thing. We and Milan were fighting at the top of the table, and I was living with a girl for the first time. Helena had been working too hard. She’d been working at Fly Me in Gothenburg during the days and in restaurants during nights and at the same time she had been studying and travelling back and forth to Malmö.
She’d been working too much and wasn’t feeling well, so I told her: ”Enough of that. Move down here.
Come to me”, and although it was a huge adjustment I think she felt it was a good thing. It was like she could start breathing again.
I had moved out of Inzaghi’s apartment to an amazing flat in the same building by Piazza Castello with high ceilings. It looked a bit like a church and on the ground floor there was the coffee shop Mood where the staff became our friends. They served us breakfast sometimes and even though we didn’t have any kids back then we had Hoffa, the mops, the fat bastard, he was cool. We could get three pizzas for dinner, one for me, one for Helena and one for Hoffa, and he would eat the complete thing, inside out, except the crust; he’d just drool on it and throw it around the flat, thanks for that. He was our fat little baby, and we were great, it was fantastic. But of course, we came from different worlds.
We went to Dubai in business class on one of our vacation trips, and obviously me and Helena knew how to handle ourselves, on the flight you behave and all that. But my family is different, and at six in the morning my kid brother wanted a whiskey, and mom was in the seat in front of him, and mom, she’s great, but you don’t play games with her. She doesn’t like it when we drink alcohol, and considering what we’ve been through you understand that. So she took off her shoe. That was her way of dealing with the problem. She hit and pounded Keki straight in the head with it. Bang, tjoff, ouch, and Keki went mad. He fought back. There was complete chaos in business class at six in the morning and I looked at Helena. She wanted to disappear.
I used to go to practice around a quarter to ten in Turin, but one day I was running late, I was running around our aparment I think we smelled smoke. Helena says so anyway, I don’t know. But I’m sure that when I was leaving and opened the door there was a fire in the hallway. Someone had gathered roses and lit them on fire. Everyone in the building had gas stoves, and in the hallway just outside our door the was a balcony with a gas tube on the wall. It could have ended in disaster. There could have been an explosion. But we got buckets with water and put the fire out, and I just regretted not having opened the door thirty seconds earler. Then I would have caught that idiot in the act and massacred him. Lighting a fire in our house? Sick! And with roses. Roses!
The police never figured out who did it, and at that time the clubs weren’t as careful about security as they are now and we forgot about the incident. You can’t walk around worrying all the time. There were other things to think about. There were new things all the time, and a lot had happened. Early in Turin I was visited by two jerks from Aftonbladet.
This was when I was living at the hotel Le Meridien. Aftonbladet wanted to repair our relationship, they said. I meant money to them, and Mino thought it was time to bury the hatchet. But remember, I don’t forget. Things stick with me. I remember and I’ll respond even if it’s ten years later.
When the guys from Aftonbladet arrived I was up in my room and I think they had been talking with Mino for a while when I came down, and I immediately felt: this isn’t going to work out. A personal ad! A made up police report!! ”Shame on you Zlatan!” all over the country! I didn’t even say hello. I became even more pissed off. What kind of fucking style had they been running? So I started bossing around, and I seriously think I scared them shitless. I even threw a water bottle at their heads.
”If you had come from my areas, you wouldn’t have survived”, I said, and maybe that was a bit harsh.
But I was tired of it and pissed off and it’s probably impossible explaining to you what kind of pressure there was. It wasn’t just the media. It was the fans, the crowds, the coaches, the club management, the teammates, money. I had to perform and if I didn’t score I would hear about it everywhere, at all levels, so I had to have some outlets. I had Mino, Helena, the guys in the team, but there were other things as well, simpler things, like my cars. They gave me a sense of freedom. I got my Ferrari Enzo around this time. The car was part of the negotitations about my conditions. It had been me, Mino and Moggi and Antonio Giraudo, the president, and Roberto Bettega, the club’s international guy, and we were sitting in a room discussing my deal when Mino said:
”Zlatan wants a Ferrari Enzo!”
Everyone just looked at eachother. We didn’t expect anything else. Enzo was Ferrari’s new top car; the coolest car they had ever produced, and it was only made in 390 copies, and we thought that we might be asking for too much. But Moggi and Giraudo seemed to think it was fair. Ferrari are part of the same company group as Juventus. Of course the guy should have an Enzo, kind of.
”No problem. We’ll get you one”, they said, and I thought: Wow, what a club!
But of course, they hadn’t really understood it. So when we had signed, Antonio Giraudo said: ”And this car, it’s the old Ferrari, right?”
I flinched, and looked at Mino.
”No” he said. It’s the new one. The one that’s only manufactured in 390 copies”, and Giraudo replied.
”I think we have a problem”, he said, and we did.
There were only three cars left, and there was a long waiting list for those with some hot shots on it.
What could we do? We called the boss of Ferrari, Luca di Montezemolo, and explained the situation. It was difficult he said, almost impossible. But he gave in eventually. I would get one if I promised never to sell it.
”I will keep it until the day I die”, I said, and honestly, I love that car.
Helena doesn’t like riding it. It’s too wild and jerky for her taste. But I’m crazy about it, and not just because of the usual things: it’s cool, awesome, fast: Here is the guy who made it. The Enzo gives me the feeling that I have to work harder to deserve it. It stops me from being content, and I can look at it and think: If I don’t keep working it’ll be taken away from me. The car is another driving force, a trigger for me.
At other times when I needed to trigger off I had a tattoo made. Tattoos became like a drug for me.
I wanted something new all the time. But they were not any spurs of the moment. Everything was thought through. Still I had been against them at first. Thought it was poor taste or something. But I was tempted. Alexander Östlund helped me getting into it, and the first tattoo was my name, from hip to hip in white. It’s only visible when I’m tanned. It was mostly just a test.
Then I became more daring. I heard the expression ”Only God can judge me”. They could write anything in their papers. Scream anything at the stadium. They still couldn’t get to me. Only God can judge me! I liked it. You have to walk your own road, and I had those words tattooed. I had a dragon made as well, because in japanese culture the dragon is the warrior and I was a warrior.
I had a carp done as well, the fish that goes against the current, and a Buddah-symbol that protects against suffering, and the five elements, water, earth, fire and all that. I had my family tattoed; the men on my right hand, right standing for power, dad, my brothers and later the sons, and the women on the left, left is where the heart is, mom, Sanela, not the half-sisters who had broken off with the family. It felt obvious back then, but later I would think about it, who is family and who isn’t? But that was later.
I was focusing on football.The league win is often a done deal early in spring. Some team has left the others behind. But this year it was a fight up until the end. Both we and Milan had seventy points, and of course the papers were writing a lot. It was all set for a drama. On the 8th of May we were facing eachother at San Siro. it felt like a league final and most people believed in Milan. Not just because they played at home. The first game, at Stadio delle Alpi, had ended 0-0. But Milan had dominated and many viewed Milan as the best team in Europe, despite our strong line-up, and no one was really surprised when Milan advanced to the Champions League final again that spring. The odds were against us, they said, and things hadn’t been made easier after our game against Inter.
It was April 20th, only a few days after my hattrick against Lecce, and I had been praised by everyone, and Mino had warned me that I’d be heavily marked by Inter. I was the star, and Inter would have to try and block or psyche me out.
”If you’re gonna survive, you have to respond with double strength. Otherwise you won’t have a chance”, Mino said, and I replied, as always:
”No problem. I like to play it rough.”
But of course, it was nervous. There was an old hatred between Inter and Juventus and Inter had quite a brutal defense that season. One of them was Marco Materazzi. No one had received more red cards in Serie A than him. Materazzi was known to play aggressively and ugly. A year later he would become famous when he said some really bad things to Zidane during the World Cup final and got head butted in return. Materazzi was all about provoking and playing rough. He was called the butcher sometimes.
Inter also had Ivan Cordoba, a short but athletic colombian, and Sinisa Mihajlovic. Mihajlovic was a serb and there was a lot written about that, that it would be like a balkan war. But that was bullshit.
What happened on the pitch had nothing to do with the war. Me and Mihajlovic became friends later in Inter and I have never cared at all where people are from. I don’t give a shit about ethnic crap, and seriously, how could I? We’re a mess in my family. Dad’s a bosnian, mom from Croatia, and the little brother has a dad who’s a serb. No, no, it had nothing to do with that.
But Mihajlovic was really tough. He was one of the best at shooting free kicks, and he was provoking all the time. He had called Patrick Viera ”nero de merda”, you black fuck, in a Champions League game and there had been a police investigation and accusations about racism. Another time he had kicked and spitted at Adrian Mutu who now just had started playing for us, and he had been suspended for eight games. He had a temper. He could blow up like a bomb. Not that I’m making a big deal of it, not at all. What happens on the pitch stays on the pitch. That’s my philosophy, and honestly, you would be in shock if you knew what’s going on out there, punches, insults, it’s a constant fight, but for us players it’s everyday life, and I’m just mentioning this thing with the Inter defenders so that you’ll understand they’re not guys you play around with. They could play rough and ugly, and I felt immediately, this is brutal, this is not just an ordinary game. There’s hate, there are insults.
There was a lot of bullshit about my family and my honour, and I responded by hitting back hard. It was the only thing I could do. If you fold in a situation like that, you’re crushed. It’s about using your anger to give even more on the field, and I played extremely physical and tough. It shouldn’t be easy facing Zlatan, not for a second, and by that time I had grown quite a bit. I wasn’t the slender Ajax dribbler anymore. I was heavier and faster. I wasn’t an easy catch, not at all, and afterwards Inter’s coach Roberto Mancini said:
”Ibrahimovic is a phenomena, when he plays on this level, he’s impossible to mark.” And the gods should know they tried, they gave me such hard tackles, and I was just as tough in return. I was a wild one. I was ”Il gladiatore”, as the newspapers said, and already in the fourth minute me and Cordoba smashed our heads against eachother and collapsed both of us. I stood up feeling dizzy. Cordoba was bleeding and had to go off to get some stitches. He returned with a band-aid around his head and things didn’t really calm down. Not at all! On the contrary, something serious was building up, and we were looking at eachother with the darkest of eyes. It was a war. There were a lot of nerves and aggressiveness, and in the thirteenth minute me and Mihajlovic fell to the ground after a crash.
For a moment we were confused. Like, what happened? But then we realized we were sitting next to eachother in the grass, and the adrenaline started flowing again, and he moved his head a bit.
I responded by marking a headbutt, it probably looked pretty scary, it was my intention to act threatening, but I barely touched him. Believe me, if I had given him a real headbutt he wouldn’t be standing up. It was more a simple touch, a way of showing: I’m not folding for you, you fuck! But Mihajlovic put his hand up his face and fell to the ground; it was a theatre act of course. He wanted me sent off. But I didn¨t even get a yellow card, not at that point.
The yellow card came a minute later in a fight with Favalli. It was all over an ugly rough game but I played well and was involved in practically all our chances, but Inter’s goalie Francesco Toldo had a great game. He made save after save and we let one goal in. Julio Cruz headed in the net, and we tried everything we could to get back. It was close, but we didn’t succeed and there was war and revenge in the air.
Cordoba wanted to get back at me and he kicked me on the hip and got a yellow. Materazzi tried to psyche me out and Mihajlovic continued with his bad mouthing and ugly tackles and I worked hard. I was pushing myself forward. I fought hard and had a good shot just before the halftime-break.
In the second half I had a long distance shot that hit the outside of the post, just up by the crossbar, and I had a freekick that Toldo saved with an incredible reflex.
But we didn’t score, and with just one minute to go I was met by Cordoba again. We bounced into eachother, and directly after, like in a reflex, I gave him a punch against his chin, or neck. Nothing serious, I thought, it was a part of the fight we were having, and the referee didn’t see it. But it had some consequences. We lost, and only that was difficult. Like the league table looked, that loss could have cost us the scudetto.
But the italian league’s disciplinary committee reviewed the footage of my punch against Cordoba and decided to ban me for three games, and that was like a catastrophe. I would miss the final struggle in the league, and the deciding game against Milan on May 8th, and I thought I had been treated unfairly.
”I’m not being treated fairly”, I told the reporters. All the shit I had to put up with, and I’m the one being punished.
It was tough, and considering how important I was to the team it was a blow to the whole club, and the management appealed and called in star lawyer Luigi Chiappero. Chiappero had defended Juventus against the old doping charges and he claimed not only that my punch had come in a fight about the ball, but also that I had to put up with attacks and insults during the entire game. He even hired a lip reader who tried to figure out what Mihajlovic had yelled at me. But it wasn’t easy. A lot of it was in serbian, so instead Mino went out and said Mihajlovic had said things that were too harsh to be repeated, stuff about my family and my mother. Mihajlovic responded ”Raiola is just a pizza maker.” Mino had never made any pizzas. He had helped with other things at his parents’ restaurant and he replied: ”The best thing about Mihajlovic’s statement is that he proves to us what we already knew, he is not intelligent. He doesn’t even deny insulting Zlatan. He is a racist, and he has shown that before.” It was a mess. There were accusations back and forth, and Luciano Moggi, who wasn’t afraid of anything, hinted at a conspiracy, a coup. The cameras that filmed my punch came from Mediaset, Berlusconi’s company, and Berlusconi owned Milan, Didn’t the footage reach the committee a bit too fast? Even the minister of the interior commented on things, and there were fights in the newspapers every day.
