n a way I couldn't keep up. Things happened too fast. A minute ago I was a problem kid on the youth squad. Now everything was happening. Me and Hasse Borg drove out to Arsenal's training grounds in St. Albans in north London, can you imagine.

It was classic ground, and I saw Patrick Viera, Thierry Henry and Dennis Bergkamp on the field. But the really cool thing was that I was going to meet Arsène Wenger. Wenger was quite new at at the club then. He was the first non-Englishman who had gotten the job as coach of Arsenal and the papers had headlines like like "Arsène who?". Like who the fuck is Arsène Wenger? But already the second season he took the double, both the league and the FA-cup, and became huge, and I felt like a little kid when we stepped into his office.

It was me, Hasse Borg and an agent I've forgotten the name of and Wenger's way of looking at me gave me the chills. He was kind of trying to look through me, or finding out who I was deep within. He's a guy who makes psychological profiles on his players, are they emotionally stable and stuff like that. He's very careful about things, like all big coaches, and I didn't talk much at first.

I was just sitting there, being very shy, but after a while I lost patience. Something about Wenger provoked me. And he flew out of his chair every now and then to see who was outside his window. Like he wanted complete control of things, and he went on and on about one thing constantly.

"You can test and practice with us", he said. "You can feel it out. You can try."

No matter how much I wanted to behave, those words triggered me. I wanted to show him what I could do.

"Give me a pair of shoes. I'll practice. I'll do it right away", I said and then Hasse Borg interrupted and said "Stop, stop, we'll work it out, this isn't an audition, not at all", and of course, I got his point: you're either interested or you're not. Auditioning is a downer. It makes you an underdog, so we said no. "We're sorry Mr. Wenger, but we're not interested, and there's been a lot of talk about that later.

But I'm sure it was the right decision, and we continued down to Monte Carlo, where Monaco were interested, but we said no to them as well, and also further on to Verona in Italy, a sister club of Roma, and then we went home. It had been a cool trip, for sure. But nothing came out of it, and I guess nothing was supposed to. I was more supposed to get an idea about how things worked on the continent, and back in Malmö it was cold and winter. I got sick in the flu.

By then I had been picked for the under 21 national team. But I had to cancel my first game, and some scouts and agents had to go home disappointed. The scouts were following me everywhere. I didn't have much of a clue about those things. There was only one guy I knew a little bit. A danish guy. John Steen Olsen was his name. He'd been watching me for Ajax for so long that we started saying hello. But I didn't make a big deal out of it. He was just part of the circus, and I didn't know what was bullshit and what was true. The whole thing was more real though after our trip. But I still couldn't really believe it. I took one day at a time and remember looking forward to going on training camp with MFF.

We were going to La Manga. It was the beginning of March, and I felt good physically. The sun was shining. La Manga is a bit of coast on Spain's southeast corner, a tourist place with long beaches and bars. Close to the mainland there is a training facility where some major clubs do their pre-season work. I shared a room with Gudmundur Mete, the Icelander. We'd been following each other since the youth team, and none of us had been on a camp like this before. We didn't know the rules and came late to dinner the first night and got fined. We just laughed about it, and the morning after we went to practice. It wasn't a big deal.

But on the sideline I spotted a familar dude. It was that John Steen Olsen guy, and I flinched. Was he here too? I said: Hello, hello! Nothing more. I didn't wanna get all fired up. Those guys were everywhere. I'd gotten used to it. But the next day there was another guy there. I was told it was the head scout from Ajax, and Hasse Borg seemed all stressed out.

"Now things are starting to happen! Things are happening!" he said and I replied: "OK, great!"

I just went on playing. But it wasn't all easy. All of sudden there were three guys from Ajax there. The assisting coach also arrived, and Hasse Borg told me even more people were coming. It was like an invasion, and we'd face norwegian team Moss the next day. By then head coach Co Adriaanse and sporting director Leo Beenhakker were there.

