n Rosengård we had different areas (enclosures), and no area was better or worse than the other, well the one that was called the Gipsy area had a low status. But it wasn’t like all the Albanians or Turks hanged around at one place. It was the area that counted, not the country your parents where from. But you had to stay at your own area, and the area where my mom had her house was called Törnrosen. It had a swing, a playing ground, a flag pole and a football court where we played every day. Sometimes they didn’t let me play. I was to little. Then I flipped out in an instant.

I hated to be left outside. I hated to lose. But still, the most important thing wasn’t winning. It was the tricks and the awesome stuff. There was a lot of “wow! Look at that!”. You could impress the guys with tricks and flicks, and you had to practice until you were the best, and often the mom’s yelled from the windows: “It’s late. The food is ready. Come inside.”

“Soon, soon”, we said and continued playing, and it could get late and start raining and general chaos. But we continued playing. We never got tired and it was close spaces. You had to be quick in both head and feet, especially for me since I was little and weak and could easily be get tackled, and I learned cool stuff all the time. I had to. Or else I wouldn’t get any “wow’s”, nothing that triggered me, and often I slept with the ball and thought of new tricks I would do the next day. It was like a movie that kept on going.

My first club was MBI, Malmö Boll och idrottsförening. I was six years when I started there. Vi played on gravel behind a couple of green barracks, and I biked to the training on stolen bikes and wasn’t always that well behaved I guess. The coaches sent me home a couple of times, and I screamed and swore at

them, and I heard all the time: “Pass the ball, Zlatan!”. It pissed me off, and I felt awkward. In MBI you had both foreigners and Swedes, and a lot of parents whined about my tricks from the block. I told them to go to hell and changed club several times and came to FBK Balkan, and that was something else!

In MBI the Swedish dads stood and yelled: “Come on, guys. Good work!”

In Balkan it was more: “I will fuck you mother up the ass”. They were crazy Yugoslavs who smoked a lot and threw shoes around them and I thought: Wonderful, exactly like home. I belong here! The coach was a Bosnian. He had played on a high level down there in Yugoslavia, and he became some kind of a dad to us. He drove us home sometimes, and could give me a couple of Kronor to buy ice cream or sometime to straighten up my hunger.

I was a goalie for a while. I don’t know why really. Maybe I had flipped out on the old goalie and said something like: “You suck, I can do this better myself”. It was probably something like that. But one game I let in a lot of goals, and then I became furious. I screamed that everyone was shit. That football was shit. That the whole world was shit, and that I would start playing hockey instead:

“Hockey is a lot better, you fucking idiots! I will become a hockey pro! Go drown yourselves!”

It was just that: I looked hockey up, and damn, all the stuff you needed! You had to have money. The only thing I could do was to continue with that shit sport called Football. But I stopped being a goalie and went up to the attack, and became kind of good.

One day we were going to play a game. I wasn’t there and everybody was screaming: “Where’s Zlatan? Where’s Zlatan?” There was only one minute to the start, and the coach and my team mates probably wanted to kill me: “Where is he? How the fuck can be the absent from a important game like this?” But then they saw a crazy guy that biked like a idiot on a stolen bike and was riding straight towards the coach. Was that mad man going to run him over? No, just in front of the old man I stood on the brakes and ran into the field, and I guess that the coach went mad.

He got sand in his eyes. He got splashed. But he let me play, and I guess we won. We were a good gang. One time i was punished for some other shit, and had to sit on the bench in the first half. We were down 4-0 against a snob team, Vellinge, it was us the immigrants against the good boys, there was a lot of aggression in the air and I was so pissed of that I was about to explode. How could that idiot put me on the bench?

“Are you stupid?” I asked the coach.

“Easy, easy, you’ll get to play soon”

He let me play in the second half and I scored eight goals. We won with eight -five and mocked the snobs and sure, I was good. I was technical and saw openings in the game all the time and at block were my mom lived I had become a little champion when it came to doing the unexpected stuff on narrow spaces. But I’m still tired of all the Donald Duck characters that go around and say: I immediately saw that Zlatan would become something extra, bla bla bla. It’s like they breast fed me. He was my best friend. That’s just bullshit.

Nobody saw anything. At least, not as much as they said they did afterwards. No big clubs were knocking at my door. I was a punk ass little kid. It wasn’t all: “Ohh, we must be nice to that talented little boy!” It was more: “Who let the immigrant in”? And already back then it was a lot of ups and downs. I could score eight goals in one game, just to be really bad in the next.