But nothing helped. The suspension was set, and I would miss the important game against Milan.
It had been my season, and I wanted nothing else than being part of winning the league. But now I would see the game from the stands, and that was tough. The pressure was incredible and the bullshit continued from all directions, and now it wasn’t just about my suspension. It was about many things, this and that. It was a circus.
It was Italy, and Juventus issued a ”silenzo stampa”. No one from the club was allowed to speak with media. Nothing, no more fighting about my suspension would interfere with the preparations.
Everyone would be quiet and focus on the game which was viewed as one of the most important ones in Europe that season. Both we and Milan had 76 points then. It was a thriller. The game was the big topic in Italy and everyone agreed, also the bookmakers, Milan were the favourites. There were eighty thousand tickets sold, Milan played at home and I was suspended, I was looked upon as the most important player. Adrian Mutu was also suspended. Zebina and Tacchinardi were injured. We didn’t have our best squad, and Milan had an amazing line-up. Defenders Cafu, Nesta, Stam and Maldini, and Kaka in midfield and Filippo Inzaghi and Shevchenko on top.
I had a bad hunch, and it wasn’t fun reading in the papers that my outburst would cost us the victory in the league. ”He must learn to behave himself, he must calm down,” That kind of talk all the time, even from Capello, and it was fucking shit that I couldn’t play the game.
But the squad was incredibly motivated. The anger over what had happened seemed to trigger everyone, and 27 minutes into the game Del Piero dribbled on the left wing and was stopped by Gattuso, the Milan guy who works harder than anyone else, and the ball flew high, and Del Piero ran after it. He hit a bicycle kick, and the ball flew into the box and found David Trézégued who headed it in the net. But there was still a lot left of the game.
Milan began an incredible pressure, and eleven minutes into the second half Inzaghi was all clear. He shot and Buffon made a save, the ball bounced back to Inzaghi who got a new chance but was stopped on the line by Zambrotta.
There was chance after chance for both teams. Del Piero hit the crossbar and Cafu was calling for a penalty. Things happened constantly. But the result remained. It was 1-0 and all of a sudden we had an advantage for the league victory, and soon after that I got to play again. A weight was lifted off my shoulders and on the 15th of May we would face Parma at home at the delle Alpi, and the pressure on me was huge. Not only because it would be my return after the suspension. Ten leading football papers had voted me as the third best attacker in Europe, after Shevchenko and Ronaldo, and there was even talk about me maybe getting the Ballon d’Or.
Either way many eyes would be on me, especially since Capello had put Trézéguet on the bench, the hero after the Milan game, and it felt like I was forced to perform. I had to be triggered, to a certain limit. There couldn’t be any more outbursts or suspensions, everyone made that perfectly clear for me.
Every single camera at the stadium would be observing me, and when I went out on the field, I could hear the fans singing:
”Ibrahimovic, Ibrahimovic, Ibrahimovic.”
There was like thunder around me, and I really was in the mood to play, and we scored 1-0, and later, in the 23rd minute, after a free kick by Camoranesi the ball came flying towards me in the box and I had been criticized for not being a good header despite my length.
Now I headed it with full force in the net, and it was wonderful. I was back, and only a few minutes before the final whistle, the result board at the stadium lit up; Lecce had equalized to 2-2 against Milan and the scudetto looked like ours.
If we just beat Livorno in the next round we would secure the victory! But we didn’t even have to do that. On May 20th Milan lost a 3-1 lead against Parma, and we were the champions. People were crying in the streets in Turin, and we went by a roofless bus through the city. We could barely move forward.
There was people everywhere, and everyone was singing and cheering and screaming. I felt like a little kid and we went out partying with the whole team, and I rarely drink. I have too many bad memories.
But now I let it all go.
We had won the league, and it was crazy. No Swede had done that since Kurre Hamrin won with Milan in 1968, and there were no discussions about it, I had been very involved. I was voted the best foreign player of the league and the most important one in Juventus. The scudetto was mine, and I drank and drank, and the entire time David Trézéguet was pushing me. More vodka, more shots, he went on, he’s french and quite withdrawn as a person, but he wants to be an an argentinean - he was born in Argentina - and now he let everything loose. Vodka here and vodka there. And I couldn’t help myself I became piss drunk, and when I came home to Piazza Castello everything was spinning, and I thought: I’ll take a shower, maybe that’ll help. But everything kept spinning.
As soon as I moved my head the whole world followed, and in the end I fell asleep in the bathtub.
Helena woke me up, just laughing at me. But I have told her not to ever tell anyone about what happened.
---------- Post added 09.04.2012 at 17:41 ----------
13
CHAPTER 13
I had no idea about the cops and the district attorneys listening in on Moggi’s phone, and I guess that was a good thing. We and Milan were fighting at the top of the table, and I was living with a girl for the first time. Helena had been working too hard. She’d been working at Fly Me in Gothenburg during the days and in restaurants during nights and at the same time she had been studying and travelling back and forth to Malmö.
She’d been working too much and wasn’t feeling well, so I told her: ”Enough of that. Move down here.
Come to me”, and although it was a huge adjustment I think she felt it was a good thing. It was like she could start breathing again.
I had moved out of Inzaghi’s apartment to an amazing flat in the same building by Piazza Castello with high ceilings. It looked a bit like a church and on the ground floor there was the coffee shop Mood where the staff became our friends. They served us breakfast sometimes and even though we didn’t have any kids back then we had Hoffa, the mops, the fat bastard, he was cool. We could get three pizzas for dinner, one for me, one for Helena and one for Hoffa, and he would eat the complete thing, inside out, except the crust; he’d just drool on it and throw it around the flat, thanks for that. He was our fat little baby, and we were great, it was fantastic. But of course, we came from different worlds.
We went to Dubai in business class on one of our vacation trips, and obviously me and Helena knew how to handle ourselves, on the flight you behave and all that. But my family is different, and at six in the morning my kid brother wanted a whiskey, and mom was in the seat in front of him, and mom, she’s great, but you don’t play games with her. She doesn’t like it when we drink alcohol, and considering what we’ve been through you understand that. So she took off her shoe. That was her way of dealing with the problem. She hit and pounded Keki straight in the head with it. Bang, tjoff, ouch, and Keki went mad. He fought back. There was complete chaos in business class at six in the morning and I looked at Helena. She wanted to disappear.
I used to go to practice around a quarter to ten in Turin, but one day I was running late, I was running around our aparment I think we smelled smoke. Helena says so anyway, I don’t know. But I’m sure that when I was leaving and opened the door there was a fire in the hallway. Someone had gathered roses and lit them on fire. Everyone in the building had gas stoves, and in the hallway just outside our door the was a balcony with a gas tube on the wall. It could have ended in disaster. There could have been an explosion. But we got buckets with water and put the fire out, and I just regretted not having opened the door thirty seconds earler. Then I would have caught that idiot in the act and massacred him. Lighting a fire in our house? Sick! And with roses. Roses!
The police never figured out who did it, and at that time the clubs weren’t as careful about security as they are now and we forgot about the incident. You can’t walk around worrying all the time. There were other things to think about. There were new things all the time, and a lot had happened. Early in Turin I was visited by two jerks from Aftonbladet.
This was when I was living at the hotel Le Meridien. Aftonbladet wanted to repair our relationship, they said. I meant money to them, and Mino thought it was time to bury the hatchet. But remember, I don’t forget. Things stick with me. I remember and I’ll respond even if it’s ten years later.
When the guys from Aftonbladet arrived I was up in my room and I think they had been talking with Mino for a while when I came down, and I immediately felt: this isn’t going to work out. A personal ad! A made up police report!! ”Shame on you Zlatan!” all over the country! I didn’t even say hello. I became even more pissed off. What kind of fucking style had they been running? So I started bossing around, and I seriously think I scared them shitless. I even threw a water bottle at their heads.
”If you had come from my areas, you wouldn’t have survived”, I said, and maybe that was a bit harsh.
But I was tired of it and pissed off and it’s probably impossible explaining to you what kind of pressure there was. It wasn’t just the media. It was the fans, the crowds, the coaches, the club management, the teammates, money. I had to perform and if I didn’t score I would hear about it everywhere, at all levels, so I had to have some outlets. I had Mino, Helena, the guys in the team, but there were other things as well, simpler things, like my cars. They gave me a sense of freedom. I got my Ferrari Enzo around this time. The car was part of the negotitations about my conditions. It had been me, Mino and Moggi and Antonio Giraudo, the president, and Roberto Bettega, the club’s international guy, and we were sitting in a room discussing my deal when Mino said:
”Zlatan wants a Ferrari Enzo!”
Everyone just looked at eachother. We didn’t expect anything else. Enzo was Ferrari’s new top car; the coolest car they had ever produced, and it was only made in 390 copies, and we thought that we might be asking for too much. But Moggi and Giraudo seemed to think it was fair. Ferrari are part of the same company group as Juventus. Of course the guy should have an Enzo, kind of.
”No problem. We’ll get you one”, they said, and I thought: Wow, what a club!
But of course, they hadn’t really understood it. So when we had signed, Antonio Giraudo said: ”And this car, it’s the old Ferrari, right?”
I flinched, and looked at Mino.
”No” he said. It’s the new one. The one that’s only manufactured in 390 copies”, and Giraudo replied.
”I think we have a problem”, he said, and we did.
There were only three cars left, and there was a long waiting list for those with some hot shots on it.
What could we do? We called the boss of Ferrari, Luca di Montezemolo, and explained the situation. It was difficult he said, almost impossible. But he gave in eventually. I would get one if I promised never to sell it.
”I will keep it until the day I die”, I said, and honestly, I love that car.
Helena doesn’t like riding it. It’s too wild and jerky for her taste. But I’m crazy about it, and not just because of the usual things: it’s cool, awesome, fast: Here is the guy who made it. The Enzo gives me the feeling that I have to work harder to deserve it. It stops me from being content, and I can look at it and think: If I don’t keep working it’ll be taken away from me. The car is another driving force, a trigger for me.
At other times when I needed to trigger off I had a tattoo made. Tattoos became like a drug for me.
I wanted something new all the time. But they were not any spurs of the moment. Everything was thought through. Still I had been against them at first. Thought it was poor taste or something. But I was tempted. Alexander Östlund helped me getting into it, and the first tattoo was my name, from hip to hip in white. It’s only visible when I’m tanned. It was mostly just a test.
Then I became more daring. I heard the expression ”Only God can judge me”. They could write anything in their papers. Scream anything at the stadium. They still couldn’t get to me. Only God can judge me! I liked it. You have to walk your own road, and I had those words tattooed. I had a dragon made as well, because in japanese culture the dragon is the warrior and I was a warrior.
I had a carp done as well, the fish that goes against the current, and a Buddah-symbol that protects against suffering, and the five elements, water, earth, fire and all that. I had my family tattoed; the men on my right hand, right standing for power, dad, my brothers and later the sons, and the women on the left, left is where the heart is, mom, Sanela, not the half-sisters who had broken off with the family. It felt obvious back then, but later I would think about it, who is family and who isn’t? But that was later.
I was focusing on football.The league win is often a done deal early in spring. Some team has left the others behind. But this year it was a fight up until the end. Both we and Milan had seventy points, and of course the papers were writing a lot. It was all set for a drama. On the 8th of May we were facing eachother at San Siro. it felt like a league final and most people believed in Milan. Not just because they played at home. The first game, at Stadio delle Alpi, had ended 0-0. But Milan had dominated and many viewed Milan as the best team in Europe, despite our strong line-up, and no one was really surprised when Milan advanced to the Champions League final again that spring. The odds were against us, they said, and things hadn’t been made easier after our game against Inter.
It was April 20th, only a few days after my hattrick against Lecce, and I had been praised by everyone, and Mino had warned me that I’d be heavily marked by Inter. I was the star, and Inter would have to try and block or psyche me out.
”If you’re gonna survive, you have to respond with double strength. Otherwise you won’t have a chance”, Mino said, and I replied, as always:
”No problem. I like to play it rough.”
But of course, it was nervous. There was an old hatred between Inter and Juventus and Inter had quite a brutal defense that season. One of them was Marco Materazzi. No one had received more red cards in Serie A than him. Materazzi was known to play aggressively and ugly. A year later he would become famous when he said some really bad things to Zidane during the World Cup final and got head butted in return. Materazzi was all about provoking and playing rough. He was called the butcher sometimes.
Inter also had Ivan Cordoba, a short but athletic colombian, and Sinisa Mihajlovic. Mihajlovic was a serb and there was a lot written about that, that it would be like a balkan war. But that was bullshit.
What happened on the pitch had nothing to do with the war. Me and Mihajlovic became friends later in Inter and I have never cared at all where people are from. I don’t give a shit about ethnic crap, and seriously, how could I? We’re a mess in my family. Dad’s a bosnian, mom from Croatia, and the little brother has a dad who’s a serb. No, no, it had nothing to do with that.