I didn't know anything about Beenhakker then; I didn't know anything about the football bosses in Europe at that time. But I realized immediately that this guy was a big shot. He wore a hat in the sun and was smoking a fat cigar. He had white curly hair, and kind of shining eyes. It's been said he looks like the crazy scientist in "Back to the future", but if that was true he was a tougher version of him. Beenhakker radiated power and coolness. He looked a bit like a mafia guy, and I like that. That's the style I've grown up with, and it didn't surprise me one bit that Beenhakker had coached Real Madrid and won both the league and the cup with them. It was obvious he had been calling shots and dominated, and it was said that he could see the potential in young players that no one else could, and I thought: Wow, this is it! But of course, there was a lot of stuff I didn't know about. Beenhakker had several times tried getting Hasse Borg to decide a price for me. Hasse had refused. He didn't want to fix my price to a certain amount.

"The guy isn't for sale", he had said and that was probably smart. But a dangerous game. Beenhakker had said:

"If you don't say a price I won't come to La Manga!"

"That's your problem. Don't come then", Hasse Borg answered, at least that's what he says, and Beenhakker folded.

He had flown to Spain, and the first thing he'd see was our game against Moss. Afterwards I don't remember seeing him on the sideline. I only saw John Steen Olsen, and the coach, Co Adriaanse, over next to the opponent’s goal. But apparently Beenhakker had climbed up on a shed next to the field to get a better view, and of course, he must have been prepared for a disappointment. It wouldn't have been the first time he'd travelled far just to watch a talent not meeting the expectations, and it wasn't an important game either. There were no reasons for anyone to give it his everything, and maybe it would just be another boring game. No one knew. The guys from Ajax were talking now and then, and I felt a bit nervous.

But quite early in the first half I received a pass from the right. I was just outside the box, and we wore our light blue shirts. The time was 15.37 if we should believe the shaky video which is on YouTube. It was hot, but with some winds from the coast, and it didn't look like a dangerous situation. It was a passive game. But I saw an opening, a possibility. It was one of those images that just appears in my head, one of those quick scenes which blows through my head and that I never have been able to really explain. Football isn't something you plan. Football just happens, and on direct touch I flipped the ball over a defender, one of those small lobs that you instantly know are perfect, and I ran. I accellerated past two defenders and met the ball a few meters into the box and came in perfect position to heel the ball. I heeled it over another defender and advanced to shoot it on volley. And for a moment you wonder, you have time to think although it's just a tenth of a second: Is it a goal? A miss? But no, it fired in the net. It was one of the most beutiful things I've done, and I ran over the field with my arms straight out and screamed. The journalists who were there thought I screamed "Zlatan, Zlatan!" But please, why would I shout my own name? I said "Showtime, showtime!".

It was a showtime-goal, and I can imagine what Beenhakker was thinking. He must have freaked out. He could never have seen anything like it. But later I found out that he also became worried. He had found what he was looking for; a big player who had technique and could score, and who just like that had scored the most amazing goal. But he was clever enough to realize that I had skyrocketed my value with that scoring, and if any other big clubs had spies in place there would be a crazy bidding war. So Leo Beenhakker decided to go for it immediately. He jumped down that shed and went to Hasse Borg.

"I want to meet that guy now, immediately", he said, because you know, in football it isn't just about the player; it's the person as well. It doesn't matter if the player is amazing if he's got the wrong attitude. You buy the complete package.

"I don't know if that's possible", Hasse Borg said.

"What do you mean 'not possible'?"

"Maybe we don't have time for that. We have lots of activities and stuff planned!"

Beenhakker got mad, because of course he got it.

There were no fucking activities. Hasse Borg must have had an orgasm. The guy knew he had ace of the deck, and now he wanted to act difficult and do all his tricks.

"What do you mean? He's a young guy. You're on training camp. Of course there's time."

"Maybe, but just a quickie", Hasse Borg said, or something like that, and they agreed we'd meet at the Ajax guys' hotel which was some bit away.

