n Malmoe we had this thing called Milen (ed note: directly translated it means “The Mile”. But it’s a distance of ten kilometres). Milen was a damn long stretch. We ran from our stadium to the Water-tower, down through Limhamn’s road, past all the really expensive houses with great views over the ocean, I remember one house in particular, it was pink and really awesome and we thought like: Wow, who are these people that are living here? It’s sick how much money they have.

We continued towards Kungsparken, in under a tunnel, and to Borgar School, it was the perfect moment for all the girls and snob’s to see me. I got such a kick out of it! It was my revenge. Here am I, the geek from Rosengård who barely had the guts to talk to a girl, and now I was running with the tough guys in MFF, like Mats Lilienberg and them. It was really awesome and I put it into system. In the beginning I ran fast. I was the new kid in the senior team and wanted to show what I could do. But then I understood the important thing: the most important thing was to impress the chicks.

That’s why me, Tony and Mete did a lot of smart tricks. We ran the first four kilometres. But at Linhamn’s road we quietly got away at the bus stop. No one saw us. We had been last in line and could easily go for the bus and get on it. Of course we laughed like maniacs. What a bold thing to do! But we had to duck when we drove past the other guys in the team. I mean, the bus thing didn’t really show the best attitude! At the end of that long road we jumped of the bus, well rested and far ahead of the other guys, and hid in the corner. When the team ran past us we started running as hell to the front of the line and had the chance to show off in front of the school. The girls probably thought, wow, those guys are really strong.

Another day on Milen I said to Tony and Mete: “This is ridiculous. Let’s steal a bike instead.” I think they were a bit hesitant to the idea. They didn’t have my experience. But I talked them into it and then I stole a bike and biked away with both of them on the package holder. Other times it really got out of hands. I wasn’t the most mature guy in town, you know, and Tony was also an idiot. That fool had started with porno movies. He rented a flick and bought chocolate instead of running, and we sat and ate that chocolate while the other guys were running Milen.

I guess I have to be happy that Roland Andersson accepted our excuses. Or he didn’t. He was cool. He got us young kids. But of course, he talked other times: What’s with this guy, Zlatan? What doesn’t he show any humility? And I heard the usual old talk: He dribbles too much. He doesn’t think of the team. Some of it was correct. Absolutely! I had a lot to learn. But some of it was jealousy. The players felt the competition, and I wasn’t only a cheat. I worked really hard, and the training with the team wasn’t enough. I played at my mom’s block as well, hour after hour. I had a trick. I went out in Rosengård and told all the little kids: “You get some money if you manage to take the ball from Me.” and it wasn’t only a game. It gave me my technique. It thought me to protect the ball with my body.

When I wasn’t playing outside with the little kids I was playing video games. I could go on for ten hours in sitting, and often I saw solutions in the game that I used in real life. It was football around the clock, I guess. But during the trainings in MFF it wasn’t easy, and maybe I played around a little bit too much. It was like they have gotten something irrational into the team that they didn’t understand. I mean every bastard pass in this or that situation and say this or that in some other situation. But I... I came from another planet. I just did my crazy Rosengård thing. In the beginning it was mostly the older guys against the younger ones. We, the young guys were supposed to carry all the shit and be available all the time. It was ridiculous, and the atmosphere was awful right from the beginning. I the beginning of the season Tommy Söderberg, the national team coach, had predicted that Malmö FF would win the league, but from that time everything went wrong, and there was a risk for relegation to division two. It was the first time for like sixty years, and the fans were angry and worried and all the older guys in the team had the world’s biggest pressure on their shoulders. They knew that what it would mean to the city if they didn’t manage to stay in Allsvenskan (ed note: Swedish first league), a catastrophe, nothing else. It wasn’t like time for party and all the Brazilian stuff. But I was really happy about being called up to the first team and wanted to show who I am. Maybe it wasn’t the right time.

But I had it in my blood. I was a new member of the gang. I wanted people to ‘get it’ and refused to back down. When Jonnie Fedel, the goalkeeper, as early as the first day sputtered “where the fuck is the balls”

it made me flinch, especially when I saw that everybody was looking at me and expected that I was supposed to get those balls. But no way in life, not when he was talking like that.

“If you want them, you have to go get them yourself!” I sputtered, and that wasn’t the usual way to respond in MFF.

