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 apartment 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 earlier. 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 negotiation’s 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 were 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 is 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, and 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 Buddha-symbol that protects against suffering, and the five elements, water, earth, fire and all that. I had my family tattooed; the men on my right hand, right standing for power, dad, and 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 each other 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 hat-trick 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. I 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 its 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 honor, 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 phenomenon, 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 each other with the darkest of eyes. It was a war. There were a lot of nerves and aggressiveness, and in the thirteenth minute I 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 each other in the grass, and the adrenaline started flowing again, and he moved his head a bit. I responded by marking a head-butt, 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 head-butt 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 free kick 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 each other, 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 favorites. 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 were 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 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.