We went there. In the car Hasse Borg went on and on about how important it was that I showed a good and positive attitude. But I was calm. Maybe Ajax wanted to buy me, and sure, that was huge, and if things were different maybe I'd been nervous.

I wasn't used to foreign hot shots at that time, and even less so with big business. But you own the world after a goal like that. It's easy being charming, and me and Hasse Borg entered their hotel and shook hands with everyone. Like "How do you do", and we talked a bit in general, and I smiled and said I really wanted to give football my everything and that I knew it was hard work, stuff like that. It was like a theatre act and everyone showed their nice side. But of course, there was seriousness and suspicion underneath. They were all looking at me: Who is he, really? Especially I remember Leo Beenhaaker. He leaned forward and said:

"If you fuck with me I'll fuck you two times back", and really, that impressed me.

It was my kind of talk, it was tounge in cheek. But of course, his guys had probably done their research. They probably knew everything about me, including that thing om Industrigatan. Not that I thought about it then. But his words could be taken as a warning, right? And I remember us going back to our hotel just 15 minutes later, and I remember not being able to sit still.

There is one kind of game on the pitch. There is another kind of game on the transfer market, I like them both, and I know some tricks. I know when to be quiet and I know when to start a war. But I've learned the difficult way. In the beginning I didn't know anything. I was just a kid who wanted to play football, and after the meeting in La Manga I didn't hear a single word about Ajax, not for a while.

I went home, and at this time I was driving a blue Mercedes convertible, not the one I ordered, but a loaner I'd gotten while waiting for the real deal, and I don't think I was going anywhere. I was just cruising around feeling like the cool guy, and in the backseat was a ball if I'd feel like playing. Just an ordinary day in Malmö, in other words.

The start of the Allsvenskan season was still a few weeks away, and I was going to play an under 21 national team game in Borås, but a part from that things were cool. It was just practice, hanging with friends and playing video games. Then the phone rang. It was Hasse Borg. Nothing strange about that. We called each other all the time. But he sounded different. "Are you busy?" he asked, and I couldn't really say that I was.

"But are you ready? Are you prepared?"

"Sure. Why?"

"They are here now."

"Who?"

"Ajax. Come down to Hotel S:t Jörgen. We're waiting for you", he said, and sure, of course, I drove down there.

I parked outside, and of course, my heart was pounding. I understood that things were happening, and I had told Hasse Borg that I wanted to be sold for record amounts. I wanted to be history. There was a swedish player who had gone to Arsenal for fourty million, that was a lot back then, and a norwegian guy, John Carew, who Valencia payed seventy for. It was a record in Scandinavia, and I had my hopes of beating that. But man, I was nineteen.

It wasn't easy being tough when things really were happening, and do you remember? We from the suburbs wore tracksuits, and sure, I had tried other styles at Borgarskolan. But now I had my Nike tracksuit again and a cap on the head, but that was wrong. When I came into S.t Jörgen, John Steen Olsen met me, and sure, I knew that everything was top secret. Ajax is listed on the stock exchange, it would be insider info if anything got out. But then I saw Cecilia Persson, and I flipped. What was Cecilia doing there? I didn't expect to meet people from Rosengård at S:t Jörgen. It was another world. Far from

the suburbs. But there she was. She and I had grown up in the same building, and she was my mom's best friend's daughter. But then I remembered, she was cleaning at the hotel. She was a cleaner just like my mom, and now she looked suspiciously at me: What is Zlatan doing with those guys, kind of, and I hushed her, like "don't say anything". And I took the elevator and went into a conference room, and there were some guys in suits, there was Beenhaaker, his finance guy, and Hasse Borg of course and I knew insantly there was something weird in the air.

Hasse was all nervous, there was adrenaline all over him, but of course, he acted cool: "Hey kid! You see, we can't say a word about this yet. But do you want to go to Ajax? They want you" and even if I'd had a hunch, I got excited.

"Absolutely!" I answered. "Ajax is a good school", and everyone nodded and smiled.