But Mihajlovic was really tough. He was one of the best at shooting free kicks, and he was provoking all the time. He had called Patrick Viera ”nero de merda”, you black fuck, in a Champions League game and there had been a police investigation and accusations about racism. Another time he had kicked and spitted at Adrian Mutu who now just had started playing for us, and he had been suspended for eight games. He had a temper. He could blow up like a bomb. Not that I’m making a big deal of it, not at all. What happens on the pitch stays on the pitch. That’s my philosophy, and honestly, you would be in shock if you knew what’s going on out there, punches, insults, it’s a constant fight, but for us players it’s everyday life, and I’m just mentioning this thing with the Inter defenders so that you’ll understand they’re not guys you play around with. They could play rough and ugly, and I felt immediately, this is brutal, this is not just an ordinary game. There’s hate, there are insults.
There was a lot of bullshit about my family and my honour, and I responded by hitting back hard. It was the only thing I could do. If you fold in a situation like that, you’re crushed. It’s about using your anger to give even more on the field, and I played extremely physical and tough. It shouldn’t be easy facing Zlatan, not for a second, and by that time I had grown quite a bit. I wasn’t the slender Ajax dribbler anymore. I was heavier and faster. I wasn’t an easy catch, not at all, and afterwards Inter’s coach Roberto Mancini said:
”Ibrahimovic is a phenomena, when he plays on this level, he’s impossible to mark.” And the gods should know they tried, they gave me such hard tackles, and I was just as tough in return. I was a wild one. I was ”Il gladiatore”, as the newspapers said, and already in the fourth minute me and Cordoba smashed our heads against eachother and collapsed both of us. I stood up feeling dizzy. Cordoba was bleeding and had to go off to get some stitches. He returned with a band-aid around his head and things didn’t really calm down. Not at all! On the contrary, something serious was building up, and we were looking at eachother with the darkest of eyes. It was a war. There were a lot of nerves and aggressiveness, and in the thirteenth minute me and Mihajlovic fell to the ground after a crash.
For a moment we were confused. Like, what happened? But then we realized we were sitting next to eachother in the grass, and the adrenaline started flowing again, and he moved his head a bit.
I responded by marking a headbutt, it probably looked pretty scary, it was my intention to act threatening, but I barely touched him. Believe me, if I had given him a real headbutt he wouldn’t be standing up. It was more a simple touch, a way of showing: I’m not folding for you, you fuck! But Mihajlovic put his hand up his face and fell to the ground; it was a theatre act of course. He wanted me sent off. But I didn¨t even get a yellow card, not at that point.
The yellow card came a minute later in a fight with Favalli. It was all over an ugly rough game but I played well and was involved in practically all our chances, but Inter’s goalie Francesco Toldo had a great game. He made save after save and we let one goal in. Julio Cruz headed in the net, and we tried everything we could to get back. It was close, but we didn’t succeed and there was war and revenge in the air.
Cordoba wanted to get back at me and he kicked me on the hip and got a yellow. Materazzi tried to psyche me out and Mihajlovic continued with his bad mouthing and ugly tackles and I worked hard. I was pushing myself forward. I fought hard and had a good shot just before the halftime-break.
In the second half I had a long distance shot that hit the outside of the post, just up by the crossbar, and I had a freekick that Toldo saved with an incredible reflex.
But we didn’t score, and with just one minute to go I was met by Cordoba again. We bounced into eachother, and directly after, like in a reflex, I gave him a punch against his chin, or neck. Nothing serious, I thought, it was a part of the fight we were having, and the referee didn’t see it. But it had some consequences. We lost, and only that was difficult. Like the league table looked, that loss could have cost us the scudetto.
But the italian league’s disciplinary committee reviewed the footage of my punch against Cordoba and decided to ban me for three games, and that was like a catastrophe. I would miss the final struggle in the league, and the deciding game against Milan on May 8th, and I thought I had been treated unfairly.
”I’m not being treated fairly”, I told the reporters. All the shit I had to put up with, and I’m the one being punished.
It was tough, and considering how important I was to the team it was a blow to the whole club, and the management appealed and called in star lawyer Luigi Chiappero. Chiappero had defended Juventus against the old doping charges and he claimed not only that my punch had come in a fight about the ball, but also that I had to put up with attacks and insults during the entire game. He even hired a lip reader who tried to figure out what Mihajlovic had yelled at me. But it wasn’t easy. A lot of it was in serbian, so instead Mino went out and said Mihajlovic had said things that were too harsh to be repeated, stuff about my family and my mother. Mihajlovic responded ”Raiola is just a pizza maker.” Mino had never made any pizzas. He had helped with other things at his parents’ restaurant and he replied: ”The best thing about Mihajlovic’s statement is that he proves to us what we already knew, he is not intelligent. He doesn’t even deny insulting Zlatan. He is a racist, and he has shown that before.” It was a mess. There were accusations back and forth, and Luciano Moggi, who wasn’t afraid of anything, hinted at a conspiracy, a coup. The cameras that filmed my punch came from Mediaset, Berlusconi’s company, and Berlusconi owned Milan, Didn’t the footage reach the committee a bit too fast? Even the minister of the interior commented on things, and there were fights in the newspapers every day.
But nothing helped. The suspension was set, and I would miss the important game against Milan.
It had been my season, and I wanted nothing else than being part of winning the league. But now I would see the game from the stands, and that was tough. The pressure was incredible and the bullshit continued from all directions, and now it wasn’t just about my suspension. It was about many things, this and that. It was a circus.
It was Italy, and Juventus issued a ”silenzo stampa”. No one from the club was allowed to speak with media. Nothing, no more fighting about my suspension would interfere with the preparations.
Everyone would be quiet and focus on the game which was viewed as one of the most important ones in Europe that season. Both we and Milan had 76 points then. It was a thriller. The game was the big topic in Italy and everyone agreed, also the bookmakers, Milan were the favourites. There were eighty thousand tickets sold, Milan played at home and I was suspended, I was looked upon as the most important player. Adrian Mutu was also suspended. Zebina and Tacchinardi were injured. We didn’t have our best squad, and Milan had an amazing line-up. Defenders Cafu, Nesta, Stam and Maldini, and Kaka in midfield and Filippo Inzaghi and Shevchenko on top.
I had a bad hunch, and it wasn’t fun reading in the papers that my outburst would cost us the victory in the league. ”He must learn to behave himself, he must calm down,” That kind of talk all the time, even from Capello, and it was fucking shit that I couldn’t play the game.
But the squad was incredibly motivated. The anger over what had happened seemed to trigger everyone, and 27 minutes into the game Del Piero dribbled on the left wing and was stopped by Gattuso, the Milan guy who works harder than anyone else, and the ball flew high, and Del Piero ran after it. He hit a bicycle kick, and the ball flew into the box and found David Trézégued who headed it in the net. But there was still a lot left of the game.
Milan began an incredible pressure, and eleven minutes into the second half Inzaghi was all clear. He shot and Buffon made a save, the ball bounced back to Inzaghi who got a new chance but was stopped on the line by Zambrotta.
There was chance after chance for both teams. Del Piero hit the crossbar and Cafu was calling for a penalty. Things happened constantly. But the result remained. It was 1-0 and all of a sudden we had an advantage for the league victory, and soon after that I got to play again. A weight was lifted off my shoulders and on the 15th of May we would face Parma at home at the delle Alpi, and the pressure on me was huge. Not only because it would be my return after the suspension. Ten leading football papers had voted me as the third best attacker in Europe, after Shevchenko and Ronaldo, and there was even talk about me maybe getting the Ballon d’Or.
Either way many eyes would be on me, especially since Capello had put Trézéguet on the bench, the hero after the Milan game, and it felt like I was forced to perform. I had to be triggered, to a certain limit. There couldn’t be any more outbursts or suspensions, everyone made that perfectly clear for me.
Every single camera at the stadium would be observing me, and when I went out on the field, I could hear the fans singing:
”Ibrahimovic, Ibrahimovic, Ibrahimovic.”
There was like thunder around me, and I really was in the mood to play, and we scored 1-0, and later, in the 23rd minute, after a free kick by Camoranesi the ball came flying towards me in the box and I had been criticized for not being a good header despite my length.
Now I headed it with full force in the net, and it was wonderful. I was back, and only a few minutes before the final whistle, the result board at the stadium lit up; Lecce had equalized to 2-2 against Milan and the scudetto looked like ours.
If we just beat Livorno in the next round we would secure the victory! But we didn’t even have to do that. On May 20th Milan lost a 3-1 lead against Parma, and we were the champions. People were crying in the streets in Turin, and we went by a roofless bus through the city. We could barely move forward.
There was people everywhere, and everyone was singing and cheering and screaming. I felt like a little kid and we went out partying with the whole team, and I rarely drink. I have too many bad memories.
But now I let it all go.
We had won the league, and it was crazy. No Swede had done that since Kurre Hamrin won with Milan in 1968, and there were no discussions about it, I had been very involved. I was voted the best foreign player of the league and the most important one in Juventus. The scudetto was mine, and I drank and drank, and the entire time David Trézéguet was pushing me. More vodka, more shots, he went on, he’s french and quite withdrawn as a person, but he wants to be an an argentinean - he was born in Argentina - and now he let everything loose. Vodka here and vodka there. And I couldn’t help myself I became piss drunk, and when I came home to Piazza Castello everything was spinning, and I thought: I’ll take a shower, maybe that’ll help. But everything kept spinning.
As soon as I moved my head the whole world followed, and in the end I fell asleep in the bathtub.
Helena woke me up, just laughing at me. But I have told her not to ever tell anyone about what happened.
the saddest part is chapter 14-15
the true colors of ibrahimovic...
Chapter 14
Moggi was like he was, but people had respect for him, and it felt good to talk to him. He made things happen. He was straight forward. He had power and he understood things right away. When I was going to negotiate for my contract for the first time it was an important thing for me obviously. I was hoping for a better contract, and I really didn’t want to provoke him, rather do the nice style and treat him like the big shot he was.
It was just that: I had Mino with me, and Mino doesn’t exactly take a bow. He’s insane. He just stepped into Moggi’s office and sat on his chair and put his feet on the table in the most nonchalant way.
“For fuck sake”, I said. “He’ll come soon. Don’t mess my contract up. Sit here with me.”
“Go and fuck yourself and be quiet”, he said, and honestly I hadn’t expected anything else.
Mino is like that, and I knew that the guy could negotiate. He was a master at it. But I still got nervous that he might mess things up for me, and it really didn’t feel good when Moggi stepped in with a cigar and the whole thing and roared:
“What the fuck, are sitting in my chair?”
“Sit down so that we can start talking!” And of course, Mino knew what he was doing, they knew each other, him and Moggi.
They had a whole story with disrespectful stuff like that, and I got a much better contract. But better yet I got a promise of another negotiation. If I continued to play good and if I remained as important I would become the best paid player, Moggi promised and I was satisfied. But then the mess started, and that was the first sign that something wasn’t right.
The second year I often lived with Adrian Mutu at hotels and camps, and then I really didn’t need to have a boring time. Adrian Mutu is Romanian, but he came to Italy and Inter 2000 already and he knew the language and all that and was a big help for me. But the guy had also partied. The stories he had! I laid there in the hotel room and just laughed at all of them. It was sick. When he was bought by Chelsea he partied all the time. But of course it didn’t work out for him in the long run. He got caught with cocaine in his blood and got fired by Chelsea and suspended and mixed up in a process with big indemnity. But when we lived together he had received treatment and was calm and clean again, and we could laugh at the whole incident. But you get it, I didn’t have much to come with on that front. What was falling asleep in the bath tub once?
And now Patrick Vieira also arrived to the club, and I can tell you, it felt right away, this is a tough type, and it was certainly not a coincidence that we got in a fight at training. I don’t exactly go for the weak ones. Against that type of persons I put hard against hard, and in Juventus I had become worse than ever.
I was a warrior, and this time I was running on the field and Vieira had the ball.
“Give me the fucking ball”, I shouted, and of course, I knew exactly who he was then.
Patrick Vieira had been Arsenal’s captain. He had won three Premier League titles with the team and had become world champion and champion of Europe with France, he wasn’t a nobody, not at all, but I shouted sharply at him. I was in a good spot, and I mean, this is football on the highest level, we’re not supposed to wipe each other’s asses.
“Shut up and run”, he sputtered back.
“Just pass me the ball and I’ll be quiet”, I answered, and then we got into each others faces, people had to take us apart.
But honestly, it was nothing, just evidence that we both were winners. You can’t be kind in this sport.
Patrick Vieira if anyone knew that. He’s the type that gives everything in every situation, and I saw how he made the whole team better. There are not many football players today that I have such respect for.
There was a wonderful quality in his game and it was incredible to have him and Nedved behind me in midfield, and I started my second season in Juventus well.
Against Roma I got a ball from Emerson just at the centre of the pitch, but I never took it down. I back heeled it over the Roma defender Samuel Kuffour. I hit it high and long because I saw that Roma’s half of the pitch was empty, and I ran after it. I went away like an arrow and Kuffour tried to hang with me. But he didn’t stand a chance, he pulled my shirt and fell, and I took the ball down on half volley, it bounced around my feet and the goal keeper, Doni, rushed out and then I shot the ball, bang, a hard shot that bombed into the goal. “Mama mia, what a goal”, like I told the journalists afterwards, and it really looked like becoming a great year.