It was the ghetto thing again, and it wasn’t popular. But I had support from Ronald and the assistant coach Thomas Sjöberg, I felt that, even though they mostly believed in Tony of course. He got playing time and scored in his debut. I sat on the bench and tried to work even harder. But it didn’t help, and I swore. Maybe I should have been satisfied and not be in such a hurry. But I don’t work like that. I want to get the chance and show what I got immediately. But it didn’t look good, and on the nineteenth of September 1999 we were facing Halmstad on their home pitch Örjans Vall.

It was a deciding game. If we won or got a draw it would mean that we would still play in Allsvenskan next year. If we didn’t we had to keep on fighting in the last rounds, and everyone in the team were nervous and shaky. Our play was locked. In the beginning of the second half Niklas Gudmunsson, our forward, got injured, and I was hoping to get a chance. But no, Roland didn’t even look at me, and time was running out. Nothing happened. At the time, the score was one-one and that would be enough. But when only fifteen minutes were left even our captain Hasse Mattisson got injured and soon after that Halmstad scored two-one, and I saw how the whole team turned pale.

In that situation Roland brought me in, and while everyone else had a crisis I got started with a real adrenalin rush. I had Ibrahimovic on my shirt. It was wow, it was big, like no one can stop me now, and immediately I had a shot that touched the bar and went over. But then something happened. We got a penalty kick in the dying minutes, and you can understand. It was a feeling of life and death. If we would score the penalty the club honour would be saved, if not we were risking a catastrophe, and all the heavy guys hesitated. They didn’t dare to take the penalty. There was too much on the life, so Tony that cocky guy stepped forward:

“I’ll take it!”

That was a tough thing to do. Like a Balkan thing, you don’t back down. But in hindsight I believe that someone should have stopped him. He was too young to take something like this on his shoulders. I remember during his run up when the whole team were holding their breath, or looked away. It was nasty. But the goalkeeper made a save, I think he feinted Tony a little bit, and we lost, and after that Tony was put in deep freeze by the coaches. I felt bad for the guy, and I know journalists who saw that like a symbolic thing. It was the moment when I slipped past him. Tony never came back to the highest level of football, and I got more playing time. I came in as a substitute six times in Allsvenskan and in some interview Roland called me an unpolished diamond. Those words stuck and soon enough little kids came up to me after the games and wanted my autograph. Not that it was a big thing at the time. But I got pumped by it, and thought: I have to get even sharper now! I can’t let those little boys down.

Look here! I wanted to shout to them. Look at the coolest thing in the world! It was really a strange thing, right? I hadn’t done anything yet, not much anyway. But still young fans from nowhere showed up, and I wanted to do even more tricks. Those little kids gave me the right to play like I did. They wouldn’t have come up to me if I was the most boring team player! I started to play for the kids, and from the first moment I wrote autographs to everyone. No one should be without one. I was young myself. I understood exactly how it would have felt if my friends got one and I didn’t.

“Is everyone satisfied?” I said before I dashed away, and on the whole it happened so much around me that I didn’t care too much about what happened with the setbacks of the team. It was kind of sick. I was becoming like a household name when my club had the worst time ever at the same time. When we lost at home against Trelleborg, the fans were crying in the stands and were yelling “resign” to Roland. The police had to come in and protect him, and stones were thrown at the Trelleborg bus and there was riots and shit, and it didn’t get better a couple of days later when we were humiliated by AIK and the catastrophe was a fact.

We were relegated from Allsvenskan. For the first time in sixty-four years Malmö FF wasn’t going to play in the highest division, and in the locker room people sat and hid themselves behind towels and shirt

while the management tried to console and cheer, or whatever they were doing, and everywhere the frustration and shame was hissing, and some probably thought I was the biggest diva who just had ran around and dribbled in important games like this. But honestly, I didn’t care that much. I had other things on my mind. Something incredible had happened.

It was exactly when I had been moved up to the first team. We had a training session and sure, we were Malmö FF. We were or had been the pride of the city. But not many people came and watched our trainings, especially not back them. But that afternoon an old man showed up in dark grey hair. I saw him from far away. I didn’t recognize him. I noticed that he was looking at us from the threes over there, and I felt strange. Like I felt something, and I started doing even more tricks. But it took some time before I understood.