But still, there was something strange going on, and I shook hands and was told that I now would negotiate my personal contract, and for some reason Beenhakker and his guys left the room, and I was left alone with Hasse Borg. What the fuck was going on with Hasse? He had the hugest snus under his lip and showed me a block of paper.

"Check this out. I've done this for you", he said, and I looked at the papers. It said a hundred and sixty thousand per month, and of course, that was a lot of money, it was, wow, am I getting that? But I hade no clue if it was good compared to the market, and I said so. "Is this good?"

"Hell yeah, of course", Hasse said. "It's four times what you make today", and I thought okay, he was probably right, it was a lot of money, and I could feel how stressed he was.

"Let's go for it, I said.

"Great, Zlatan! Congratulations!" Then he went out, he'd negotiate some he said, and when he came back he looked really proud. It was like he had fixed the world's best deal.

"They will pay for your new Mercedes also, it's on them", and that was awesome too I thought, and answered "Wow, cool".

But I still didn't know anything more about the deal, or was thinking that this thing with the car maybe was like nothing, because honestly, what do you think? That I was prepared for that change?

I wasn't prepared one god damn bit. I didn't know anything about what football players made or what taxes they had in Holland, and I really didn't have anyone who spoke for me or looked after my best interests. I was nineteen years old and from Rosengård. I didn't know anything about the world. I knew as much as Cecilia outside, and as you know, I thought Hasse Borg was my friend, my extra dad kind of. I never understood that he was only thinking about one thing: making money for the club, and it would really take a long time before I understood what that weird vibe in that room had been about. But sure, those guys in suits had been in the middle of a negotiation.

They hadn't even decided on a price for me, and the reason I had been called there was that of course it's easier getting a transfer in place if you first sign the player and decide his salary, because then you know what kind of money you have to play with. If your then so smart to make sure the guy the guy gets the lowest pay in the entire team, then it's much easier getting a high fee. I was simply used in that strategy game.

But I didn't know anything about that back then. I just stepped out in the lobby and cheered of joy, or something like that, but I think I was quite good at keeping my mouth shut. The only one I told was my dad, and wise as he is, he was sceptical. He didn't trust people. But me, I just let it happen, and the next day I went to Borås to play the U21 national against Macedonia. It was a Euro qualifier and my debut in the youth national team, and it should have been a big deal. But of course my mind was elsewhere and I remember meeting Hasse Borg and Leo Beenhakker again and signed the contract, They were done negotiating then.

But still we had to keep it secret until two o'clock the afternoon when it would be announced in Holland, and I found out a whole bunch of foreign agents had come to town to check me out. But they came for nothing. I was an Ajax player. I was walking on clouds, and I asked Hasse Borg:

"What was my price?" and the answer, seriously, I will never forget it.

He had to repeat himself. It was like I didn't understand what he said, and maybe he first mentioned it in guilden, and that wasn't a currency I knew. But then I realized how much it was and I flipped like fuck. Okay, I had hoped for a record transfer. I wanted to leave for more than John Carew, but seeing it black on white was something completely different. It was mindblowing. It was eighty five fucking million! But most importantly, no Swede, no Scandinavian, not even Henke Larsson, not John Carew had been sold for anything close that figure, and of course I realized that there would be a lott of press. I was used to some media.

But still, when I got the papers the next day - it was insane. The press had a Zlatan orgy. It was the money kid. It was Zlatan the incredible. It was Zlatan all kinds of things, and I read everything and enjoyed it, and I remember when I went for coffee in Borås with Chippen and Kennedy Bakircioglü in the under 21 national team. We were sitting at a coffee shop having a soda and a bun, and suddenly som girls our age came up to us, and one of them said, kind of shy: "Are you the eighty five million guy?" I mean, how do you answer that?

"Absolutely", I said. "That's me", and my phone rang all the time.

People were sucking up and congratulating and were quite jealous, all except one, mom. She was furious. "My god, Zlatan, what happened?" she screamed. "Have you been kidnapped? Are you dead?" She had seen me on TV and didn't really understand what they said, and normally, if you're from Rosengård and in the media it's bad news.