I got the golden ball in Sweden, the award to the best player of the year, and that was of course fun, but complicated. Aftonbladet arranged the event, and I had not forgotten. I stayed at home. Turin arranged the winter Olympics the next year. There were people everywhere and parties and concerts at Piazza Castello and at night me and Helena stood on the terrace and watched. We had it nice and decided to get children, or I don’t know about decided. We just let it happen, you should plan such a thing, I believe.
It should just happen. Who knows when you’re ready? Sometimes we went to Malmö to visit my family.
Helena had sold her farm then and we lived often at my mom’s place, in the house I’d bought for her in Svågertork, and sometimes I played football on her lawn. One day I made a shot.
I hit the ball like hell, and the ball went through the fence. It made a hole and mom wanted to kill me obviously, that women has a temper. “Now you’ll just get out of here and buy me a new fence. Just go”, she sputtered, and of course, in situations like this there’s only one way out: you obey. I and Helena took the car to Bauhaus. But sadly, you couldn’t buy separate boards. We had to take a whole fence, big as a little house, and I couldn’t fit it into the car, not a chance. So I took it on my back and head for two kilometres. It was like when dad carried my bed, and I got there all done, but mom was happy, and that was the most important thing, and like I’ve said, we had it good.
But on the pitch I started to lose some of my flow. I started to feel too heavy. I was up in ninety eight kilo and all of it wasn’t muscles. I had often eaten pasta two times a day, and that was too much I had learned, and I took the gym-training and diet down a notch and tried to get back to form. But there were some problems. What was Moggi’s problem for example? Was he playing a game? I didn’t get it.
We were going to negotiate a new contract. But Moggi delayed it. He came with excuses. He had always been a player full of tricks. But now he was totally hopeless. Next week, he said. Next month. There was always something. It was back and forth and eventually I got mad. I told Mino:
“Fuck it. Let’s sign it now! I don’t want to argue anymore.” We had then gotten a deal that looked pretty good and I thought, it’s enough now, I wanted to get rid of it. But even then nothing happened, or yeah, Moggi notified, fine, good, we’ll sign in a couple of days.
First we were going to play Champions League against Bayern. It was at home in Turin, and during the game I met a central defender named Valerien ismael. He was on me all the time, and after dragging me down in quite a dirty way I kicked him and got a yellow card. But it didn’t stop there.
In the ninetieth minute I was down in the penalty area and of course, I should have stayed calm. We were up two-one and the game was soon over. But I was irritated against Ismael and clipped him and got another yellow card. I was show out, and of course, Capello wasn’t happy. He yelled. That was totally fine.
It was unnecessary and stupid, and it was Capello’s job to teach me a lesson.
But Moggi, what did have to do with it? He explained that my contract was no longer valid. I had blown my chance, he said and I got furious. Was I going to lose my deal because of one single mistake?
“Tell Moggi that I’ll never sign a contract no matter what he gives me”, I told Mino. “I want to be sold.”
“Think of what you’re saying”, Mino said.
I had thought. And I refused to accept, and it meat war, nothing else. It was enough now, and that’s why Mino went to Moggi, and said how it was: Watch out for Zlatan, he’s stubborn, crazy, you’ll risk losing him, and two weeks later Moggi really showed up with the contract. We hadn’t believed anything else. He didn’t want to lose me. But still, it wasn’t over yet. Mino booked meetings. Moggi delayed them, and came with excuses. He was going to travel, it was this and that, and I remember it so well: Mino called me.
“Something’s not right”, he said.
“What do you mean? What?”
“I can’t put my finger on it. But Moggi is acting strange.” Soon it wasn’t only Mino who knew about it. There was something in the air, and it wasn’t about Lapo Elkann, even though that also was big. Lapo Elkann was the grand son to Gianni Agnelli. I had met him a couple of times. We didn’t connect. A guy like that is on his own planet. He was a playboy and a fashion icon and had hardly anything to do with running Juventus. It was Moggi and Giraudo who ran things, not the owners. But of course, the kid was a symbol for the club and Fiat, and he was later listed as one of the best dressed in the world, and all that. His scandal became a big thing.
Lapo Elkann took an overdose of cocaine, and not with anyone: he took it with transsexual prostitutes in an apartment in Turin, and he was taken to hospital with an ambulance where he laid there in coma.
The news was all over the place in Italy, and Del Piero and some more players went out in media and expressed their support, and of course, it had nothing to do with football. But afterwards it was still seen as the reason to the start of the catastrophe for the club.
Exactly when Moggi himself got to know about the suspicions I don’t know. But the cops must have started to interrogate him way before the story exploded in media, and as I understand it, everything had started with the old doping scandal – the one that Juventus actually was discharged for. In relation with that the police had bugged Moggi’s phone and then got to hear some things that didn’t have to do anything with doping, but that still felt suspicious. Moggi had apparently tried to get the “right” referees to the Juventus games, and that’s why the continued taping his phone, and apparently a lot if shit came forward, at least it seemed like that when all of it was put together, even though I myself don’t give much for those evidence. Most of it was because Juventus was number one. I’m sure of that.
As always when someone is dominating, other want to drag them in the dirt, and it doesn’t surprise me at all that the accusations came when we were winning the league. It looked bad, we got that right away.
Media treated it like a world war. But it was bullshit, like I said, most of it. Referees favouring us? Come on! We had fought out there.
We had risked our legs and didn’t fucking have the referees with us, not a chance. I had never had them on my side, honestly. I’m too big for that. If a guy slam in my I stand still, but if I rumble in him he flies four metres. I have my body and my playing style against me.
I have never been friends with the referee’s, no one in our team were. No, no, we were the best and were going to be brought down. It was the truth, and there were also a lot of shady stuff in that inquiry. For example it was led by Guido Rossi, a guy with close ties to Inter, and Inter got strangely away from the entanglement.
A lot of it wasn’t brought up or it was exaggerated so that Juventus could be the big bad guys. Milan, Lazio and Fiorentina and the referee union was also punished. But it was the worst for us because Moggi’s phone was tapped upside down. Still the evidence didn’t look so strong. Alright, it didn’t really look good, that’s true.
It sounded like Moggi was putting pressure on the Italian referee boss to get good guys to the games and you can hear how he yells at them who had been bad, for example someone named Fandel who was our referee in our fight against Djurgården. Some other referees had been said to been kept in the dressing rooms and got an ear full after we lost against Reggina in November 2004, and then it was a thing with the pope. The pope was dying. There wasn’t going to be any games played then. The country was going to mourn their father. But it was said that Moggi even had called the domestic minister and asked for games to be played anyway, according to what’s been said, it was because our opponent had two players injured and two suspended. I have no idea how much truth is in that. Stuff like this probably happen all the time in the branch, and honestly, who the fuck doesn’t yell at the referees? Who doesn’t work for their club?
It was a mess, it was called Moggiopoli often, like Moggigate, and of course my name came up. I hadn’t expected anything else. Of course they would have brought in the best player as well. There were talks that Moggi had talked about my fight with van der Vaart and said something about me doing the right thing to get out from the club. The kid has balls, he said, or something of the sort. Some even said that he had encouraged me to get in a fight, and that got people interested of course. It would be a typical Moggi thing, the thought, and a typical Ibra thing as well probably. But it was bullshit of course. The fight was something between me and van der Vaart, and no one else.
But at the time you could say anything and on the morning of the eighteenth May I got a phone call.
Me and Helena were in Monte Carlo then with Alexander Östlund and his family, and got to hear on the phone that the police was outside our door. The police wanted to come in. They had even orders to make a search in my apartment, and honestly, what could I do? I got out of there right away. I drove to Turin in an hour and met the cops outside, and I have to say, they were gentlemen. They were only doing their job. But that doesn’t mean it was a pleasant thing. They were going to go through all my payments from Juventus, like I was a criminal or something, and they asked me if I had taken money under the table, and I told them like it was: “Never!” and then they looked around. Eventually I told them:
“Is this what you’re searching for?”
I gave them mine and Helena’s bank papers and they were satisfied with that. They said thank you and good buy, like, we admire your game. Juventus management, Giraudo, Bettega and Moggi resigned in that time, and it felt strange. They were crashed down in the shit. Moggi told the newspapers: “I miss my soul, it’s been killed.”
The next day the Juventus stock crashed in the Milano market and we had a crisis meeting in our gym, I won’t ever forget it.
Moggi came down. On the surface he looked like usual, nice clothes and dominant. But it was some other Moggi. At that time some new scandal about his son had also been discovered, something about unfaithfulness, and he talked about it, and about how demeaning it was, and I remember that I agreed with him. It was personal stuff and didn’t have anything to do with football. But it wasn’t what touched me the most.
He started to cry, him of all people. I felt in my stomach. I had never seen him weak before. That man always had control. He had power all over him. But then... how can I explain? It wasn’t a long time ago he had bossed me around and dismissed my contract and all that. But now suddenly I was supposed to feel sorry for him. The world was upside down, and maybe I shouldn’t have cared so much, and say something like: You have yourself to blame. But I really felt bad for Moggi. It hurt me to see a man like him fall, and afterwards I thought a lot about that, and not the usual: “nothing can be taken for granted!” I was also starting to understand things better. Why did he delay our negotiations all the time? Why did he make such a fuss out of it?
Was it to protect me?
I started to believe that. I didn’t know. But I chose to interpret it like that. He had to know what was happening. He had to know that Juventus wasn’t going to be the same team as before, and that I would have been fucked if he had tied me to the club. Then I would have been stuck with the club no matter what. I think that he thought about stuff like that. Moggi maybe didn’t always put the brake on when it was red, of careful with every rule. But he was a skillful man when it came to his job, and he took care of his players, I know that, and without him my career and been at a dead end. I thank him for that, and when the whole world is criticizing him, I stand by his side. I liked Luciano Moggi.
Juventus was a sinking ship, and there were talks about the club being relegated to Serie B or Serie C.
It was that level of craziness. But still you couldn’t understand it, not right away. Were we who had built our team and won two league titles in a row lose everything because of something that didn’t mean anything for our game? It was just too much, and it looked like it took some time before the management understood how serious it was. I remember a early call from Alessio Secco.
Alessio Secco was my old team manager. He was the one who had called me and booked the trainings:
“We train tomorrow at ten! Be there on time.” That type of talk! And now suddenly he was the new director, it was sick, and I had a tough time taking him seriously. But in the first call he gave me an opening:
“If you get an offer, Zlatan, take it. That’s my recommendation to you.” That was on the other hand the last kind thing I heard. After that they got tough and absolutely, you can understand that. One after one the players got away, Thuram and Zambrotta to Barcelona, Cannavaro and Emerson to Real Madrid, Patrick Vieira to Inter, and every one of us who were left called our agents:
“Sell us, sell us. What are our options?”
There was desperation in the air. And I didn’t hear more comments like the one from Alessio Secco. Now the club was fighting for its life.
The management did everything to keep us who were left and use every loop hole that was in the contracts. It was a nightmare. I was coming up in my career. I was having my break through. Would everything fall now? It was a worried time, and I felt more and more every day: I was going to fight.
No way, I wasn’t going to sacrifice a year in division two, if you can call it one year, it would be more, I understood that: one year to get back up, another year or two to get back to the top and get a CL spot, and even then we would probably not have a great team. My best years as a football player was being risked and I told Mino time after time:
“Do whatever you can. Take me away from here.”
“I’m working on it.”
“You better.”
It was the June of 2006. Helena was pregnant and I was happy for it. The child was supposed to come at the end of September, but other than that I was in a no man’s land. What was going to happen? I didn’t know a thing. At this time I was at camp with the NT before world cup that was going to be held in Germany that summer. The whole family was going to be there; mom, dad, Sapko, Sanela, her husband and also Keki, and as usual I was the one who was going to fix everything, with hotel, travels, money and rental cars and all that.
I got on my nerves pretty early, and in the last minute my dad dropped out, it was the usual thing, and there was a lot of fuss about his tickets: What should we do with them? Who’s going to get them instead?
No one can say that I got more balanced by all this, and I also started to feel my groin, the same shit that I was operated for in Ajax, and I talked with the NT management about it.
But we decided that I was going to play. I have a fundamental principle; if I play bad I don’t blame any injuries. It’s just silly. I mean, if you’re not good because of an injury, why are you playing then? It gets wrong no matter how you answer. You just have to suck it up and keep going, but it’s true, it was unusually hard at that time, and at the fourteenth of July the last sentence came from Italy.
They took two league titles from us and we lost our CL spot, but above all: we were relegated to Serie B
and was going to start the season with a bunch of minus points, maybe as much as thirty, and I was still on the sinking ship.
the true colors of ibrahimovic...
Chapter 14
Moggi was like he was, but people had respect for him, and it felt good to talk to him. He made things happen. He was straight forward. He had power and he understood things right away. When I was going to negotiate for my contract for the first time it was an important thing for me obviously. I was hoping for a better contract, and I really didn’t want to provoke him, rather do the nice style and treat him like the big shot he was.