I always had to make it on my own during my childhood, and it was empty around me, and absolutely, my old man had done some incredible stuff also. But he wasn’t like that other dads that I had seen. He hadn’t watched any of my games, or encouraged me regarding school. He had his drinking and his war and his Yugoslav music. But now, I couldn’t believe it. That old man actually was my dad. He was there to watch, and I was blow away. It was like I was dreaming and started playing with a sick power: Shit, dad is here! It’s insane. Look here, I wanted to shout. Look here! Check this out! You son is the best player in the world.

I think that’s one of the biggest moments of my life. I promise. I got him back. Not that I really had him

before. It there was a crisis, he’d come running like the meanest Hulk. But like this, this was something

new, and afterwards I ran up to him and talked to like all cool and that, like it was something natural that

he was there.

“What’s up?”

“Well played, Zlatan”

It was insane. Dad had snapped, I believe. I became his drug. He started following everything I did. He watched every training session. His house became like a museum of my career, and he cut every article, every little press item, and it has continued like that. Ask him today about any of my games. He got it recorded and every word that is written about it, and then all the shirt and shoes that I’ve had and the awards and Guldbollarna (ed note: The Golden Ball, goes to the best Swedish player every year. Zlatan has six in a row). You name it, everything is there, and it’s not like he got them in some disorder, like before with his stuff. Everything is on its place. He can find anything in a second. From that day he started living for me and my football, and I believe it helped him feel better. Life wasn’t easy on him. He was lonely. Sanela had broken up with him because of his drinking and his temper and all his harsh word about mom, and that had taken a toll on him. Sanela was his heart, and she will always be. But now she wasn’t there for him anymore. She had broken up with him, another one of those tough things in my family, you know, and dad needed something new, and now he got just that. We started talking every day, and all that became a driving force for me as well. It was wow, like, football can do wonders, and I fought even harder. What was a relegation to division two why the old man had became my biggest fan!

I didn’t know what to do. Should I start playing in Superettan (ed note: Super one) like they called it nowadays instead of division two, what a silly name by the way, or should I look elsewhere? There was talks about AIK were after me. But was it true? I didn’t have a clue. I didn’t know shit about how hot I was. I wasn’t even a starter in MFF. I was eighteen and should sign a senior contract. But I waited. Everything felt insecure, especially since Roland Andersson and Thomas Sjörberg had gotten fired. They had believed in me when everyone else where whining. Would I even get any playing time if I stayed? I didn’t know and I hesitated. Both of me and my dad hesitated and how good was I really?

I didn’t have a clue. I had written a couple of autographs to little kids. But that obviously didn’t mean a thing, and my confidence went up and down. The first rush on enjoyment of being brought up to the first team started to fade away. But then I met a guy from Trinidad Tobago. It was during pre-season. He was cool. He was on a trial with us, and afterwards he came up to me. “Hey kid”, he said

“What?”

“If you’re not a pro in three years, it’s your own fault!”

“What do you mean?”

“You heard!”

Fucking of course I heard.

But it took some time to digest. Could it be true? If someone else had said it I would have hardly believed in it. But this guy, he apparently knew something. He had been around the world and it went like a dagger through my body. Was I really a pro talent in the making? I started to believe in it. For the first time I really did that and sharpened my play even more.

Hasse Borg, the old national team defender, had just become a sporting director in MFF. Hasse had a good eye on me at once. I guess he understood my talent, and he talked to journalists. Like, hey hey, you all should check this kid out, and in February next year a reporter who worked for Kvällsposten, named Rume Smith, came to the training. Rune was awesome. He could almost become a friend, and after watching me a little bit we talked, him and I, nothing special, not at all.

I talked about MFF and Superettan and my dreams of becoming a pro in Italy, like Ronaldo, and Rune took notes and smiled, and I don’t really know what I expected. I had no experience of journalists at that time. But it became a big thing. Rune wrote like: “Taste this future news bill name, ZLATAN, this sounds exciting. And he’s exciting. A different type of player, a dynamite package in the forward line”, and then he mentioned the thing with unpolished diamond again and I expressed myself in a cocky and not in a typical Swedish manner in the article, and I don’t know. There must have been something with that report. More and more little kids came up to me after the trainings and even some teenage girls as well, and even some adults. That was the start of the hysteria, all that “Zlatan, Zlatan!” that would become my life and that was unreal at first: Like what’s going on? Is it me they’re talking about?