I hanged around with a guy called Tony Flygare. We had the same home language teacher. His parents are also from Balkan and we was something of a tough guy also. He didn’t live in Rosengår, he live just outside at Vitemöllegatan. We were born the same year, he was born in January and I in October, and that probably meant something. He was bigger and stronger and was seen as the bigger talent. It was a lot of Tony: “Look at him, what a player” and I stood in his shadow. Maybe it was good, what do I know. I had to be the underdog. But like I said, at the time I wasn’t a big talent. I was a savage, a maniac, and I really didn’t get control over my temper. I continued to yell at players and referees and I changed clubs all the time. I played in Balkan. I came back to MBI and then again Balkan and then to BK Flagg. It was a mess and no one took me to training, so to speak, and sometimes I look at the parents standing there.

My dad was never there, not amongst the Yugoslavs nor the Swedes, and I really don’t know what I thought. That was just the way it was. I didn’t need anyone. I had gotten used to that. But still, it pained me. I don’t know. You get used to your life, and I kept that on a distance. Dad was dad. He was hopeless. He was fantastic. He was up and down. I didn’t count on him, not like other kids counted on their parents. But still, I guess I had some hope for him. Damn, imagine if he had seen that awesome stuff, that Brazilian thing? Dad had his moments when he was extremely involved. He wanted me to become a lawyer.

I can’t say that I believed in it. In my circles you didn’t become a lawyer. You did crazy stuff and dreamt of becoming the tough guy, and we really didn’t have any support from the parents either, it wasn’t all: “Should I explain the Swedish story for you?” It was all Yugoslavian music and beer cans and empty fridges and the Balkan war. But sometimes, you know, he took his time and talket about football with me and it made me happy every time. I mean, he was dad one day, and one day he said, I don’t forget it, there was something ceremonial in the air:

“Zlatan, it’s time for you to start playing in a big club”

“What do you mean big club?”

“A good team, Zlatan. Like Malmö FF”.

I don’t think I really understood. What was so special with Malmö FF? I didn’t know anything about stuff like that. But I knew about the club. I had played against them with Balkan, and thought: Why not? If my dad says so. But I didn’t know where the stadium was, or anything else in the city for that matter. Malmö where close. But it was another world. I reached the age of seventeen before I went to the city central, and I didn’t understand anything about the life there. But i learned the road to the training, and it took me thirty minutes to bike there with my clothes in a plastic bag, and of course, I was nervous. In Malmö FF it was serious. It wasn’t the usual: Come and play, kid! Here you had to go on trial and take a place and I noticed at once, I wasn’t like the others, and I prepared myself to pack my stuff and go home. But on the second day, coach Nils told me:

“You’re welcome to the team”

“You really mean that?”

I was thirteen back then, and there was a couple of foreigners there already, Tony was amongst them. Other than that there were only Swedes, somewhere Limhamn’s types, high class kids. I felt like I was from Mars. Not only because dad didn’t had a big villa and never came to my games. I talked differently. I dribbled. I exploded like a bomb, and I fought on the pitch. One time I got a yellow card for yelling at my team mates.

“You can’t do that!” the ref said.

“You can also go fuck yourself”, I shouted and was shown the red card.

The Swedes started to talk. Their parents wanted my out of there, and I thought for the thousand time: I don’t give a fuck about them. I’ll change team again. Or I venture with tae kwo do instead. That’s cooler. Football is shit. Some idiot dad in the team had a list. Zlatan must be kicked out of the team, it said, and all types of people signed that list. They talked about it all the time: Zlatan doesn’t belong here. We have to throw him out! Sign it, bla bla.

It was insane. Alright, I had been in a fight with that dad’s son. He had given me a lot of dirty tackles and I

exploded. I head butted him, honestly. But I really regretted it afterwards. I took the bike to the hospital

and apologized. It was a idiotic thing to do, really, but a list? Get out of here! The coach, Åke Kallenberg,

just looked at that list:

“What is this shit?”

He tore it apart. He was good, Åke. Or I don’t know about good! He benched me for almost a year in the junior team, and like everyone else he thought that I dribbled to much and yelled to much on my team mates and had the wrong attitude and approach and all that. I learned something important during those years. If a guy like me is to be respected he had to be five times better than Leffe Persson (Swedish name) and all those other names. He had to train ten times harder. Or else he wouldn’t stand a chance. No way. Especially not if he’s a bike thief.

Obviously I should have conducted myself better after all that stuff. I probably wanted to. I wasn’t totally hopeless. But the training ground was very far away, seven kilometres, and I often went there by walking. But sometimes the temptation was too big, especially if I saw a nice bike. One time I had my eyes on a yellow bike with a couple of cool boxes, and suddenly I understood, it was a postal bike. I biked around with the neighbourhood’s letters, and then I jumped off and put the bike in a corner. I didn’t want to steal people’s post as well.

