here had been a lot of Marco van Basten. I had inherited his shirt number and was supposed to be like him on the pitch and all that, and sure, it was flattering. But I was getting tired of it. I didn’t want to be the new van Basten. I was Zlatan, nothing else. So no, I wanted to shout, don’t bring that guy up again. I’ve heard enough of him. But still, of course, it was a really cool thing when he showed up in person, it was wow, is he talking to me?

van Basten is a legend, one of the best strikers ever, maybe not as good as Ronaldo, but still, he had scored over two hundred goals and totally dominated in Milan. It was almost ten years ago he had been chosen as the best in the world by FIFA, and now he had been on a coaching course and was going to be a assistant in Ajax junior team, a first step for him in that career. That’s why he was close to us in trainings.

I became a little boy before him, at least in the beginning. But I got used to it. We talked almost on daily basis, and had some fun together. Before every game he triggered me. We talked and made bets and joked.

“Well, how many goals will you score this time? I think you’ll score one.” “One? You’re mad. I’ll score at least two.” “Bullshit. You want to bet?”

“How much?”

We went on like that and he gave me a lot of advice, and he was really an awesome person. He did his own thing and didn’t care about what the bosses thought of it. He was completely independent. I had gotten criticism because I didn’t help out enough in defense, and even because I just stood there on the pitch when the opposition attacked, and I had thought about that of course, and wondered what I should do about it. I asked van Basten about it.

“Don’t listen to the coaches!” he said.

“Why’s that?”

“You shouldn’t waste your energy on defending. You’re supposed to use them in attack. You serve your team best by attacking and scoring goals, not by tiring yourself out in defense”, and that became a thing I picked up: you have to save your energy for scoring goals.

We went to Portugal for a training camp and by that time Beenhakker had resigned as director and was replaced by Louis van Gaal. van Gaal was a pompous type. Kind of like Co Adriaanse. He wanted to be a dictator without any sense of humor. As a player he was nothing special, but in Holland he had a high status because he had won the Champions League with Ajax as coach and was knighted by the government for it. van Gaal liked to talk about playing systems. He was one of those in the club who talked about the players as numbers. It was a lot of the five goes here and the six there and I was happy when I didn’t have to see him. But in Portugal I couldn’t get away from him. I was going to meet up with van Gaal and Koeman and listen to what they thought of my first part of the season. It was one of those meetings whit grades that they loved in Ajax and I went to their room, sat in front och van Gaal and Ronald Koeman. Koeman smiled. van Gaal looked angry.

“Zlatan”, Koeman said. “You’ve been fantastic, but you’ll only get an eight. You haven’t worked enough in defence.”

“Alright, good”, I said and wanted to go.

I liked Koeman, but couldn’t put up with van Gaal, and I thought: Great, an eight is good enough. Can I go now?

“Do you know how to play in defense?”

van Gaal meddled, and I saw how Koeman got irritated as well.

“I hope so”, I answered.

After that van Gaal started to explain and believe me, I had heard it before. It was the same old thing about how number nine, that’s me, defend to the right when the ten goes to the left, and vice versa, and he wrote arrows and finished pretty strong:

“Have you understood? Do you get this?” and I saw it as an attack.

“You can wake every player from their sleep in the middle of the night”, I said, “and ask them how they should defend and they will tell you, the nine runs this way and the ten runs that way. We know all that, and we know that you have made it up. But I have worked with van Basten, and he thinks the opposite.” “Excuse me?”

“van Basten told be that the number nine should save his energy for attacking and scoring goals, and honestly, now I don’t know who I should listen to. van Basten who’s a legend or van Gaal?” I said and I especially marked the words van Gaal, like he was some insignificant person, and what do you think? Did van Gaal become happy?

He was completely raging. Who should I listen to, a legend or a van Gaal?

“I have to go now”, I said and got out of there.

There was talks again about Roma’s interest, and Roma were coached by Fabio Capello, a real tough guy, it was said, who without any problems could bench or yell at any star player. It was indeed Capello who had coached van Basten in Milan during their prime and helped him become better than ever, and obviously I talked to van Basten about it: “What do you think? Wouldn’t Roma be awesome? Will I make it?”

“Stay in Ajax”, he said. “You have to develop as a striker before you come to Italy.” “Why?”

“It’s much tougher there. Here you get maybe five, six chances to score a goal during a game, but in Italy you’ll only get one or two and then you must be able to take advantage of that”, and absolutely, in a way I agreed with him.

I hadn’t hit it off just yet. I still scored to few goals, and I had a lot to learn. I needed to become more efficient in the penalty area. But still, Italy had been a dream from the beginning and I believed that my playing style would suit the league. That’s why I went to my agent, Anders Carlsson:

“What’s up? What do you have going for me?” Of course, Anders wanted the best for me. He checked it out and came back. But what did he have to show?