It was just that: I had Mino with me, and Mino doesn’t exactly take a bow. He’s insane. He just stepped into Moggi’s office and sat on his chair and put his feet on the table in the most nonchalant way.
“For fuck sake”, I said. “He’ll come soon. Don’t mess my contract up. Sit here with me.”
“Go and fuck yourself and be quiet”, he said, and honestly I hadn’t expected anything else.
Mino is like that, and I knew that the guy could negotiate. He was a master at it. But I still got nervous that he might mess things up for me, and it really didn’t feel good when Moggi stepped in with a cigar and the whole thing and roared:
“What the fuck, are sitting in my chair?”
“Sit down so that we can start talking!” And of course, Mino knew what he was doing, they knew each other, him and Moggi.
They had a whole story with disrespectful stuff like that, and I got a much better contract. But better yet I got a promise of another negotiation. If I continued to play good and if I remained as important I would become the best paid player, Moggi promised and I was satisfied. But then the mess started, and that was the first sign that something wasn’t right.
The second year I often lived with Adrian Mutu at hotels and camps, and then I really didn’t need to have a boring time. Adrian Mutu is Romanian, but he came to Italy and Inter 2000 already and he knew the language and all that and was a big help for me. But the guy had also partied. The stories he had! I laid there in the hotel room and just laughed at all of them. It was sick. When he was bought by Chelsea he partied all the time. But of course it didn’t work out for him in the long run. He got caught with cocaine in his blood and got fired by Chelsea and suspended and mixed up in a process with big indemnity. But when we lived together he had received treatment and was calm and clean again, and we could laugh at the whole incident. But you get it, I didn’t have much to come with on that front. What was falling asleep in the bath tub once?
And now Patrick Vieira also arrived to the club, and I can tell you, it felt right away, this is a tough type, and it was certainly not a coincidence that we got in a fight at training. I don’t exactly go for the weak ones. Against that type of persons I put hard against hard, and in Juventus I had become worse than ever.
I was a warrior, and this time I was running on the field and Vieira had the ball.
“Give me the fucking ball”, I shouted, and of course, I knew exactly who he was then.
Patrick Vieira had been Arsenal’s captain. He had won three Premier League titles with the team and had become world champion and champion of Europe with France, he wasn’t a nobody, not at all, but I shouted sharply at him. I was in a good spot, and I mean, this is football on the highest level, we’re not supposed to wipe each other’s asses.
“Shut up and run”, he sputtered back.
“Just pass me the ball and I’ll be quiet”, I answered, and then we got into each others faces, people had to take us apart.
But honestly, it was nothing, just evidence that we both were winners. You can’t be kind in this sport.
Patrick Vieira if anyone knew that. He’s the type that gives everything in every situation, and I saw how he made the whole team better. There are not many football players today that I have such respect for.
There was a wonderful quality in his game and it was incredible to have him and Nedved behind me in midfield, and I started my second season in Juventus well.
Against Roma I got a ball from Emerson just at the centre of the pitch, but I never took it down. I back heeled it over the Roma defender Samuel Kuffour. I hit it high and long because I saw that Roma’s half of the pitch was empty, and I ran after it. I went away like an arrow and Kuffour tried to hang with me. But he didn’t stand a chance, he pulled my shirt and fell, and I took the ball down on half volley, it bounced around my feet and the goal keeper, Doni, rushed out and then I shot the ball, bang, a hard shot that bombed into the goal. “Mama mia, what a goal”, like I told the journalists afterwards, and it really looked like becoming a great year.
I got the golden ball in Sweden, the award to the best player of the year, and that was of course fun, but complicated. Aftonbladet arranged the event, and I had not forgotten. I stayed at home. Turin arranged the winter Olympics the next year. There were people everywhere and parties and concerts at Piazza Castello and at night me and Helena stood on the terrace and watched. We had it nice and decided to get children, or I don’t know about decided. We just let it happen, you should plan such a thing, I believe.
It should just happen. Who knows when you’re ready? Sometimes we went to Malmö to visit my family.
Helena had sold her farm then and we lived often at my mom’s place, in the house I’d bought for her in Svågertork, and sometimes I played football on her lawn. One day I made a shot.
I hit the ball like hell, and the ball went through the fence. It made a hole and mom wanted to kill me obviously, that women has a temper. “Now you’ll just get out of here and buy me a new fence. Just go”, she sputtered, and of course, in situations like this there’s only one way out: you obey. I and Helena took the car to Bauhaus. But sadly, you couldn’t buy separate boards. We had to take a whole fence, big as a little house, and I couldn’t fit it into the car, not a chance. So I took it on my back and head for two kilometres. It was like when dad carried my bed, and I got there all done, but mom was happy, and that was the most important thing, and like I’ve said, we had it good.
But on the pitch I started to lose some of my flow. I started to feel too heavy. I was up in ninety eight kilo and all of it wasn’t muscles. I had often eaten pasta two times a day, and that was too much I had learned, and I took the gym-training and diet down a notch and tried to get back to form. But there were some problems. What was Moggi’s problem for example? Was he playing a game? I didn’t get it.
We were going to negotiate a new contract. But Moggi delayed it. He came with excuses. He had always been a player full of tricks. But now he was totally hopeless. Next week, he said. Next month. There was always something. It was back and forth and eventually I got mad. I told Mino:
“Fuck it. Let’s sign it now! I don’t want to argue anymore.” We had then gotten a deal that looked pretty good and I thought, it’s enough now, I wanted to get rid of it. But even then nothing happened, or yeah, Moggi notified, fine, good, we’ll sign in a couple of days.
First we were going to play Champions League against Bayern. It was at home in Turin, and during the game I met a central defender named Valerien ismael. He was on me all the time, and after dragging me down in quite a dirty way I kicked him and got a yellow card. But it didn’t stop there.
In the ninetieth minute I was down in the penalty area and of course, I should have stayed calm. We were up two-one and the game was soon over. But I was irritated against Ismael and clipped him and got another yellow card. I was show out, and of course, Capello wasn’t happy. He yelled. That was totally fine.
It was unnecessary and stupid, and it was Capello’s job to teach me a lesson.
But Moggi, what did have to do with it? He explained that my contract was no longer valid. I had blown my chance, he said and I got furious. Was I going to lose my deal because of one single mistake?
“Tell Moggi that I’ll never sign a contract no matter what he gives me”, I told Mino. “I want to be sold.”
“Think of what you’re saying”, Mino said.
I had thought. And I refused to accept, and it meat war, nothing else. It was enough now, and that’s why Mino went to Moggi, and said how it was: Watch out for Zlatan, he’s stubborn, crazy, you’ll risk losing him, and two weeks later Moggi really showed up with the contract. We hadn’t believed anything else. He didn’t want to lose me. But still, it wasn’t over yet. Mino booked meetings. Moggi delayed them, and came with excuses. He was going to travel, it was this and that, and I remember it so well: Mino called me.
“Something’s not right”, he said.
“What do you mean? What?”
“I can’t put my finger on it. But Moggi is acting strange.” Soon it wasn’t only Mino who knew about it. There was something in the air, and it wasn’t about Lapo Elkann, even though that also was big. Lapo Elkann was the grand son to Gianni Agnelli. I had met him a couple of times. We didn’t connect. A guy like that is on his own planet. He was a playboy and a fashion icon and had hardly anything to do with running Juventus. It was Moggi and Giraudo who ran things, not the owners. But of course, the kid was a symbol for the club and Fiat, and he was later listed as one of the best dressed in the world, and all that. His scandal became a big thing.
Lapo Elkann took an overdose of cocaine, and not with anyone: he took it with transsexual prostitutes in an apartment in Turin, and he was taken to hospital with an ambulance where he laid there in coma.
The news was all over the place in Italy, and Del Piero and some more players went out in media and expressed their support, and of course, it had nothing to do with football. But afterwards it was still seen as the reason to the start of the catastrophe for the club.
Exactly when Moggi himself got to know about the suspicions I don’t know. But the cops must have started to interrogate him way before the story exploded in media, and as I understand it, everything had started with the old doping scandal – the one that Juventus actually was discharged for. In relation with that the police had bugged Moggi’s phone and then got to hear some things that didn’t have to do anything with doping, but that still felt suspicious. Moggi had apparently tried to get the “right” referees to the Juventus games, and that’s why the continued taping his phone, and apparently a lot if shit came forward, at least it seemed like that when all of it was put together, even though I myself don’t give much for those evidence. Most of it was because Juventus was number one. I’m sure of that.
As always when someone is dominating, other want to drag them in the dirt, and it doesn’t surprise me at all that the accusations came when we were winning the league. It looked bad, we got that right away.
Media treated it like a world war. But it was bullshit, like I said, most of it. Referees favouring us? Come on! We had fought out there.
We had risked our legs and didn’t fucking have the referees with us, not a chance. I had never had them on my side, honestly. I’m too big for that. If a guy slam in my I stand still, but if I rumble in him he flies four metres. I have my body and my playing style against me.
I have never been friends with the referee’s, no one in our team were. No, no, we were the best and were going to be brought down. It was the truth, and there were also a lot of shady stuff in that inquiry. For example it was led by Guido Rossi, a guy with close ties to Inter, and Inter got strangely away from the entanglement.
A lot of it wasn’t brought up or it was exaggerated so that Juventus could be the big bad guys. Milan, Lazio and Fiorentina and the referee union was also punished. But it was the worst for us because Moggi’s phone was tapped upside down. Still the evidence didn’t look so strong. Alright, it didn’t really look good, that’s true.
It sounded like Moggi was putting pressure on the Italian referee boss to get good guys to the games and you can hear how he yells at them who had been bad, for example someone named Fandel who was our referee in our fight against Djurgården. Some other referees had been said to been kept in the dressing rooms and got an ear full after we lost against Reggina in November 2004, and then it was a thing with the pope. The pope was dying. There wasn’t going to be any games played then. The country was going to mourn their father. But it was said that Moggi even had called the domestic minister and asked for games to be played anyway, according to what’s been said, it was because our opponent had two players injured and two suspended. I have no idea how much truth is in that. Stuff like this probably happen all the time in the branch, and honestly, who the fuck doesn’t yell at the referees? Who doesn’t work for their club?
It was a mess, it was called Moggiopoli often, like Moggigate, and of course my name came up. I hadn’t expected anything else. Of course they would have brought in the best player as well. There were talks that Moggi had talked about my fight with van der Vaart and said something about me doing the right thing to get out from the club. The kid has balls, he said, or something of the sort. Some even said that he had encouraged me to get in a fight, and that got people interested of course. It would be a typical Moggi thing, the thought, and a typical Ibra thing as well probably. But it was bullshit of course. The fight was something between me and van der Vaart, and no one else.
But at the time you could say anything and on the morning of the eighteenth May I got a phone call.
Me and Helena were in Monte Carlo then with Alexander Östlund and his family, and got to hear on the phone that the police was outside our door. The police wanted to come in. They had even orders to make a search in my apartment, and honestly, what could I do? I got out of there right away. I drove to Turin in an hour and met the cops outside, and I have to say, they were gentlemen. They were only doing their job. But that doesn’t mean it was a pleasant thing. They were going to go through all my payments from Juventus, like I was a criminal or something, and they asked me if I had taken money under the table, and I told them like it was: “Never!” and then they looked around. Eventually I told them:
“Is this what you’re searching for?”
I gave them mine and Helena’s bank papers and they were satisfied with that. They said thank you and good buy, like, we admire your game. Juventus management, Giraudo, Bettega and Moggi resigned in that time, and it felt strange. They were crashed down in the shit. Moggi told the newspapers: “I miss my soul, it’s been killed.”
The next day the Juventus stock crashed in the Milano market and we had a crisis meeting in our gym, I won’t ever forget it.
Moggi came down. On the surface he looked like usual, nice clothes and dominant. But it was some other Moggi. At that time some new scandal about his son had also been discovered, something about unfaithfulness, and he talked about it, and about how demeaning it was, and I remember that I agreed with him. It was personal stuff and didn’t have anything to do with football. But it wasn’t what touched me the most.
He started to cry, him of all people. I felt in my stomach. I had never seen him weak before. That man always had control. He had power all over him. But then... how can I explain? It wasn’t a long time ago he had bossed me around and dismissed my contract and all that. But now suddenly I was supposed to feel sorry for him. The world was upside down, and maybe I shouldn’t have cared so much, and say something like: You have yourself to blame. But I really felt bad for Moggi. It hurt me to see a man like him fall, and afterwards I thought a lot about that, and not the usual: “nothing can be taken for granted!” I was also starting to understand things better. Why did he delay our negotiations all the time? Why did he make such a fuss out of it?
Was it to protect me?
I started to believe that. I didn’t know. But I chose to interpret it like that. He had to know what was happening. He had to know that Juventus wasn’t going to be the same team as before, and that I would have been fucked if he had tied me to the club. Then I would have been stuck with the club no matter what. I think that he thought about stuff like that. Moggi maybe didn’t always put the brake on when it was red, of careful with every rule. But he was a skillful man when it came to his job, and he took care of his players, I know that, and without him my career and been at a dead end. I thank him for that, and when the whole world is criticizing him, I stand by his side. I liked Luciano Moggi.