One time the bike that I had stolen was stolen from me and I stood there outside the arena and it was a long way home and I was hungry and impatient, so I took a new bike outside the dressing rooms. I broke the lock as usual, and I liked it as I remember. It was a good bike and I was careful to park it far away so that the old owner wouldn’t run into it. But three days later we were called to a meeting. Already back then, I had a hang up on stuff like that. Meetings usually mean trouble and preaching and I immediately started to come up with smart excuses:

Like, it wasn’t me. It was my brother, and sure enough: the meeting was about the assistant coach’s bike. “Has anyone seen it?”

No one had seen it. Neither had I! I mean, in a situation like that, you don’t say a thing. That’s how it works. You play stupid: Ohh, I’m sorry, poor you, I got my bike stolen once too.

But still, I felt bad. What have I done? And so unlucky! It was the assistant coach’s bike. You’re supposed to respect the coaches. I knew that.

Or I should say, I thought that one should listen to them and learn their stuff, zonal play, tactics and all that. But at the same time not listen. Like still continue with the dribbling and the tricks. Listen, don’t listen! That was my philosophy. But to steal their bikes? I didn’t think that was included in the concept. I was worried and went to the assistant coach.

“You know, it’s like this”, I said. “I have borrowed your bike a bit. It was a crisis situation. A onetime thing! You’ll get it back tomorrow”.

I put on the biggest smile, and I think it helped me in some way. My smile helped me a lot those years and I could come up with a joke when I needed it the most. But it wasn’t easy. I wasn’t only the black sheep. If something disappeared, I got blamed. It was of course the correct thing to do. I was the poor guy. When the others had the best football shoes fron the beginning with kangaroo skin, I bought my first shoes from “Ekohallen” for fifth nine kronor (six euro), it was a couple of shoes that were placed next to the tomatoes and vegetables, and so it continued. I never had anything flashy when it came down to stuff like that.

When the team went abroad a lot of the other kids had two thousand kronor (200 euro) with them. I had like twenty kronor, and still sometimes my dad didn’t pay the rent to be able to send me with the team. He rather got evicted than let me stay at home. It was a beautiful thing to do. But I couldn’t really match my friends.

“Come Zlatan, let’s eat pizza, a hamburger, and let’s go buy this and that.” “Nahh, later. I’m not hungry! I’ll chill here instead”.

I tried to get away but still be cool. That didn’t work to well. It wasn’t a big thing. But it was something new and went into an unsecure time. Not that I wanted to be like everyone else. Maybe a little! I wanted to learn their stuff, like etiquette and such things. But mostly I did my own thing; that was my weapon, so to speak. I saw the mates from my type of ghettos who tried to play high class. It always failed as much as they tried, and I thought, I’ll do the opposite, I do my thing even harder. Instead of saying: “I have only 20 kronor”, I said: “I have nothing, not a dime.” That was much cooler. More crazy. I was a tough guy from Rosengård. I was different. It became my identity, and I enjoyed it more and more and didn’t ever care that i didn’t know a thing about the Swede’s idols.

Sometimes we were ball boys when the senior team played, and once Malmö FF had a game against IFK Göteborg, a big game, and my team mates became wild and wanted autographs from the stars, especially from someone named Thomas Ravelli, and apparently were some big hero after some penalty kick in the World Cup. I had never heard of him, not that I said anything about it. I didn’t want to make a fool out of myself, and of course, I had also seen the WC. But, I was from Rosengård. I didn’t give a damn about the Swedes. I rooted for the Brazilians, for Romario and Bebeto and the gang, and the only thing that interested me with that Ravelli was his shorts. I ponder about where to stole a pair.

We were supposed to sell Binglotto (some sort of Swedish lottery tickets) to bring in money to the club, and I had no idea what those lottery tickets were for. I had never heard of Loket (the anchor guy). But I tried to sell the tickets.

“Hello, hello, my name is Zlatan. Sorry to disturb. Do you want a lottery ticket?”

It didn’t go to well, seriously. I sold one and even less of the Christmas calendars we were supposed to sell. Zero that is, and eventually my dad had to buy everything. It wasn’t fair. We didn’t have the economy and weren’t really in the need of having more junk at home. It was stupid, and I don’t understand how they can send kids to do such beggar stuff.