I’d be lying if I didn’t say that if was really awesome. I mean, what do you thing? I had been trying to get some attention during my whole life and now suddenly people came up from nowhere and were impressed as hell and wanted my signature. Of course it was cool. It was the biggest rush in the world. I got pumped. I was filled with adrenalin. I flew forward. You know, I’ve heard a lot people who say: “O, I’ve had such a tough time, people are shouting outside my window. They want my autograph. Like, poor me.“ That’s bullshit.

You get a kick out of stuff like that, trust me, especially if you’ve been through the same things as me, and had been the kid from the ghetto. It’s like the fattest head light shining on you. But of course, some things I couldn’t really get yet, the jealousy and all that, the psychological stuff people use when they want to bring you down, especially if you’re from the wrong place and don’t act kindly and like a Swede. They taunted me as well. There was a lot of: “You just been lucky!” and “who do you think you are?”

I answered by becoming even more cocky. What else could I do? I wasn’t raised to apologize. I my family you don’t say: “Sorry, sorry, I’m so sorry that you got upset!” We got even. We fight if we have to, and we don’t trust people just like that. Everyone in my family had their problems, and my old man always said: “Don’t do anything prematurely. People just want to take advantage of you,” and I listened, and I thought. But it wasn’t easy. During this time Hasse Borg was running around in some nice costume and tried to get me to sign a senior contract. He was really on me, and I was flattered by it. I felt important. We had a new coach at that time, Micke Andersson, and I was still not sure about how much I was going to play. Micke Andersson apparently wanted to go with Niclas Kindvall and Mats lilienberg in the offence and have me as a substitute, and I didn’t want to go down to Superettan just to sit om the bench.

I discussed it with Hasse Borg, and you can say all kinds of things about him. But I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he had success in business life. He was straight forward in his style. He’s a bastard when it comes to persuade, and he used his experience from his own playing career and went on:

“This will be good, kid. We will venture on you and Superettan will be a perfect place for you to grow. You’ll get opportunities to develop. Just sign.”

I know that I agreed. I started to get confidence for the guy. He called me all the time and gave advice, and I thought: Why not? He probably knows. He had been a pro in Germany and all that, and it looked like he really cared about be. “Agents are thieves”, he said, and I believed him.

There was a guy who was after me. His name was Roger Ljung. Roger Ljung is a agent, and he wanted me. But my dad was sceptical and I didn’t know anything about agents. What’s that, kind of? So I bought what Hasse Borg had said, agents are thieves, and I signed his contract and got a apartment in Lorensborg, a single room apartment not far away from the stadium, and a mobile phone, which meant a lot, the phone at my dad’s wasn’t for me, and a salary of sixteen thousands each month (ed note: 1600 Euro).

I decided to really give it a go. But it started out badly. In the first game of the season in Superettan away against a little team, Gunnilse, and we should have won big. But the blockages were still there, and I sat on the bench. Fuck, was it going to be like this? The stands were boring and it was windy and when I eventually came in I got a bad elbow in my back. I punched the opponent in the back, bang, just like that, and then I bad mouthed the referee who also gave me a yellow card. There was a big circus about that, both on the pitch and in the newspapers and Hasse Mattisson, our captain, just went on about how I spread negative energy around me.

“What negative energy? I’m just pumped.”

“You don’t let go of things.” And then some bullshit that I really wasn’t the star I believed I was and that everyone else could do the same tricks that I did. They just didn’t want to show off and act like Maradona, and I got frustrated. There’s a picture of me when I’m outside the bus in Gunnilse looking mad.

But it let go with time. I started playing better and I have to give it to Hasse Borg; Superettan gave me playing time and opportunities to develop. I have to be grateful for the relegation in a way, and soon enough things started to happen.

It was insane if you think about it. I was no Ronaldo yet, and the newspapers in Sweden usually don’t care about division two football. But the biggest newspapers had coverage’s of me: “Superdiva in Superettan” and stuff like that, and Malmö FF Supporter Club got an unexpected raise in female applicants, and all the older guys in the team was like wondering: What’s going on? What’s happening? And it wasn’t really easy to understand, especially not for me. In the stands people were waving posters: “Zlatan is the king”, and shouted the biggest rock star shouts when I did my dribbling. What happened? What has that about? I didn’t know. I still really don’t know.

