started high school in Borgar-school that has a special football alignment, and I had great expectations. Now everything would change! Now I would become really cool. But everything was like a chock. Ok, I was prepared.

I had some snob boys in the team. But now there were also girls and others types of guys, cool guys who stood in the corners with nice clothes and smoked. Where I came from you had sport shoes and trainings overalls with big Adidas- or Nike marks. It was the coolest thing, one thought, and I always walked around like that. What I didn’t know was that Rosengård was branded in my forehead. It was like a sign. As if that extra teacher was still stalking me.

In Borgar School they had Ralph Lauren shirts, Timberland shoes and shirts! Just that! I had barely seen a guy in a shirt before, and I realized that I had to do something about the situation. There were a lot of really hot girls in school. You couldn’t talk to them looking like a ghetto kid. I talked with my dad about it and we got into a fight. We got study benefits (ed not: during the 3 years in high school, every kid in Sweden gets an certain amount of money each month) from the government. The amount was 795 kr each month and for dad it was natural that he should get the money since he paid for everything, like he said. I put it differently:

“You know that I can’t be the biggest geek in school!”

In some way he bought the argument. I got the study benefit and a bank account. The money came the 20th every month and a lot of my mate’s stood there by the cash dispenser 23.59 the day before and waited for the money, all hyped: will it every turn into midnight? Ten, nine, eight... I was a bit cooler. But in the morning I had definitely gotten some of the money and bought a pair of Davis Jeans.

Those were the cheapest. Or sometimes I bought some shirts, three for the price of one. I tried different styles. Nothing worked. I still had Rosengård branded in my forehead. I didn’t fit in. That’s how I felt. I had been a little guy all my life. But that summer I grew thirteen CM in just a couple of months and I guess

that I looked kind of rickety. I needed to assert myself, and for the first time in my life I started hanging in the city centre, at Burger King, and at the squares.

I did some worse stuff to, not only for the kick. I needed cool stuff. Or else I wouldn’t stand a chance in the school yard. I stole a guys MP3. We had lockers outside the class rooms with small locks with codes and a friend told me the secret code of one guys. When he wasn’t there I took his minidisc and biked away with it and listened to his songs and felt kind of cool. But it wasn’t enough. I still didn’t have much to come with. I was still the ghetto kid. My friend was smarter. He got himself a girl from a nice family and became friends with her brother and started borrowing his clothes. A good trick, absolutely, even though it didn’t worked all the way. We from ghettos never fitted in. We were different. But still, my friend walked around with the most expensive clothes and had a cool girl and was all cocky. I had my football.

But that didn’t go to well either. I had broken into the junior team and played with guys who were one year older than me, and that’s an achievement itself. We were a fantastic gang, one of the better teams in the country in our age group. But I was sitting on the bench. It was Åke Kallenberg’s decision. A coach should obviously be able to bench anyone he wants. But I don’t think that it only had to do with football. When I came in, I usually scored. I wasn’t bad. But I was wrong in other ways, they thought.

It was said that I didn’t contribute enough to the team. “Your dribbling doesn’t bring the game forward!” I heard that type of stuff a hundred times, and I felt the vibes: That Zlatan! Isn’t he unbalanced? It wasn’t lists anymore, but not far away from it, and its true; I yelled at my team mates. I screamed and talked to much on the pitch. I could get into fights with spectators. Not that it was any serious stuff. But I had my temper and my playing stype. I was a different type of player and I got mad. I didn’t really belong in MFF. Many people looked at it like that. I remember junior- SM (ed note: SM = Swedish championsship). We qualified for the knock out rounds, and it was obviously a big thing.

But Åke Kallenberg didn’t pick me for the team. I didn’t even get to sit on the bench. “Zlatan is injured”, he said in front of everyone and it made me jump up. What does he mean? I told him: “What are you talking about? How can you say something like that?”

“You’re injured”, he repeated, and I couldn’t believe it. Why did he come with shit like this when we were going to play a championship?

“You’re only saying that because you don’t want me to come along and play.”

But no, he felt that I was injured and it made me mad. There was something strange in the air. No one told me like it was. No one were man enough and that year Malmö FF won the junior-SM without me and that didn’t really made me more confident. Sure, I had said a lot of cocky stuff. Like when my Italian teacher threw me out from the class room, and I answered: “I don’t give a fuck about you. I’ll eventually learn the language when I become a football pro in Italy”, and that sounds kind of funny in hindsight. Back then it was all talk. I didn’t believe in it. How could I, when I wasn’t even a starter in the junior team?

At this time the senior team had problems. Malmö FF’s senior team is like the nicest team in the country. When the old man came to Sweden back in the 70s the club totally dominated. They even reached the final of Champions League, or European Cup as it was called back then, and none of the juniors was brought in. The management recruited from other top clubs instead. But this year the situation was changed. Without anyone knowing why, the club failed. MFF always was at the top, but was almost being relegated now. They played really bad. The economy was worthless. They didn’t have any money to buy any players and more young guys from the junior teams got the chance, and you can imagine how we juniors talked about it! Who will get the next change? Him or him?

