oggi 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 other’s 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 kilometers. 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 says 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 were going to start the season with a bunch of minus points, maybe as much as thirty and I was still on the sinking ship.