Juventus was a sinking ship, and there were talks about the club being relegated to Serie B or Serie C.
It was that level of craziness. But still you couldn’t understand it, not right away. Were we who had built our team and won two league titles in a row lose everything because of something that didn’t mean anything for our game? It was just too much, and it looked like it took some time before the management understood how serious it was. I remember a early call from Alessio Secco.
Alessio Secco was my old team manager. He was the one who had called me and booked the trainings:
“We train tomorrow at ten! Be there on time.” That type of talk! And now suddenly he was the new director, it was sick, and I had a tough time taking him seriously. But in the first call he gave me an opening:
“If you get an offer, Zlatan, take it. That’s my recommendation to you.” That was on the other hand the last kind thing I heard. After that they got tough and absolutely, you can understand that. One after one the players got away, Thuram and Zambrotta to Barcelona, Cannavaro and Emerson to Real Madrid, Patrick Vieira to Inter, and every one of us who were left called our agents:
“Sell us, sell us. What are our options?”
There was desperation in the air. And I didn’t hear more comments like the one from Alessio Secco. Now the club was fighting for its life.
The management did everything to keep us who were left and use every loop hole that was in the contracts. It was a nightmare. I was coming up in my career. I was having my break through. Would everything fall now? It was a worried time, and I felt more and more every day: I was going to fight.
No way, I wasn’t going to sacrifice a year in division two, if you can call it one year, it would be more, I understood that: one year to get back up, another year or two to get back to the top and get a CL spot, and even then we would probably not have a great team. My best years as a football player was being risked and I told Mino time after time:
“Do whatever you can. Take me away from here.”
“I’m working on it.”
“You better.”
It was the June of 2006. Helena was pregnant and I was happy for it. The child was supposed to come at the end of September, but other than that I was in a no man’s land. What was going to happen? I didn’t know a thing. At this time I was at camp with the NT before world cup that was going to be held in Germany that summer. The whole family was going to be there; mom, dad, Sapko, Sanela, her husband and also Keki, and as usual I was the one who was going to fix everything, with hotel, travels, money and rental cars and all that.
I got on my nerves pretty early, and in the last minute my dad dropped out, it was the usual thing, and there was a lot of fuss about his tickets: What should we do with them? Who’s going to get them instead?
No one can say that I got more balanced by all this, and I also started to feel my groin, the same shit that I was operated for in Ajax, and I talked with the NT management about it.
But we decided that I was going to play. I have a fundamental principle; if I play bad I don’t blame any injuries. It’s just silly. I mean, if you’re not good because of an injury, why are you playing then? It gets wrong no matter how you answer. You just have to suck it up and keep going, but it’s true, it was unusually hard at that time, and at the fourteenth of July the last sentence came from Italy.
They took two league titles from us and we lost our CL spot, but above all: we were relegated to Serie B
and was going to start the season with a bunch of minus points, maybe as much as thirty, and I was still on the sinking ship.
here's the whole book...going to read it..it really looks interesting
http://pdfepubebooks1.info/199/index_split_014.html
http://pdfepubebooks1.info/199/index_split_014.html
CHAPTER 15
Earlier, in September 2005, we had played against Hungary in the World Cup qualifications at the Ferenc Puskas-Stadium in Budapest. We were more or less forced to win if we were to qualify for the World Cup, and the pressure had been building the days before the game. But it seemed to become an anti-climax. Nothing was happening, and I couldn’t get into the game. I was tired and out of form and when we had played full time, it was 0-0 and everyone just waited for the final whistle.
Some papers had given me a 1 rating. I was a disappointment, and many probably saw that as a confirmation: He’s just an overrated diva, after all. But then I got a pass inside the box, from Mattias Jonson I think, and it didn’t seem like I was doing much with that one either. I had a defender hanging on me and I started dribbling back out on the field without gaining something from that. But then I turned back, like BAM, because don’t forget, it’s for situations like that I play, and that’s why I often seem to be just walking around. I save myself to be able to run on fast, aggressive things, and now I took a few quick steps towards the sideline, and the defender couldn’t keep up at all, and I came in position to shoot, not a good position though. The angle was too tight and the goalie was positioned well, and most people expected a pass.
But I went for it and few goals are made from that angle. At best it hits the side of the net, and the goalie didn’t react. He didn’t even raise his hands and for a second I thought I had missed. And I wasn’t the only one. The audience didn’t react, and Olof Mellberg hung with his head, like: shit, so close, and on extra time. He even turned around. He was waiting for the goalie to kick in the ball again, and on the other side, Andreas Isaksson in our goal was thinking: It’s too quiet, and Olof look disappointed. The ball must have gone outside, in the side of the net. But then I raised my arms and ran around the goal and the stadium woke up.
The ball hadn’t hit the side at all. It had gone in by the crossbar from an impossible angle and the goalie hadn’t even been given the time to react, and not much later the referee whistled the game off, and no one gave me a 1 rating anymore.
The goal became a classic and we qualified for the World Cup and I really hoped it would be a success.
I needed it, and really, it felt good down there at our WC camp in Germany, despite the chaos in Juventus. After Tommy Söderberg quit we had a new second coach, and it wasn’t just anyone. It was Roland Andersson, who once said: ”It’s time to stop playing with the young shits, Zlatan”, he who once took me up and into the first team, and honestly, I was moved. I hadn’t seen him since he was kicked out of MFF, and it felt good being able to show him: You were right, Roland, betting on me was worth it. He had gotten som critique for that. But now we were here, me and Roland. It had worked out for the both of us, and the mood and atmosphere was good all over. There were Swedish supporters all over and everywhere you could hear that song the young kid sings, you know: ”No one kicks the ball like him, Zlatan, I said Zlatan, I love you Ich liebe dich, Zlatan Ibrahimovic”.
That was a nice groove. But my groin wasn’t feeling well, and my family was fighting. It was crazy, really. No matter how much younger brother I am - only Keki is younger - I’ve become like the dad to all of them and here in Germany it was always about something. It was dad who didn’t want to come, and now his tickets weren’t being used, it was the hotel which was too far away, or my older brother, Sapko, who needed money and when he received it couldn’t handle exchanging it. At the same time Helena was seven months pregnant. She took care of herself, but there was chaos and commotion around her. When she was going off the bus before our game against Paraguay our fans were all over her like crazy and she felt unsafe and flew home the next day. It was this and that all the time, big things and small.
”Please, Zlatan, can you do this for me?”
I was the travel guide for the family in Germany and I couldn’t focus on my game. The phone was ringing constantly. There were complains and lots of stuff. It was insane. I was playing the fucking World Cup. And still I had to take care of rental cars and shit, and I probably shouldn’t have played at all. My groin was trouble, like I said. But Lagerbäck was sure. I would play, and the first game was against Trinidad & Tobago, and of course we should win, not by one goal, but by three, four, five. But nothing worked for us. Their goalie was having the game of his life, and we didn’t even score when they had a guy sent off. The only positive thing about that game happened afterwards. I got to meet their coach.
The coach’s name was Leo Beenhakker. It was amazing to see him again. My God, many want to take credit for my carreer. Almost everything is bullshit, silly attempts from people who want to gain from my name, but some guys have really meant a lot. Roland Andersson is one and Beenhakker another one. They believed in me when everyone else was in doubt. I hope being able to do things like that when I’m older. Not just whine about those who are different: Look, now he’s dribbling again, he’s doing this and that, but actually think a bit a head.
There’s a photo from that meeting with Beenhakker. I’ve taken off my shirt and my face shines, despite the disappointment from the game. I never really got going in that tournament. We got a draw against England, and that was good. But Germany crushed us in the round of 16 and I played like shit, and I really take all the blaim for that. A family is a family. You take care of each other. But I shouldn’t have been a travel guide and the tournament became a lesson for me too. Afterwards I explained to everyone:
”You’re welcome to hang along, and I’ll try arrange things well for you, but once you’re there, you take care of your own problems and yourselves.”
I returned to Turin and it didn’t feel like home anymore. Turin had become a place I had to leave, and the atmosphere in the club hadn’t exactly improved. There had been another disaster.
Gianluca Pessotto had been a defender in the club all since 1995. He had won everything with the club, identified himself with Juventus. I knew him quite well. We had played together for two years and the guy wasn’t really the cocky kind. He was incredibly sensitive and nice and always stayed in the background. Exactly what happened after that, I don’t know.
Pessotto had just quit as a player and become the new team manager after Alessio Secco, who had been promoted to director, and maybe it wasn’t easy getting an office job after a life as a player. But more than anything, Pessotto had taken the gambling scandal and the relegation to Serie B very hard, and also some things had happened with his family.
One of those days he was sitting in his office, four floors up, just as usual. But this day he stepped up, into one of the windows with a rosary in his hand, and threw himself out, backwards, and landed on the asphalt between two cars. The fall was 15 meters. It’s amazing that he survived! He wound up in the hospital with some fractures and inner bleedings, but he made it, and people were happy about that, despite everything. But still, his suicide attempt was seen as another thing of concern. It was like: Who’s the next one to loose it?
Everything felt quite desperate, and the new president, Giovanni Cobolli Gigli, also explained: we are not letting any more players leave. The management would fight for every single one, and of course I talked to Mino about this. We discussed it all the time, and we both agreed, there was only one way.
We had to strike back. So Mino went to the media and said:
”We’re prepared to take any legal means necessary to get away from this club.” We didn’t wanna appear weak, not a chance. If Juventus played hard ball, so would we. But it wasn’t a simple war. A lot was at stake, and I talked to Alessio Secco again, the guy who tried to be the new Moggi, and I instantly heard, his opinion was different now:
”You have to stay in this club. We demand that. You have to show loyalty with the team.”
”Before the break you said the opposite. That I should take any offers.”
”But the situation is different now. We’re in crisis. We will offer you a new contract.”
”I’m not staying”, I said. ”Under no conditions.”
By every hour, every day, the pressure was increasing, and of course it was unpleasant, and I fought with everything I had, with Mino, with the law, with everything. But it’s true. I couldn’t be too defiant. I still got my salary from the club, and of course the big question was: how far could I go? I spoke with Mino about it.
We decided that I would train with the team, but not play any matches. According to Mino there was a foundation for doing so in the contract, so that’s why I, despite everything, went with all the others to a pre-season camp in the mountains. The Italian national team players hadn’t come back yet, they were still in Germany. Italy went all the way and won the World Cup. That was insanely strong by the team, I think, considering the scandals going on at home, so it was only to congratulate them. But that didn’t exactly help me. Our new coach was Didier Deschamps. He was an old player too, french. He had been the captain when France won the World Cup in 1998, and now at his new job he was forced to get Juventus back to Serie A immediately. It was a tremendous pressure on him, and already during the first day in training he came up to me:
”Ibra”, he said.
”Yes?”
”I want to build our game around you. You are my most important player. You are the future. You have to help us back.”
”Thanks, but…”
”No buts. You have to stay here. I won’t accept anything else”, he continued, and even though it didn’t feel good, I heard how important I was to him, I continued my own plan:
”No, no, no. I’m leaving.”
I shared room with Nedved at the camp. Nedved and I were friends. Both of us had Mino as agent. But we were in different situations. Nedved, just like Del Piero, Buffon and Trézéguet had decided to stay in Juventus and I remember clearly how Deschamps came up to us, maybe to have us act out against eachother, I don’t know. But he wasn’t going to give up.
”Listen”, he said. ”I have great expectations on you, Ibra. You are the main reason I took this job.”
”Get out”, I said. ”You took the job for the club, not for me.”
”I promise. If you leave, I will leave”, he continued, and then I couldn’t help smiling, after all.
”OK man, pack your bags and call a cab”, I replied, and then he laughed like if I had been joking.
But I had never been so far from a joke in my life. If Juventus were fighting for it’s life as a major club, I was fighting for my life as a player too. One year in Serie B would make everything stop, and one of those days Alessio Secco and Jean-Claude Blanc came to me. Jean-Claude was a Harvard guy, a hot shot that the Agnellu family had taken in to save Juventus from disaster, and of course he had been accurate about things. He had his papers in order and had written a proposal for a contract with different amounts, and I immediately thought: Don’t even read it! Make a fuzz later! The more trouble you make, the more they want to let you go.
”I don’t even want to see it. I’m not signing anything”, I replied.
”Please at least look at what we’re offering. We’re being very generous!”
”Why? It won’t lead anywhere.”
”You don’t know that before you’ve looked at it.”
”Sure I do. Even if you offer me twenty million euros, it’s totally uninteresting for me.”
”That’s respectless of you”, Blanc hissed.
”Take it any way you want to”, I said, and left, and sure I knew I had hurt him, and that’s always a risk, and in a worst case scenario I would be without a club in September.
But I had to play the game and take some risk. I had to move on, and sure, my position for negotiation wasn’t the best anymore. I had a bad World Cup, and hadn’t been too great the previous season in Juventus either. I had been too heavy, and scored too few goals. But still I hoped that people knew my capacity. Only the year before I had been great, and voted the best foreign player in the league. I thought there must be some interest amongst the clubs, and Mino was working hard behind the scenes.