But I guess a lot of people just became happy when I did my tricks and show things and I heard a lot of “Wow”, and “ohh ohhh ohhh” now as well, just like at my mom’s block, that I got a kick. I grew when people knew me around the city and the girls yelled and the kids ran to me with their autograph books, and I did my thing even harder. But of course, sometimes it got out of hand. For the first time in my life I had some money, and with me money from the first pay check I got my license in an intensive course. For a guy from Rosengård is the car something fundamental, you could easily say that.

In Rosengård you don’t brag about the nice apartment and beach house. You brag about the fattest car, and if you want to show that you’ve made it in life, it’s with a nice ride. In Rosengård everyone drives a car, with or without a driving license, and when I got my Toyota Celica on leasing me and my friends were out all the time and back then I had been starting to cool down a little bit. The whole stir in media made me want to do the “right things”, at least a little bit, and when my friends started stealing cars and stuff like that, I told them:

“Stuff like this doesn’t work for me anymore.”

But still, I needed some kicks, like when me and a friend of mine were driving up the Industrigatan (ed note: gata=road) where all the prostitutes in Malmoe worked. Industrigatan isn’t far away from Rosengård, and I had been there and done some crazy stuff as a kid. Once I even threw an egg in the head of one of the women, just a stupid thing like that, not so pleasant, I admit. But back then I didn’t think that far, and now when me and my friend were there in my Toyota we saw a prostitute who stood there bend over a car, like she was talking to a costumer, and then we said: “come on, let’s mess with the punter” and we parked the car just in front of his and then we rushed out and yelled: “It’s the police! Get your hands up!”

It was sick. I had a shampoo bottle in my hand like the wackest toy gun, and that customer, some old man, became really afraid and drove away really fast from the situation. We didn’t think more of it, it was just a thing we did. But when we drove further away we heard sirens, and behind us in a police car that old man from Industrigatan sat in the back, and we thought: What’s happening? What’s this? And of course, we could have gotten away from the area. We weren’t strangers to stuff like that, after all. But fuck it, we had our belts on and we hadn’t really done anything bad, not really. So we stopped.

“We were just messing around”, we said. “We were playing cops, not a big thing, right? We’re sorry,” and the cops were mostly laughing, and like it wasn’t a big deal.

But then some chump showed up, one of those photographers, who sit and listen to the police radio all day, and he took a picture, and as the idiot I am I put on a big smile, because the whole media thing was new to me then. It was still a cool thing to be in the newspapers, didn’t matter if I had done an awesome goal or if the cop had busted me. That’s why I smiled like a clown, and my friend took it even further. He had the picture framed and put it on his wall, and that old man, do you know what he did? He went out in interviews and said that he really was the nicest old man from church who only wanted to help the prostitutes. Get out of here! But that story hanged around. It was even said that some clubs didn’t want to buy me because of that incident. That was probably bullshit.

But the newspapers became even wilder after that, and some on my team mates moaned and whined, “he really has a lot to learn”, “he’s very unpolished”, and really, I get them. It couldn’t have been easy. They probably needed to put me down once in a while. Here was I from out of nowhere and got more attention in a week than they had gotten during their whole careers and on top on that some types in sharp costumes and with the fattest watches showed up and in the boring stands in the countryside’s we were playing at during that season, guys who didn’t look like they were belonging there, and all of them were watching me.

Afterwards I don’t even know when I understood, or even thought about it. But people started to talk about those guys, and they said that they were talent scouts from European club, and that they were there to study me. The guy from Trinidad Tobago had indeed prepared me for it, but it still felt unreal and I tried to talk about it with Hasse Borg. He slipped away. He didn’t seem to like the topic. “Is it true, Hasse? Foreign clubs are after me?”

“Take it easy, kid.”

“But who are they?”

“It’s nothing, Hasse Borg said.” “And we’re not selling you”, and I thought: Sure, fine, I’m not in that of a hurry after all, and I tried to negotiate a better contract instead.

“If you give me five good games in a row I’ll give you a new deal”, Hasse Borg said, and then I did it, I played great in five, six, seven games and then we sat down and talked about the terms.