"It's cool, mom. I've just been sold to Ajax", I said, and then she got mad instead. "Why didn't you tell me? Why do I hear about things like that on the TV?"

But she calmed down, and I can become quite touched when I think about it, and the next day I went to Holland with John Steen Olsen and I wore that pink sweater and brown leather jacket which was the coolest outfit I had, and I held a press conference in Amsterdam. It was quite a chaos with photographers and journalists sitting and standing all over the place, and I shone. I looked down. I was happy and insecure. I was big and small at the same time, and I tried champagne for the first time in my life and made faces, like "Uh, what kind of shit is this, and I got shirt number nine from Beenhakker, the one that had been worn by Van Basten.

It was almost too much and around this time some guys were making a documentary about me and MFF which is called "Blådårar", and those guys followed me to Amsterdam and filmed me with the club's sponsor at a Mitsubishi dealership and I walk around in my brown leather jacket checking out the cars. "Strange just being able to walk in here and pick one. But I'll get used to it I guess", I say, smiling.

It was the first time I got that awesome feeling that anything is possible. Honestly, it was like a fairytale, and spring was in the air, and I went to the Ajax stadium stood there in the empty stands sucking a lollipop, thinking. And all the time the journalists went more wild. They did the story about the kid from the ghetto who got to live the dream and the next day they wrote that Zlatan had gotten a taste of professional football and a life in luxery. That was when Allsvenskan was about to start. Hasse Borg had negotiated that I would stay in MFF for another six months, so I had to go straight from Amsterdam back to Malmö and practice. I remember it was a cold day.

I had cut my hair and I was happy I hadn't seen my teammates for a while. But now they were all sitting there in the dressing room reading with the papers on their laps, reading about my "life of luxery". You can see the scene in "Blådårar". I walk in, laughing, taking my jacket off, screaming of joy, a wild little "Jiiaa!" and they raise their heads. I almost feel sorry for them.

They all look sad. Of course they're green with envy, no one more than Hasse Mattisson, they guy who fought me in Gunnilse. He looks devastated, but still, he's a nice guy. He's the team captain and he means well. At least he tries:

"Congratulations. This is great! Just do it", he says, but he doesn't fool anyone, certainly not the camera.

The camera pans from his sad eyes to me, and I'm just sitting there smiling, happy as a kid, and maybe, I don't know, some kind of mania infected me those days. Something always has to happen. I wanted action, action. Like making a drama, a show, and that's why I did some stupid things. I got some blonde

loops in my hair, and I got engaged, not that it was stupid getting engaged with Mia or anything. She was a good girl, she studied web design and was blonde and pretty, and a forward person. We had met at Cyprus the summer before where she worked in some bar and switched numbers, and started hanging in Sweden had a fun together. But there was like a fever in that engagement, and since I still hadn't any blocks towards media, I told Rune Smith at Kvällsposten about it. That's when he asks: "What did you give her as engagement present?"

"Present? She got Zlatan."

She got Zlatan! It was one of those comments that just came, a quote bouncing out of me, and sounded cocky, right in line with my media image, and that's still mentioned all the time. It was just that: a few weeks later Mia got nothing. I broke off the engagement since a friend fooled me into believing I would have to get married within a year, and in general I was doing a lot of those sudden unexpected things. I was like on speed. Too much was going on around me and the start of Allsvenskan was getting closer, and you can imagine, that was when I would have to prove that I really was worth those eighty five million. The day before Anders Svensson and Kim Källström had scored two goals in their opening games of Allsvenskan and there was talk about me not being able to handle my new stardom. Maybe I was just an overvalued teenager. Like most of the time those years they talked about me being blown out of proportions by the media, and I felt I had to perform. That was a lot to carry around, and I remember Malmö Stadium was boiling. It was the 9th of April 2001.