We played football and we were an awesome vintage. It was Tony Flygare, Gudmundur Mete, Matias Concha, Jimmy Tamandi, Markus Rosenberg. It was me. It was all kinds of great guys, and I got better and better, but the whining continued. It was mostly the parents. They didn’t give in. “Here he goes again”, they said. “Here he dribbles again!” “He’s not right for the team!” It pissed me of. Who the fuck were they to stand there and judge me? There has been a lot about me wanting to stop playing football back then. That’s not true. But I really thought of changing teams for a while. I didn’t have a dad close by who could defend me or buy me the most expensive clothes. I had to make it on my own, and everywhere the Swedish dads and their snobby sons explained why I was wrong. Of course I got mad! Furthermore I was restless. I wanted action, action. I needed something new.

Johnny Gyllensjö, the junior team coach, heard about it and talked to the club. “Come one”, he said. “Everyone can’t be pretty boys. We’re losing a great talent here!” My dad signed a junior contract for me. I got fifteen hundred a month and that was a kick of course, and I worked harder and harder. Like I said, I wasn’t impossible to work with. It wasn’t only, don’t listen! It was also listen.

I trained hard at getting the ball with as few touches as possible. But I didn’t shine all that much, I have to say. It was still mostly Tony, and I sucked in as much knowledge as possible to become at least as good as him. My whole generation in MFF like the Brazilian stuff and tricks. We triggered each other. It was kind of like on my mom’s block again, and when we had computers we downloaded different tricks, stuff Ronaldo and Romario did, and then we practiced the tricks until we got it right. We were used to touching the ball. But the Brazilians pushed it with the foot and we practiced again and again until we had it right and eventually we tried it at the games. There were a lot of us who did that kind of stuff. But I took it one step further. I went deeper. I was more accurate with the details. I became obsessed, honestly. Those tricks had always been my way of showing myself, and I dribbled on, didn’t matter how much the parents and coaches moaned about it. No, I didn’t adapt. Or rather, I did both. I wanted to be different. I wanted to know the coach’s stuff to, that went better and better. But it wasn’t always easy. Sometimes it pained me, and I probably was affected by the situation at my mom and dad. It was a lot of shit that needed to come out.

In Sorgenfri School they gave me a extra teacher. I got really pissed off. Sure, I was messy. Maybe the worst of them all. But an extra teacher! Get out of here. I had good grades in subjects like English, chemistry, and physics. I wasn’t a junkie kid. I hadn’t even smoked a cigarette. I just did some stupid stuff. But there was talk about putting me in a special School. They wanted to brand me, and I felt like a UFO. It started ticking like a bomb in my body. Do I need to say that I was good in gym class? Maybe I was a bit unfocused in the class room and had a hard time sitting still with books. But I could also concentrate, if we’re talking about hitting away a ball or an egg.

One day in gym class. That special teacher was there to watch me. And every little thing I did, she was on me, like a patch. Then I got pissed off. I hit the ball right in her head. She was shocked and just looked at me, and afterwards they called my dad and wanted to talk about psychiatric help and special School and all that shit, and you know, it wasn’t an easy thing to discuss with my dad. No one talks badly about his children, especially not a stalking teacher. He got mad, went straight to school with his cowboy style: “Who the fuck are you? To come here and talk about psychiatric help? You all need help. But there’s nothing wrong with my son, he’s a good kid, you all can go fuck yourselves!”

He was a crazy Yugoslav in his prime and sometime later that teacher stopped. I got my confidence back. But still, the whole thing! A special teacher just for me! It made me mad. Sure, I maybe wasn’t some hall monitor. But you can’t divide kids into groups like that. You can’t!

If someone today would treat Maxi and Vincent like they were different, I’d get really pissed off. I promise. I’d make a bigger scene than my dad. That special treatment is still in me. It made me feel bad. Alright, in the long run it may have made me stronger. What do I know? I became even more of a warrior. But in the short run it messed me up.

You know, one day I was going to have a date with a girl, and I wasn’t so confident when it came to girls back then. The guy with the extra teacher, how cool did that sound? Just to ask for her number made me all sweaty! She was an awesome girl in my eyes, and I managed to say: “You want to do something after school?”

“Sure, absolutely”, she said.

“What about Gustav?”

Gustav Adolf was a square in Malmö City, and I felt that she liked the idea. But when I arrived she wasn’t there. I got all nervous. I wasn’t in my own neighbourhood and felt insecure. Why didn’t she come? Didn’t she like me anymore? One minute passed, two, three, ten minutes, and eventually I couldn’t stand it anymore. It was the worst humiliation. She fooled me, I thought. Who would want a date with me? So I got went home. I don’t give a damn about her. I’m going to be a football star. It was the most stupid thing. The girl’s bus was just late. The driver wanted to have a cigarette or something, and she came just after I left and was as sad as me.