“Southampton is interested”, he said.

“What the fuck! Southampton! Is that my level?”

Southampton!

During this time I had bought a Porsche Turbo. It was wonderful, but completely suicidal. It felt like a go-kart. I was like a maniac in it. Me and a friend had driven it in Småland, outside Växsjö, and I had pushed the gas pedal. I came up to two hundred and fifty. It was nothing special back then. It was just that: when I put the brake on we heard police sirens.

The cops were after us, and I thought: Alright, bad situation, what to do? I can stop and say I’m sorry, here’s my driving license. But honestly, those news bills? Did I want them? Would a debate about Zlatan as a maniac in the traffic help my career? Hardly, right? I looked back. The police were four cars behind us. They weren’t getting anywhere since cars came from the other way, they were locked, and I had Dutch signs so they couldn’t track me and I thought: They don’t stand a chance, and I put in the second gear and accelerated. I pushed the gas as hell and came up to three hundred and those sirens were still loud, wee, wee, but weaker and weaker. The police car disappeared further and further away and eventually we couldn’t see it anymore so we went under a tunnel and waited there like in a movie, and we made it.

It was a lot of that stuff with that car, and I remember that I was driving Anders Carlsson, the agent, in it. He was going to his hotel and then to the airport, and we got to a curve and it was a red light. But God, I couldn’t, not in that car. I continued driving, like vroom, and he said:

“I think it was a red light.”

“Is it true?” I answered. “I must have missed it”, and then I drove away, right, left in the city. I was driving pretty wildly and he looked really sweaty, and when we arrived to the hotel he opened the door and got out without a word.

The next day he called me, really furious:

“That was the worst thing I’ve experienced.”

“What?” I said.

I acted like I didn’t know what he was talking about.

“That car ride.”

Anders Carlsson wasn’t a guy for me. That became more and more apparent. I needed another agent who weren’t as careful with rules, and stop signs, and luckily Anders had then left IMG and was going to start his own firm so he had given me my new contract to sign. But since I hadn’t done it yet I was a free man. It was just that: what should I do with my freedom? I had no clue, and at that time I didn’t have many people to talk about football with.

I had of course Maxwell and some other players in the team, but still no; it was such a competition everywhere and I didn’t know who I could trust, especially not when it came to agents and transfers. Everyone wanted to go on to big clubs, and it felt like I needed to talk to someone from outside. I thought of Thijs.

Thijs Slegers was a journalist. He had interviewed me for Voetbal International, and I had liked him right away. We had talked on the phone after the interview. He was someone I could exchange ideas with, and he knew stuff, I think. He knew how I was and what kind of guys I liked. I dialled his number again and explained the situation:

“I have to change agent. Who would be the best for me?” And Thijs, he’s so awesome.

“Let me think about it” he said, and absolutely, I was going to let him thing, I didn’t want to do anything prematurely.

“Listen”, he said later on. “There are two agents that I can think of. One is the company that works for Beckham. They’re supposed to be great, and then there’s another guy. But...”

“What?”

“He’s Mafioso.”

“Mafioso sounds good”, I said.

“I suspected that you would say that.”

“Wonderful. Make the meeting happen.”

The guy wasn’t really a Mafioso. He just had that style. His name was Mino Raiola, and I had heard of him before. He was Maxwell’s agent and via Maxwell he had tried to get in touch with me a couple of months earlier. That’s how he works. Mino always goes through middle hands. He always says: If you approach them yourself, you seem weak. But with me it hadn’t gone too well – I had been cocky, and told Maxwell:

“If he has anything concrete he can show up, or else I’m not interested”, but Mino had sent word back: “Tell this Zlatan to go and fuck himself”, and even though I probably became angry then, it triggered me now when I got to know some stuff about him. I’m raised with that style; go fuck yourself and all that stuff. I feel at home with that type of talk, and I felt that Mino and I had the same background. None of us had gotten anything for free. Mino is born in southern Italy in the Salerno province. But as a kid his family moved to Holland and opened a pizza restaurant in the city of Harleem. Mino had to clean and do the dishes as a kid, and also as a waiter. But the kid advanced. He started taking care of the economy and that type of stuff.

He fought his way up as a teenager. He did all kinds of stuff; he studied law, made business and learned languages. And also, he liked football, and wanted to be an agent early in his life. Holland had a sick system before that determined that the players should be sold without any fee that was based on age and some statistical shit, and he went against that. He challenged the football federation once, and he really didn’t start with nobodies. As early as 1993 he sold Bergkamp to Inter and in 2001 he had helped Nedved to get to Juventus for forty one million Euros.