I raised my salary with about ten thousands, and raised it ten thousand more later on, and I thought it was OK. I didn’t really have a clue, and I went to my dad and proudly showed him my contract. He wasn’t as impressed. He had totally changed. He was the biggest interested supporter now and instead of digging himself down into the war or something else, he sat at home all day and read stuff about football, and when he read the paragraph about sales to foreign clubs he jumped.

“What the fuck”, he said. “There’s nothing in this contract about how much you’re going to get.” “How much should I get?”

“You should get ten percent of the money if you get sold. Or else they’re using you”, and I thought that I would really want ten or twenty percent. But I didn’t understand how we should get that money. If there was an opening for something like that then Hasse Borg would have mentioned it, right?

But I asked him anyway. I didn’t want to give in to easily. “Hey, Hasse”, I said. “Can I get ten percent if I get sold?” But of course, I hadn’t expected anything else. “Sorry kid!” he said. “It doesn’t work like that”, and then I told my dad about it. I figured that we wouldn’t give up.

If it doesn’t work, then it doesn’t work. But it was the other way around. He god mad, and asked me for Hasse Borg’s number. He called once, twice, three times, and eventually got a hold of him, and he didn’t settle for a “no” on the phone. He demanded a meeting and it got settled, we were going to met Hasse Borg at ten then next day at his office, and can you imagine. I was nervous. Dad is dad, and I was worried

that it might become a bit wild and crazy, and honestly, it wasn’t so balanced either! Dad got out of hand pretty soon. He started sputtering and hit the desk with his fist: “Is my son a horse?”

Nah, of course Hasse Borg didn’t feel I was a horse.

“Why are you treating him like one then?”

“We’re not treating him...”

It went on like that, and eventually my dad explained to MFF that they weren’t going to see me anymore. I wouldn’t play one second if the contract wasn’t going to be re-negotiated, then Hasse Borg started to turn pale from what I understand, and I get it, honestly. You don’t mess with dad. He’s like a lion, and we got those ten percent in the contract, and that would mean a lot. All credit to dad for that, and all that happened should be a lesson, something to have in mind. But agents were still thieves and I still trusted Hasse Borg. He was my mentor, like, a real extra dad. He invited me to his farm on the country side, and I got to meet his dog, the kids and wife and the animals, and I asked him for advice when I bought my Mercedes Cabriolet on instalments.

But at the same time, how should I put it? The situation was on the edge. My confidence was growing, and I became bolder. I scored more artistic goals, and all the Brazilian tricks I had practiced on hour after hour were starting to work. All the hard work with that stuff started to pay off. I the junior team they gave me a hard time for it and the parents whined: Oh, he’s dribbling again! He doesn’t play for the team, and that. But now I got cheers and applauses from the stands, and I got it right away, this is my chance. A lot of people were still moaning. But it gets tougher on them when we’re winning and the crowd loves me.

The autograph hunters and the roars and the posters in the sea of crowds gave me power, and I got in a great form. Against Västerås on away turf I got a pass from Hasse Mattison. It was on stoppage time. The game was almost over. But I saw a glitch and chipped the ball over myself and a couple of opponents, Majstorovic was one of them, it was a beautiful little thing, and I could put the ball in to goal.

I scored twelve goals in Superettan, more than anyone in MFF, and we qualified to Allsvenskan and I was definitely an important player in the team. I wasn’t just the individualist, like some said. I started making the difference, and all the time the hysteria around me increased, and at that time I didn’t said only some boring stuff.

I hadn’t had any problems with media yet. I was myself with the journalists and I told them about what cars I wanted and which games I played, and I said stuff like “There’s only one Zlatan” and “Zlatan is Zlatan”, not all that humble stuff, and I guess that I was seen as something totally new. It wasn’t the usual “the ball is round”, and that, (ed note: I think this is a Swedish expression only. It means that anything can happen on the football field).

It was more freely, from the heart. I talked almost like I did at home, and even Hasse Borg admitted that I was popular and that talent scouts were lurking in the bushes. “But we have to stay cool.”

Afterwards I got to hear that about one agent called him about me every day. I was hot, and I guess that he already then suspected that could become the saviour of the club economy. I was his golden boy, like media put it later, and one day he came up to me and asked:

“What about going on a trip?”

“Sure, I’d love to”

It was a little tour, he explained, to different clubs that were interested in buying me, and I felt, fuck, it’s really happening.