I had my blue Mercedes convertible and I was so proud of it. But when Rune Smith interviewed me ahead of the game I didn't want them to take pictures of me next to it. I didn't want to seem too cocky. It felt like that shit would come back to me, and I heard some doubts: the pressure will be too much, stuff like that, and it wasn't all easy handling that. I was nineteen, and everything had happened too quickly, Still, I was triggered by it. Everything was on a new level now. But that feeling of wanting to get back at everyone who never believed in me I had had for a long time. I had been driven by revenge and anger all since I began playing and now there were a lot of expectations and concern in the air. We were facing AIK. Not an easy first game.

Last time we met them we had been humiliated and sent down to the second division and now before this season, many thought AIK were among the favourites to win Allsvenskan, and really, who were we? We had just been promoted from the second division even without winning it. Still, the pressure seemed to be on us, and people said it was mainly because of me, the eighty five million guy. Malmö Stadium was packed, almost twenty thousand people, and I ran in that long corridor with the blue floor towards the field and I heard the pounding sound from out there. It was huge, I understood that, this was the return to Allsvenskan, but still, I could hardly understand it.

Papers flew through the air. People held cards and signs and when we lined up they were screaming something, at first I didn't hear what it was. It was "We love Malmö", but also my name. It was like an amazing choir and on those signs it said "Good luck Zlatan" and stuff like that and I just stood there on the pitch and just pumped everything towards my ears with my hand, like: Give me more, give me more, and honestly, all who doubted me were right with at least one thing. Everything was set for a terrible game. It was too much.

A quarter to nine the game began, and the audience just got louder. In those days scoring wasn't the most important thing. It was the show, the artistry, all those things I practiced over and over, and early in the game I made a tunnel on an AIK-defender and made some dribbles. Then I disappeared from the game and AIK took over and had chance after chance and things didn't look so good for us. Maybe I wanted too much. That was something I knew already back then. If you want too much, you'll easily lock up.

But I tried to relax and after thirty minutes I got the ball Peter Sörensen right outside the box. It didn't feel like a great opportunity at first. But I made a move. I pulled the ball with me with a heel and advanced and shot a broadside in goal and oh my god, I experienced it like a shock: now comes the explotion, it happens now, and I celebrated down on my knees while the entire stadium screamed "Zlatan, Zlatan, SuperZlatan", all kinds of those things, and afterwards it was like I was being carried ahead.

I did trick after trick, and in the ninth minute in the second half I got another nice ball from Sörensen. I was out wide on the right and ran towards the line. it didn't seem like an angle to shoot from, not at all, and everyone thought he's passing. But I shot at goal anyway. From that impossible angle I scored again and the stadium went totally crazy, and I walked there slowly with my arms pointed outwards, and that face I make! That is power, that is: Here I am, you fuckers who were only whining and trying to get me away from football.

It was revenge, it was pride, and I guess all those who said those eighty five million were too much got to eat it, and I'll never forget the reporters afterwards. They were practically shining, and one of them said: "If I say Anders Svensson and Kim Källström, what do you say?"

"I say Zlatan, Zlatan", and people were laughing and I stepped out into the spring evening, and there was my Mercedes convertible, and it was huge.

But it took a while getting to it. Young kids, boys and girls, were everywhere and wanted my autograph, so I stayed there forever, no one would leave without one that was part of my philosophy. I would pay back, and after that I stepped into my new car and sped out of there while the fans were screaming and waiving their autographs, and that could have been enough. But it wasn't over, that was just the beginning, and the next day the papers came out, and what do you think? Did they write anything?

They wrote like crazy, and apparently I had said when we were relegated from Allsvenskan:

"I want people to forget about me. You shouldn't even know I exist. Later, when we return I will hit the football field like a lightning", and the papers used that quote.

I became the lightning that struck. I became all kinds of cool things and they were even talking about a Swedish Zlatan fever. I was everywhere, in all the media, and they said not only young kids read it. It was the lady at the post office, the old man at the liquor store, and I heard jokes like "Hey, what's up? How are you?" "I think I have the Zlatan fever", and I was walking on air. It was amazing. Some guys even made a song which became a huge hit. You heard it everywhere. People had it as a ringtone on their mobile phones: "Ohiya, Zlatan and me, we're from the same town" they were singing, and I mean, how do you handle something like that? They're singing about you. But of course, there was a flipside to everything, and I saw it in the third round of Allsvenskan. It was on April 21st. We were in Stockholm to play against Djurgården.