But he wasn’t a top dog, not yet, but it was said that he was rising and was able to use any tricks and that sounded good. I didn’t want a good boy again. I wanted to be bought and get a good contract, and that’s why I decided to impress that Mino. When Thijs arranged the meeting at Okura Hotel in Amsterdam, I put on my cool brown leather jacket from Gucci. I wasn’t going to be that dork in the sweat pants again and get fooled once more. I put on my gold watch and took the Porsche, and parked it just outside.

Like, here am I, and then I went in to Okura, and that Hotel, seriously! It’s just by the Amstel Channel and incredibly elegant and luxurious, and I thought: Now it’s on, I have to stay cool, and I went on to the sushi restaurant in there. We had booked a table there, and I didn’t really know what type of person to expect,

probably some type of suit with even a cooler gold watch. But what the hell showed up? A guy in jeans and Nike-T-shirt and with that belly, like, like the guys from the Sopranos.

Was this Santa supposed to be an agent? And when we ordered, what do you think? We got a little sushi with an avocado and shrimps? We got food for five people, and he ate like a mad man. But then he started talking, and he got right to the point. There was no elegant shit, and I felt right away, this is good, and I told myself: I want to work with this guy. We think the same, and I prepared to shake hands for the collaboration.

But do you know what he did, that smug bastard? He took up four papers he had printed from the Internet and on them there were a lot of names and numbers, like Christian Vieri, twenty seven games, twenty four goals. Filippo Inzaghi, twenty five games, twenty goals. David Trezeguet, twenty four games, twenty goals. And lastly, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, twenty five games, five goals.

“Do you think I can sell you with stats like this”, he said, and I thought, what’s this attack? But then I got back.

“If I had scored twenty goals even my mom could have sold me”, I answered, and then he became quiet, he wanted to laugh, I know that today. But he was doing his thing. He didn’t want to lose his upper hand. “You’re right. But...”

What the fuck is it now? I thought. It felt like he was going to attack me again.

“You think you’re all that, huh?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You think you can impress me with your watch, your jacket and your Porsche. But you don’t Not at all. I

think it’s just silly.”

“Alright!”

“Do you want to be the best in the world? Or the one who makes the most money and can glide around in stuff like this?”

“Best in the world!”

“Good! Because if you get to be the best in the world, the other things will come as well. But if you’re only

after money, there will be nothing, you get it?”

“I get it.”

“Think about it, and let me know”, he said and then we ended the meeting.

I got out of there and felt, alright, I’ll thing about it then. I can also be cool like that and let him wait. But no, I hadn’t even got to the car before I started itching. I called him:

“Listen, I can’t wait, I want to start working with you right now.” He got quiet.

“Alright”, he said. “But if you’re going to work with me, you’ll do as I say.” “Yeah, sure.”

“You’re going to sell your cars. You’re going to sell your watches and start training three times harder. Because your stats are crap.”

Your stats are crap! I should have told him to go to hell. Sell my cars? What was his problem with them? We went too far, no doubt about that. But still, he was right, wasn’t he? I gave him my Porsche Turbo. Not just to be a good boy, it was good to get rid of that car, honestly. I would only kill myself in it. But it didn’t stop there.

I started driving around with the clubs fucking boring Fiat Stilo, and I put away my gold watch. I put on an ugly Nike watch instead and walked around in sweat pants again. It was going to be a rough time now, and I trained like a maniac. I really killed myself out there and I started to get it, all of it was true. I had been too satisfied, thinking I was some cool kid. But that was the wrong attitude.

I reality I had scored to few goals and been slow. I hadn’t been motivated enough. I understood that more and more and started giving everything on the training pitch and the games. But it true, it wasn’t easy to change overnight. You start out hard, but then you get tired. Luckily I had no chance to rest. Mino was on me like glue.

“You like when people tell you that you’re the best, right?” “Yeah, maybe.”

“But it’s not true. You’re not the best. You’re shit. You’re nothing. You have to work harder.”

“You’re the shit. You just moan. You should work out yourself.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“Fuck you.”

It got easily aggressive between us, or rather, it seemed aggressive. But we were raised like that, and obviously I got it, that whole attitude, you’re nothing and that, was his way to get me to change attitude, and I really think he succeed. I started to say those things to myself:

“You’re a nobody, Zlatan. You’re a shit. You’re not even as half as good as you think! You have to work harder.”

I was triggered by it, and became even more of a winner. The coach wasn’t going to send me home now. I gave everything in every situation and wanted to win every single game or competition even on practice, and indeed I had a pain in my left groin. But I didn’t care about it. I just went on. I wasn’t going to give up. Didn’t even care if it got worse and worse. I took the pain. Several other players in the team were injured then. I didn’t want to give the coach more problems, and I often played with pain killers. Just tried to ignore the shit. But Mino saw, he got it. He wanted me to work hard, but not to break.

“You can’t do it anymore, kid”, he said. “You can’t play injured”, and then I took it seriously and visited a specialist, and it was decided that I needed an operation.