”I have Inter and Milan interested”, he said at an early stage, and that sounded good of course. Some light in the tunnel.
But it was just loose talk at that point, and I still didn’t know what my situation with contracts and Juve looked like. What were my possibilites to get out of there if they refused to let me go? I wasn’t sure, and it was up and down every day. Mino was optimistic. That was his job, and I couldn’t do anything but wait, and fight. The media already knew that I wanted to leave at any price. And now also info came that Inter were interested in me, and the Juventus supporters really hate Inter, and as a player you are always surrounded by fans. They hang outside the training grounds wanting autographs and often they can pay to get in and watch. It’s business everywhere in this sport, and then, during pre-season way up in the mountains they were there, screaming at me.
”Traitor and pig”, they screamed and things like that, and sure, that wasn’t nice.
But honestly, you’re used to almost everything as a player, and those words just went through me. We were playing a practice game against Spezia, and what had I said about games? I wouldn’t play them.
So I sat there in my room, playing Playstation. And outside was the bus which would take us to the stadium and everyone was already downstairs, also Nedved, and I think the bus had the engine running. Where the fuck is Ibra? They waited and waited and finally Deschamps came up to my room.
He was furious.
”Why are you sitting here? We are leaving!”
I didn’t even turn around, just kept playing.
”Didn’t you hear me?”
”Didn’t YOU hear me?” I replied. ”I will train, but I won’t play any games. I’ve told you ten times.”
”Of course the fuck you do. You are part of this team. You’re coming NOW. Get up.” He stepped right up to me but I just sat there, kept playing.
”What kind of fucking respect is that, sitting here playing?” he screamed. ”You will be fined for this, you hear?”
”Okey.”
”What okey?”
”Give me fine. I’ll stay here!”
And then he left. He was going insane, and I was sitting there with my Playstation while the others left on that bus, and if things weren’t tense before, they became tense now. The incident was reported upwards of course. I was fined, thirty thousand euros I think. It became a war, and like in all wars, tactics were the most important thing. How would I strike back? What’s the next step? I was thinking and thinking.
I had secret visitors. Ariel Braida, a hot shot from Milan, came to see me during the camp. I just snuck away and met him at a hotel nearby, and we talked about what it would be like to be a part of Milan.
But to tell you the truth, I didn’t really like his style. It was a lot like: ”Kaka is a star. You’re not. But Milan can turn you into one.” It was like I needed Milan more than Milan needed me, and I didn’t really feel seen or wanted, and I had liked to have said thanks and goodbye at once, but my position for negotiations was far from perfect. I desperately wanted to get away from Juventus. I didn’t have a good hand and I had to return to Turin without any good offers.
It was hot. It was August and Helena was more pregnant than ever, and had some signs of stress.
There were paparazzi after us all the time, and I supported her as much as I could. But I was in no man’s land. I didn’t know anything about the future, and nothing was easy. The club had a new training facility. Everything that had to do with Moggi was to be cleaned out, even his old locker room, and I continued training. I had to stick to mine. But it was strange. No one viewed me as part of the team, and the drama continued. Things happened all the time, and at least I noticed one good thing: Juventus weren’t fighting for me as much as before.
Who wants a guy who doesn’t give a fuck and just plays Playstation?
It was still a long way to go, and the question was still: Inter or Milan? It should have been an easy choice. Inter hadn’t won the league for seventeen years. Inter weren’t really a top club anymore. Milan were one of the most successful clubs in Europe. Of course you’re going to Milan, Mino said. I wasn’t as sure. Inter was Ronaldo’s old team and the club really showed they wanted me, and I kept thinking of what Braida had said to me up there in the mountains: ”You’re not a real star yet!” Milan had the strongest team. But still I leaned towards Inter. I wanted the underdog.
”OK”, Mino said. ”Just remember that Inter will be a totally different challenge. You won’t get any scudetti for free there.”
I didn’t want anything for free. I wanted challenges and responsibility. That feeling grew stronger, and already then I understood what it would mean coming to a club that hadn’t won the league in seventeen years and then would do it with me. That would raise things to a whole new level. But, nothing was done or settled yet, and first of all we had to get something done, anything! We had to leave the sinking ship and grab on to what we could.
Milan would play qualifications for the Champions League then. It was a result of Calciopoli. Normally they’d be playing it of course, but since the courts had given them minus-points they had to play a qualifier against Red Star Belgrade. The first game was at San Siro in Milan. It was an important game for me too. If Milan would qualify they would also get more money to buy players, and Adriano Galliani, the vice president of Milan, had told me:
”We wait and see the outcome of this, and then we’ll get back to you.” Until then Inter had been more interested, but they weren’t playing it simple either. Inter was owned by Massimo Moratti. Moratti is a big shot. He’s an oil tycoon. He owned the club and of course he could also sense my desperation. He had lowered his bid four times. There was always something, and on August 8th I was sitting in our apartment at Piazza Castello in Turin.
Milan’s game against Red Star started at 20.45. I didn’t watch it. I had other things to do. But apparently Kaka assisted Filippo Inzaghi early in the game for 1-0, and some of the tension in the club let go. Shortly after that my phone rang. It had been ringing all day, and most of the times it was Mino.
He kept me updated about every little step in the process, and now he told me that Silvio Berlusconi wanted to meet with me, and I flinched of course. Not just because it was him, but because it showed that the club was seriously interested. But still I wasn’t sure. Inter was still my first choice. But of course I understood that this conversation wouldn’t exactly hurt us.
”Can we use this?” I said.
”You bet we can”, Mino replied, and instantly called Moratti, because if there’s anything that gets that
man going it’s beating Milan.
”We just wanted to inform you that Ibrahimovic is having a late dinner with Berlusconi in Milan”, Mino said.
”What?”
”They have reserved a table at Restaurant Giannino.”
”So the fuck they have”, Moratti answered. ”I’ll send a guy over right now.” Moratti sent Branca. Marco Branco was a sporting director at Inter. He was kind of a young skinny guy, but when he knocked on our door only an hour later I learned another thing about him. He was one of the worst chain smokers I’ve ever met. I walked back and forth in our apartment and filled an ashtray in no time. But he was stressed. He was forced to close a deal before Berlusconie tied his tie and left for dinner at the Giannino. So of course, he was stressed. He was about to screw the most powerful man in Italy on a deal, nothing less, and of course Mino used that. He likes it when the counterpart is under pressure. Pressure makes people softening, and there were different phone calls and numbers thrown in the air all the time. It was my contract. My conditions, and the clock kept ticking and Branca kept smoking and smoking.
”Do you accept?” he said.
I looked at Mino.
Mino said: ”Go for it!”
”Ok, sure.”
Branca started smoking even more, and then he called Moratti. You could really hear the exitement in his voice.
”Zlatan accepted”, he said.
That was good news. It was big. You could hear that in his voice. But nothing was set yet. Now it was down to the deal between the two clubs. What was my price? It was a new game, and of course, if Juventus would lose me, they would demand good payment. But before anything was set, Moratti called.
”Are you happy?”
”I am happy”, I said.
”Then I’d like to welcome you”, and you get it, I had a sigh of relief.
All the uncertainty of the past spring and summer was like swept away in a single second, and now Mino only had to call the management of Milan. Berlusconi probably didn’t want to go to dinner anymore. We weren’t exactly going to talk about the weather, and if I had understood everything correctly the Milan guys were really caught off guard: What the fuck is happening? Is Ibra going to Inter now?
”Sometimes things happen fast”, Mino said.
I was eventually bought for twenty seven million euros, it was the biggest transfer in Serie A that year, and I never had to pay that fine I had gotten for playing Playstation. Mino made made it disappear and Moratti went to the media and said my transfer was of the same importance as when the club had bought Ronaldo, and of course that struck my heart. I was ready for Inter. But first I was going to a national team game in Gothenburg and I was counting on an easy ride before the real thing would begin again.
Earlier, in September 2005, we had played against Hungary in the World Cup qualifications at the Ferenc Puskas-Stadium in Budapest. We were more or less forced to win if we were to qualify for the World Cup, and the pressure had been building the days before the game. But it seemed to become an anti-climax. Nothing was happening, and I couldn’t get into the game. I was tired and out of form and when we had played full time, it was 0-0 and everyone just waited for the final whistle.
Some papers had given me a 1 rating. I was a disappointment, and many probably saw that as a confirmation: He’s just an overrated diva, after all. But then I got a pass inside the box, from Mattias Jonson I think, and it didn’t seem like I was doing much with that one either. I had a defender hanging on me and I started dribbling back out on the field without gaining something from that. But then I turned back, like BAM, because don’t forget, it’s for situations like that I play, and that’s why I often seem to be just walking around. I save myself to be able to run on fast, aggressive things, and now I took a few quick steps towards the sideline, and the defender couldn’t keep up at all, and I came in position to shoot, not a good position though. The angle was too tight and the goalie was positioned well, and most people expected a pass.
But I went for it and few goals are made from that angle. At best it hits the side of the net, and the goalie didn’t react. He didn’t even raise his hands and for a second I thought I had missed. And I wasn’t the only one. The audience didn’t react, and Olof Mellberg hung with his head, like: shit, so close, and on extra time. He even turned around. He was waiting for the goalie to kick in the ball again, and on the other side, Andreas Isaksson in our goal was thinking: It’s too quiet, and Olof look disappointed. The ball must have gone outside, in the side of the net. But then I raised my arms and ran around the goal and the stadium woke up.
The ball hadn’t hit the side at all. It had gone in by the crossbar from an impossible angle and the goalie hadn’t even been given the time to react, and not much later the referee whistled the game off, and no one gave me a 1 rating anymore.
The goal became a classic and we qualified for the World Cup and I really hoped it would be a success.
I needed it, and really, it felt good down there at our WC camp in Germany, despite the chaos in Juventus. After Tommy Söderberg quit we had a new second coach, and it wasn’t just anyone. It was Roland Andersson, who once said: ”It’s time to stop playing with the young shits, Zlatan”, he who once took me up and into the first team, and honestly, I was moved. I hadn’t seen him since he was kicked out of MFF, and it felt good being able to show him: You were right, Roland, betting on me was worth it. He had gotten som critique for that. But now we were here, me and Roland. It had worked out for the both of us, and the mood and atmosphere was good all over. There were Swedish supporters all over and everywhere you could hear that song the young kid sings, you know: ”No one kicks the ball like him, Zlatan, I said Zlatan, I love you Ich liebe dich, Zlatan Ibrahimovic”.
That was a nice groove. But my groin wasn’t feeling well, and my family was fighting. It was crazy, really. No matter how much younger brother I am - only Keki is younger - I’ve become like the dad to all of them and here in Germany it was always about something. It was dad who didn’t want to come, and now his tickets weren’t being used, it was the hotel which was too far away, or my older brother, Sapko, who needed money and when he received it couldn’t handle exchanging it. At the same time Helena was seven months pregnant. She took care of herself, but there was chaos and commotion around her. When she was going off the bus before our game against Paraguay our fans were all over her like crazy and she felt unsafe and flew home the next day. It was this and that all the time, big things and small.
”Please, Zlatan, can you do this for me?”
I was the travel guide for the family in Germany and I couldn’t focus on my game. The phone was ringing constantly. There were complains and lots of stuff. It was insane. I was playing the fucking World Cup. And still I had to take care of rental cars and shit, and I probably shouldn’t have played at all. My groin was trouble, like I said. But Lagerbäck was sure. I would play, and the first game was against Trinidad & Tobago, and of course we should win, not by one goal, but by three, four, five. But nothing worked for us. Their goalie was having the game of his life, and we didn’t even score when they had a guy sent off. The only positive thing about that game happened afterwards. I got to meet their coach.
The coach’s name was Leo Beenhakker. It was amazing to see him again. My God, many want to take credit for my carreer. Almost everything is bullshit, silly attempts from people who want to gain from my name, but some guys have really meant a lot. Roland Andersson is one and Beenhakker another one. They believed in me when everyone else was in doubt. I hope being able to do things like that when I’m older. Not just whine about those who are different: Look, now he’s dribbling again, he’s doing this and that, but actually think a bit a head.
There’s a photo from that meeting with Beenhakker. I’ve taken off my shirt and my face shines, despite the disappointment from the game. I never really got going in that tournament. We got a draw against England, and that was good. But Germany crushed us in the round of 16 and I played like shit, and I really take all the blaim for that. A family is a family. You take care of each other. But I shouldn’t have been a travel guide and the tournament became a lesson for me too. Afterwards I explained to everyone:
”You’re welcome to hang along, and I’ll try arrange things well for you, but once you’re there, you take care of your own problems and yourselves.”
I returned to Turin and it didn’t feel like home anymore. Turin had become a place I had to leave, and the atmosphere in the club hadn’t exactly improved. There had been another disaster.
Gianluca Pessotto had been a defender in the club all since 1995. He had won everything with the club, identified himself with Juventus. I knew him quite well. We had played together for two years and the guy wasn’t really the cocky kind. He was incredibly sensitive and nice and always stayed in the background. Exactly what happened after that, I don’t know.