Djurgården was the team which was relegated with us and also advanced back together with us, Djurgården as the winner and we in second place, and to tell the truth, they had beaten the shit out of us in the second division, the first time with 2-0 and the second with 4-1, so in that way, sure they had an advantage. But still, we had beaten both AIK and Elfsborg with 2-0 in our first two games, and most importantly, Malmö FF had me. Everyone was talking about it, Zlatan, Zlatan, I was hotter than lava, and people said national team coach Lars Lagerböck was in the stands to check me out.

But of course this also annoyed even more people: What the fuck is so special about that guy? One of the tabloids even approached the entire defence line of Djurgården. I remember there were three big guys, who stood with their arms crossed all over the middle spread in the paper, and above them the headline: "We are the ones putting an end to the overrated diva Zlatan", and I guess I expected quite an aggressive mood on the field. It was a prestigious game, and clearly it would be a rough one, but still, I got the chills when I stepped out on the Stockholm Stadium.

The Djurgården fans were spewing hatred, or if it wasn't hatred, at least they were the worst psychings I've ever experienced: "We hate Zlatan, we hate Zlatan!" It was like thunder around me. The entire audience was against me, and I heard a lot of other things, lots of mean shit about me and my mom.

I had never experienced anything like it, and ok, somehow I could understand it. The fans couldn't run down on the pitch themselves and play ball, so what did they do? They attacked the best player of the other team, they tried to break me, and it's natural in a way. That's the way it is in football. But this was over the line, and it pissed me off. I was going to show them, and in a way I was playing more against the audience than the other team. But just like against AIK it took a while before I got into the game.

I was roughly marked. They had those leeches from the newspaper after me, and Djurgården dominated the first twenty minutes. We had bought a guy from Nigeria. His name was Peter Ijeh and he had the reputation of being a great goal scorer. He became the league's top scorer the season after. But at that time he was still in my shadow. Who wasn't? He received a pass in the 21st minute, from Daniel Majstorović, who later would become a close friend of mine.

Peter Ijeh scored 1-0, and in the 68th minute he assisted Joseph Elanga beautifully, the other african player we had bought that year, Elanga tackled a defender and scored 2-0. The audiences were booing, they were screaming, and of course, I sucked, I was nobody. I hadn't scored, just like those defenders had said I wouldn't, and sure, up until then I hadn't been very good.

I had done some tricks and also a heel pass down by the corner flag, but apart from that it had more been Ijeh's and Majstorović's game than mine, and there was no magic in the air when I received the ball two minutes later in the middle of the field. But it would change, because suddenly I dribbled one guy, it just happened, and then another one, and I felt: Wow, I'm light, I have control, so I continued.

It was like a dance and even if I didn't know it then I dribbled all those defenders from the newspaper and shot the ball into the net with my left toe, and honestly, that feeling, it wasn't just joy. It was revenge. This is for you, I thought, this is for all your words and all your hatred, and I figured my fight with the audience would continue even after the game.

I mean, we had humiliated Djurgården, the game ended 4-0, but do you know what happened? I was surrounded by Djurgården fans, and no one wanted to fight or hate anymore. They wanted my autograph. They were like crazy for me, and honestly, when I think back about those times, a lot is about stuff like that, about how it was possible to turn everything around with a goal or some show thing. You know, there was no movie I loved more back then than "Gladiator" and there is a scene there, everyone knows it, when the emperor comes down in the arena and asks the gladiator to remove his mask and the gladiator does that and says:

"My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius … And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next."

That was how I felt, or wanted to feel, I wanted to stand there in front of the whole world and show all those who had doubted me who I really was, and I couldn't imagine who would be able to stop me.