It was Tony Flygare, obviously, and the Gudmundur Mete and Jimmy Tamandy. They didn’t even think of me. I was the last one in the team that was going to be brought in. I believed that. Most people believed that. So honestly, there was nothing to hope for. Even the junior team coaches benched me. Why would the senior team want me then? No way! Still, I wasn’t worse than Tony, Mete and Jimmy. I had shown that in the little playing time that I got. What was the problem? What are they doing? All that was itching in me, and I became even more confident that it was some sort of politics behind it all.

As a kid it may have been cool to be different and cockier than the rest, but in the long run it held me back. When it really counts you don’t wants some wild headed immigrant doing his Brazilian stuff all the time. Malmö FF was the most proud and nicest club. During their prime every player had been blonde and well behaved and they always said good, nice things, and from that time they hadn’t brought in so many guys with foreign background. Ok, Yksel Osmanovski had played there. He was also from Rosengård. He was a pro in Bari back then. But he was a good guy. No, no, there wasn’t going to be any senior team for me. I had my junior contract. I was going to have to be happy with that, and with U20. U20 was something they had created in relation to the special football alignment in Borgar School (ed note: he’s not talking about Swedish U20). The junior team was up to eighteen. In the U20 there was a twenty years old limit.

There wasn’t so many of us who were brought up there yet, not enough to make a team yet. But the intention was to stop us from leaving the team, and often we played with the guys from the reserve team and played against division three-teams. It wasn’t anything special, but I had the chance to shine there.

Sometimes we trained with the senior team, and then I refused to adapt. Normally a junior doesn’t bring the most complicated dribbling in moments like this. He’s supposed to be a good boy. But I thought: Why not? I have nothing to lose. I gave it all, and of course, I noticed that they were talking about me. “Who does he think he is?” and stuff like that, and I mumbled: “Go fuck yourselves!” and just continued. I dribbled, I played the tough guy, and sometimes the senior team coach, Roland Andersson, was watching.

In the beginning I had all kinds of expectations: Does he think I’m any good? But that changed with all the shit that was happening around me. When I saw him one day alongside the pitch, I thought: Someone has probably whined to him! Some complaint. At that time I felt more and more disappointed with football, and didn’t have any success in other areas either, especially not in school. I was still shy and insecure and often I only ate in school. I ate like a mad man. But the rest I didn’t care about. I studied less, and eventually I dropped out completely from high school, and at home it was all kinds of problems.

It was like a mine field, and I tried to stay away from it and did my tricks on block. I my room I had pictures of Ronaldo. Ronaldo was the man. Not only for the step over’s and the goals in WC. Ronaldo was great on all levels. He was someone I wanted to become. A guy who made the difference. The Swedish national team players, what was that? There was no superstar there, no one there that the world talked about. Ronaldo was my hero and I studied him on the net and tried to understand his moving pattern, and I thought that I becoming really good. I danced with the ball.

But what did that give me? Nothing, I believed. It was an unfair world. Guys like me didn’t stand a chance, and I wouldn’t become a star no matter what qualities I had. That was the situation. I was fucked. I was wrong, and I tried to find other ways. But I didn’t care enough to go all the way. I just kept on playing. That day when Roland Andersson stood there watching I was playing with the Malmö U20 on pitch one. Pitch one does no longer exist. But it was a grass pitch, just outside Malmö Stadium, and afterwards I got to hear that Roland Andersson wanted to talk to me. I knew that. I panicked, and honestly I started thinking: Have I stolen a bike? Have I head butted anyone? I went through every stupid thing I’ve done and it was a lot of things probably. But I didn’t understand how it had reached him, and I was thinking of thousands excuses. Roland loud guy with a deep voice. He’s cool, but very strict. He dominates the room, and I think my heart started pounding a little bit.

Roland Andersson, I had hear that he had played in WC in Argentina. He was not only one of the old MFF stars back from the great times. He was also a former national team player. A guy with respect, and he was sitting at his desk, and wasn’t smiling. He looked serious, like, here comes the telling off.

“Hey, Roland. What’s up? You wanted something, or?”

I always tried to be a little cocky like that. It was a thing since my childhood. You couldn’t show weakness. “Sit down.”

“Alright, take it easy. No one has died. I promise.” “Zlatan, it’s time for you to stop playing with the little shits.”

With the little shits? What is he talking about, I was thinking, and what have I done to the little kids? “Why is that”, I said. “Are you talking about someone in particular?”

“It’s time for you to start playing with the big boys.”

I still didn’t get it.

“What?”

“You’re welcome to the senior team, kid”, he continued, and honestly, I can’t describe, never ever.

It was like I had been risen ten meters up the air, and I guess that I went out and stole a new bike and felt like the coolest guy in town.