Pessotto had just quit as a player and become the new team manager after Alessio Secco, who had been promoted to director, and maybe it wasn’t easy getting an office job after a life as a player. But more than anything, Pessotto had taken the gambling scandal and the relegation to Serie B very hard, and also some things had happened with his family.
One of those days he was sitting in his office, four floors up, just as usual. But this day he stepped up, into one of the windows with a rosary in his hand, and threw himself out, backwards, and landed on the asphalt between two cars. The fall was 15 meters. It’s amazing that he survived! He wound up in the hospital with some fractures and inner bleedings, but he made it, and people were happy about that, despite everything. But still, his suicide attempt was seen as another thing of concern. It was like: Who’s the next one to loose it?
Everything felt quite desperate, and the new president, Giovanni Cobolli Gigli, also explained: we are not letting any more players leave. The management would fight for every single one, and of course I talked to Mino about this. We discussed it all the time, and we both agreed, there was only one way.
We had to strike back. So Mino went to the media and said:
”We’re prepared to take any legal means necessary to get away from this club.” We didn’t wanna appear weak, not a chance. If Juventus played hard ball, so would we. But it wasn’t a simple war. A lot was at stake, and I talked to Alessio Secco again, the guy who tried to be the new Moggi, and I instantly heard, his opinion was different now:
”You have to stay in this club. We demand that. You have to show loyalty with the team.”
”Before the break you said the opposite. That I should take any offers.”
”But the situation is different now. We’re in crisis. We will offer you a new contract.”
”I’m not staying”, I said. ”Under no conditions.”
By every hour, every day, the pressure was increasing, and of course it was unpleasant, and I fought with everything I had, with Mino, with the law, with everything. But it’s true. I couldn’t be too defiant. I still got my salary from the club, and of course the big question was: how far could I go? I spoke with Mino about it.
We decided that I would train with the team, but not play any matches. According to Mino there was a foundation for doing so in the contract, so that’s why I, despite everything, went with all the others to a pre-season camp in the mountains. The Italian national team players hadn’t come back yet, they were still in Germany. Italy went all the way and won the World Cup. That was insanely strong by the team, I think, considering the scandals going on at home, so it was only to congratulate them. But that didn’t exactly help me. Our new coach was Didier Deschamps. He was an old player too, french. He had been the captain when France won the World Cup in 1998, and now at his new job he was forced to get Juventus back to Serie A immediately. It was a tremendous pressure on him, and already during the first day in training he came up to me:
”Ibra”, he said.
”Yes?”
”I want to build our game around you. You are my most important player. You are the future. You have to help us back.”
”Thanks, but…”
”No buts. You have to stay here. I won’t accept anything else”, he continued, and even though it didn’t feel good, I heard how important I was to him, I continued my own plan:
”No, no, no. I’m leaving.”
I shared room with Nedved at the camp. Nedved and I were friends. Both of us had Mino as agent. But we were in different situations. Nedved, just like Del Piero, Buffon and Trézéguet had decided to stay in Juventus and I remember clearly how Deschamps came up to us, maybe to have us act out against eachother, I don’t know. But he wasn’t going to give up.
”Listen”, he said. ”I have great expectations on you, Ibra. You are the main reason I took this job.”
”Get out”, I said. ”You took the job for the club, not for me.”
”I promise. If you leave, I will leave”, he continued, and then I couldn’t help smiling, after all.
”OK man, pack your bags and call a cab”, I replied, and then he laughed like if I had been joking.
But I had never been so far from a joke in my life. If Juventus were fighting for it’s life as a major club, I was fighting for my life as a player too. One year in Serie B would make everything stop, and one of those days Alessio Secco and Jean-Claude Blanc came to me. Jean-Claude was a Harvard guy, a hot shot that the Agnellu family had taken in to save Juventus from disaster, and of course he had been accurate about things. He had his papers in order and had written a proposal for a contract with different amounts, and I immediately thought: Don’t even read it! Make a fuzz later! The more trouble you make, the more they want to let you go.
”I don’t even want to see it. I’m not signing anything”, I replied.
”Please at least look at what we’re offering. We’re being very generous!”
”Why? It won’t lead anywhere.”
”You don’t know that before you’ve looked at it.”
”Sure I do. Even if you offer me twenty million euros, it’s totally uninteresting for me.”
”That’s respectless of you”, Blanc hissed.
”Take it any way you want to”, I said, and left, and sure I knew I had hurt him, and that’s always a risk, and in a worst case scenario I would be without a club in September.
But I had to play the game and take some risk. I had to move on, and sure, my position for negotiation wasn’t the best anymore. I had a bad World Cup, and hadn’t been too great the previous season in Juventus either. I had been too heavy, and scored too few goals. But still I hoped that people knew my capacity. Only the year before I had been great, and voted the best foreign player in the league. I thought there must be some interest amongst the clubs, and Mino was working hard behind the scenes.
”I have Inter and Milan interested”, he said at an early stage, and that sounded good of course. Some light in the tunnel.
But it was just loose talk at that point, and I still didn’t know what my situation with contracts and Juve looked like. What were my possibilites to get out of there if they refused to let me go? I wasn’t sure, and it was up and down every day. Mino was optimistic. That was his job, and I couldn’t do anything but wait, and fight. The media already knew that I wanted to leave at any price. And now also info came that Inter were interested in me, and the Juventus supporters really hate Inter, and as a player you are always surrounded by fans. They hang outside the training grounds wanting autographs and often they can pay to get in and watch. It’s business everywhere in this sport, and then, during pre-season way up in the mountains they were there, screaming at me.
”Traitor and pig”, they screamed and things like that, and sure, that wasn’t nice.
But honestly, you’re used to almost everything as a player, and those words just went through me. We were playing a practice game against Spezia, and what had I said about games? I wouldn’t play them.
So I sat there in my room, playing Playstation. And outside was the bus which would take us to the stadium and everyone was already downstairs, also Nedved, and I think the bus had the engine running. Where the fuck is Ibra? They waited and waited and finally Deschamps came up to my room.
He was furious.
”Why are you sitting here? We are leaving!”
I didn’t even turn around, just kept playing.
”Didn’t you hear me?”
”Didn’t YOU hear me?” I replied. ”I will train, but I won’t play any games. I’ve told you ten times.”
”Of course the fuck you do. You are part of this team. You’re coming NOW. Get up.” He stepped right up to me but I just sat there, kept playing.
”What kind of fucking respect is that, sitting here playing?” he screamed. ”You will be fined for this, you hear?”
”Okey.”
”What okey?”
”Give me fine. I’ll stay here!”
And then he left. He was going insane, and I was sitting there with my Playstation while the others left on that bus, and if things weren’t tense before, they became tense now. The incident was reported upwards of course. I was fined, thirty thousand euros I think. It became a war, and like in all wars, tactics were the most important thing. How would I strike back? What’s the next step? I was thinking and thinking.
I had secret visitors. Ariel Braida, a hot shot from Milan, came to see me during the camp. I just snuck away and met him at a hotel nearby, and we talked about what it would be like to be a part of Milan.
But to tell you the truth, I didn’t really like his style. It was a lot like: ”Kaka is a star. You’re not. But Milan can turn you into one.” It was like I needed Milan more than Milan needed me, and I didn’t really feel seen or wanted, and I had liked to have said thanks and goodbye at once, but my position for negotiations was far from perfect. I desperately wanted to get away from Juventus. I didn’t have a good hand and I had to return to Turin without any good offers.
It was hot. It was August and Helena was more pregnant than ever, and had some signs of stress.
There were paparazzi after us all the time, and I supported her as much as I could. But I was in no man’s land. I didn’t know anything about the future, and nothing was easy. The club had a new training facility. Everything that had to do with Moggi was to be cleaned out, even his old locker room, and I continued training. I had to stick to mine. But it was strange. No one viewed me as part of the team, and the drama continued. Things happened all the time, and at least I noticed one good thing: Juventus weren’t fighting for me as much as before.
Who wants a guy who doesn’t give a fuck and just plays Playstation?
It was still a long way to go, and the question was still: Inter or Milan? It should have been an easy choice. Inter hadn’t won the league for seventeen years. Inter weren’t really a top club anymore. Milan were one of the most successful clubs in Europe. Of course you’re going to Milan, Mino said. I wasn’t as sure. Inter was Ronaldo’s old team and the club really showed they wanted me, and I kept thinking of what Braida had said to me up there in the mountains: ”You’re not a real star yet!” Milan had the strongest team. But still I leaned towards Inter. I wanted the underdog.
”OK”, Mino said. ”Just remember that Inter will be a totally different challenge. You won’t get any scudetti for free there.”
I didn’t want anything for free. I wanted challenges and responsibility. That feeling grew stronger, and already then I understood what it would mean coming to a club that hadn’t won the league in seventeen years and then would do it with me. That would raise things to a whole new level. But, nothing was done or settled yet, and first of all we had to get something done, anything! We had to leave the sinking ship and grab on to what we could.
Milan would play qualifications for the Champions League then. It was a result of Calciopoli. Normally they’d be playing it of course, but since the courts had given them minus-points they had to play a qualifier against Red Star Belgrade. The first game was at San Siro in Milan. It was an important game for me too. If Milan would qualify they would also get more money to buy players, and Adriano Galliani, the vice president of Milan, had told me:
”We wait and see the outcome of this, and then we’ll get back to you.” Until then Inter had been more interested, but they weren’t playing it simple either. Inter was owned by Massimo Moratti. Moratti is a big shot. He’s an oil tycoon. He owned the club and of course he could also sense my desperation. He had lowered his bid four times. There was always something, and on August 8th I was sitting in our apartment at Piazza Castello in Turin.
Milan’s game against Red Star started at 20.45. I didn’t watch it. I had other things to do. But apparently Kaka assisted Filippo Inzaghi early in the game for 1-0, and some of the tension in the club let go. Shortly after that my phone rang. It had been ringing all day, and most of the times it was Mino.
He kept me updated about every little step in the process, and now he told me that Silvio Berlusconi wanted to meet with me, and I flinched of course. Not just because it was him, but because it showed that the club was seriously interested. But still I wasn’t sure. Inter was still my first choice. But of course I understood that this conversation wouldn’t exactly hurt us.
”Can we use this?” I said.
”You bet we can”, Mino replied, and instantly called Moratti, because if there’s anything that gets that
man going it’s beating Milan.
”We just wanted to inform you that Ibrahimovic is having a late dinner with Berlusconi in Milan”, Mino said.
”What?”
”They have reserved a table at Restaurant Giannino.”
”So the fuck they have”, Moratti answered. ”I’ll send a guy over right now.” Moratti sent Branca. Marco Branco was a sporting director at Inter. He was kind of a young skinny guy, but when he knocked on our door only an hour later I learned another thing about him. He was one of the worst chain smokers I’ve ever met. I walked back and forth in our apartment and filled an ashtray in no time. But he was stressed. He was forced to close a deal before Berlusconie tied his tie and left for dinner at the Giannino. So of course, he was stressed. He was about to screw the most powerful man in Italy on a deal, nothing less, and of course Mino used that. He likes it when the counterpart is under pressure. Pressure makes people softening, and there were different phone calls and numbers thrown in the air all the time. It was my contract. My conditions, and the clock kept ticking and Branca kept smoking and smoking.
”Do you accept?” he said.
I looked at Mino.
Mino said: ”Go for it!”
”Ok, sure.”
Branca started smoking even more, and then he called Moratti. You could really hear the exitement in his voice.
”Zlatan accepted”, he said.
That was good news. It was big. You could hear that in his voice. But nothing was set yet. Now it was down to the deal between the two clubs. What was my price? It was a new game, and of course, if Juventus would lose me, they would demand good payment. But before anything was set, Moratti called.
”Are you happy?”
”I am happy”, I said.
”Then I’d like to welcome you”, and you get it, I had a sigh of relief.
All the uncertainty of the past spring and summer was like swept away in a single second, and now Mino only had to call the management of Milan. Berlusconi probably didn’t want to go to dinner anymore. We weren’t exactly going to talk about the weather, and if I had understood everything correctly the Milan guys were really caught off guard: What the fuck is happening? Is Ibra going to Inter now?
”Sometimes things happen fast”, Mino said.
I was eventually bought for twenty seven million euros, it was the biggest transfer in Serie A that year, and I never had to pay that fine I had gotten for playing Playstation. Mino made made it disappear and Moratti went to the media and said my transfer was of the same importance as when the club had bought Ronaldo, and of course that struck my heart. I was ready for Inter. But first I was going to a national team game in Gothenburg and I was counting on an easy ride before the real thing would begin again.
No
Because in the 80's the gypsies from Yugoslavia "occupied" Italy and the Italians used the word zingaro for every Yu guy. After Romania was accepted to EU, it was the Romanian gypsies who emigrated to Italy and filled the country so the Romanians became zingari in Italy.
It actually borders racism when fans at the stadiums call Mutu or Zlatan zingari.
Because in the 80's the gypsies from Yugoslavia "occupied" Italy and the Italians used the word zingaro for every Yu guy. After Romania was accepted to EU, it was the Romanian gypsies who emigrated to Italy and filled the country so the Romanians became zingari in Italy.
It actually borders racism when fans at the stadiums call Mutu or Zlatan zingari.