In the university hospital of Rotterdam they fixed my left groin, and afterwards I had to build up its strength in the club swimming pool. It was no game. Mino told the fitness coach that I have had it easy. “The kid had joked around. Now he has to fight his heart out totally! Just get on him!”

I had to have this damn pulse watch on me, and some kind of floating device that held me up, and then I started running in the water until I reached my absolute maximum, and afterwards I wanted to puke. I fell down at the poolside. I just have to rest, collapse. I couldn’t move. I was totally ended, and once I had to pee, and it got worse and worse. But I didn’t have the power to go to the bathroom. There was a hole at the poolside and I peed in that hole, what else could I do? I was totally done.

“In Ajax we had a discipline rule: we weren’t allowed to go get food before they said “Go” (ed note: I can’t translate the Swedish word “varsågod” and I couldn’t find anything on the net. But they didn’t say “Go”, it was more like “Here you are” or “Please”), and often I got to the food before they even said the first syllable. I was always hungry as a wolf. Now I couldn’t even raise my head. As much as they shouted I still laid there at the poolside.

I went on like this for two weeks, and the strange thing was that it wasn’t only rough. There was also something great about that pain. I was enjoying to completely end myself, and I started to get what hard work really means. I entered a new phase and felt stronger than ever. When I came back from the rehab I gave everything on the pitch and started to dominate.

I got confident, and posters like “Zlatan, the son of God”, and stuff like that started to show up. People were screaming my name. I got better than ever, and it was obviously wonderful, but also, as always: when someone’s shining others get jealous and there was already some tensions in the team, especially between the young guys who all wanted to show themselves and get sold to big clubs.

I guess that for example Rafael van der Vaart wasn’t completely happy about the development. Rafael was probably the most popular player in the country then. He was definitely the one that was most loved by Ajax fans who didn’t really like the foreigners on the pitch, and Ronald Koeman made him team captain, despite Rafael being only twenty one years old. I was probably some cocky thing for him, and he was also head hunted by the gossip press. He had it going with some famous chick, and maybe it wasn’t easy for him to get my success on the pitch in that situation. Rafael probably saw himself as the big star and didn’t want any competition. I don’t know, and then he wanted to get sold, like the rest of us. He did everything to get out of there, I think. On the other hand, it’s true, I didn’t know him, and didn’t care either.

I was the summer of 2004, and the tension between us didn’t explode until August. In May and June it was still pretty cool. We had won the league again, and Maxwell, my friend, was chosen as the best player in the league and I was happy for him. If there’s someone I want the best for its him, and I

remember that we went to Haarlem to eat in the pizza restaurant where Mino had grown up, and there I talked to Mino’s sister. She was wondering one thing, she said. It was about their dad.

“My dad has started driving around in a Porsche Turbo”, she said. “That’s kind of strange actually. It’s not exactly the type of car he’s had before. Does this have anything to do with you?”

“Your dad...”

I missed the Porsche, but it was probably in better hands now, and that summer I really wanted to stay away from stupid things and concentrate only on football. EC in Portugal was coming up. It was my first championship was I was established in the NT, and I remember Henke Larsson calling. Henke was a role model. He was at the end of his time in Celtic then. He was going to get sold to Barcelona after the summer, and after the loss against Senegal in the WC he had explained:

“I’m not playing in the NT anymore. I want to be with my family”, and of course, you had to accept that, especially from a guy like him.

But he was missed. We were going to play in the same group as Italy and needed all the strong players we could get, and I guess that most people were losing hope of him coming back. But now he said that he had changed his mind and wanted to play, and it made me shine up. Now it would probably be me and him in attack. That would make us stronger, and I noticed how the pressure was mounting up and there were talks about my international breakthrough in this competition, and I understood that I would have many eyes on me, also from foreign scouts and coaches. Days before we went away the fans and journalists were on me like maniacs and in moments like that it felt good to have Henke. He had been through uproar on the highest level, but of course, the circus around me was sick back then and I don’t forget when I asked him later on.

“Damn, Henke, what should I do? If anyone should know it’s you. How should I deal with this?”

“Sorry, Zlatan. You’re on your own from now on. A circus like this has no Swedish player ever been through!”

For example a Norwegian guy came with a damn orange. There had been a lot of talks about oranges since John Carew in Valencia had criticized my game and I had answered:

“What John Carew does with a football, I can do with an orange”, and now the Norwegian journalist came and wanted me to show what I could to with that fruit.

Get out of here, why should I make this guy famous as well? Why should I go with his thing?

“You can take your orange, peal it and eat it. It’s good vitamins for you”, I said, and of course, that also

became a thing, he’s so cocky and arrogant, and there was more talks about how the relationship

between me and media was tense.

But honestly, was that so strange?