e played a NT game against Latvia and won with one-zero. Kim Källström scored the goal and on the next day we had the day off. It was the third September. Olof Mellberg had his twenty ninth birthdays. He was a captain of Aston Villa. We had met in the NT, and in the beginning he was very quiet, I thought, a bit like Trezeguet, but he opened up and we became friends. Now he wanted me and Chippen to go out with him and celebrate, and absolutely, why not?

We wound up on a place in Avenyn (ed note: main street in Gothenburg) that had photos on the walls. The newspapers described it as an “in place”. Every nightclub that I’ve been to becomes in place’s. But it was worthless. It was almost empty. We were almost alone and we sat there and took a drink in peace. It wasn’t more fun than that, and the time was eleven in the evening. We were supposed to be at the hotel at eleven in the evening, according to the NT rules. But what the hell, we said. Don’t have to be that careful with the time. We had been out before and got back late without anyone making a big fuss out of it. Besides it was Olof’s birthday and we were sober and decent, and quarter past twelve we were back at the hotel and went to bed like good boys. That was the whole thing. My friends from Rosengård would not even have listened if I would try to tell them the story. It was nothing, honestly.

It’s just one problem. I can’t go out to buy milk without the papers knowing about it. I have spies on me wherever I go. People send text messages and take pictures. I saw Zlatan there and there, oh, oh, and to make it not so boring you exaggerate and tell the friends who in their turn exaggerates a little bit more. It must be cool, at least a little bit. It’s in the package, and most of the time I have people who stand up for me: What kind of talk is that? Zlatan hasn’t done shit. But this time the papers were a bit smarter.

They turned it around and called our team manager, but didn’t ask about us and when we arrived to the hotel, except they asked what the rules were. He said like it was: everyone should be at the hotel at eleven.

“But Zlatan, Chippen and Mellberg came back later. We have witnesses”, the journalists said and absolutely, the team manager is a good guy, he usually defends us. But this time he wasn’t fast enough in the head, and maybe you can’t expect it either. Who says the right stuff all the time?

But if he’d been smart and done like the guys in the Italian teams, he’d asked the journalists if he could get back at them and called later to give a good explanation to why we had been out a little bit longer, like for example that we had permission, something like that, not saying that we should avoid punishment, not at all. But the fundamental principle should always be that you stay tight as a group. We’re a team, we’re one, and then they can punish us internally as much as they want.

But the team manager answered that no one was supposed to be out after eleven and that we must have broken the rules. After that everything went to hell. They called me in the morning: “You’re called to a meeting with Lagerbäck”, and indeed, I don’t like meetings. But on the other hand I have some sort of experience for it. I got called to meeting even in preschool. It was a normal thing for me. It was my life, and this time I knew what it was about. It was bullshit, and I took it calmly. I called one of the security guys that I know who usually know things.

“How is it looking?”

“I think you’ll have to pack your bags”, he said, and I didn’t understand a thing.

Pack my bags? Because I’ve been a little late? I refused to believe it. But then I accepted the situation. What else could I do? I packed, and didn’t even make up any explanations. The situation was too silly for it. The truth had to do for once. I wasn’t even going to blame my brother. I just got in there and Lagerbäck and the whole gang was there and also Mellberg and Chippen. They weren’t as cool as me. They weren’t as accustomed to it. But I felt at home. I was almost as I had missed it, like I’d been to good and should have lived more on the edge!

“We’ve decided to send you home at once”, Lagerbäck said. “What do you have to say about it?” “I’m sorry”, Chippen said. “It was really a stupid thing to do.”

“I’m sorry too”, Mellberg said. “But... how will you speak to the media about it?” he continued, and there was a lot of talk about that, and during the whole discussion I sat there quietly. I had nothing to say and Lagerbäck maybe saw it as something strange. I’m not really the shy guy.

“And what about you, Zlatan. What do you say?”

“I’m saying nothing.”

“What do you mean?”

“Exactly what I said. Nothing!”

I noticed right away, they got nervous. I would probably have been more comfortable if I’d been cocky. It would have been my style. But this was something new to them. Nothing! They got like stressed by it: What’s Zlatan planning now? And the more stressed they became, the calmer I felt. It was kind of strange. My silence messed with the balance. I got an advantage. Everything felt so familiar. It was Wessels department store again. It was the school. It was MFF’s junior team and I listened to Lagerbäck’s little speech about how clear they’d been about their rules with the same interest that I’d listened to the teachers in school, like: You just keep talking, I don’t care. But it’s true, one thing pissed me off. It was when he said:

“We have decided that you won’t be playing against Liechtenstein”, and don’t think that I cared about that, I had for fuck same already packed my bags. Lagerbäck could have sent me to Kiruna and I wouldn’t have whined about it and honestly, who cares about Liechtenstein? It was the word we that pissed me off. Who the hell were we?

He was the boss. Why did he hide behind others? He should have been man enough and said “I have decided”, then I would have respected him for it, but this, this was cowardly, and I looked him straight in the eyes with a fierce look, but I was still not saying a thing, and afterwards I went up to my room and called Keki. In situations like this you need the family.

“Come and get me!”

“What have you done?”

“I was late.”

Before I left I talked to the team manager. He and I had always a good relationship. He knew me better than most in the NT and knew my background, and my nature. He knows that I don’t forget easily. “Hey Zlatan”, he said. “I’m not worried for Chippen and Mellberg. They’re ordinary Swedish guys, they’ll take their punishment and come back, but with you Zlatan... I’m afraid that Lagerbäck is digging his own grave.”

“We’ll see”, I just answered, and in an hour I was gone from the hotel. Me and the little brother took Chippen in the car with us. It was him, me, Keki and one of my friends, and we stopped at a gas station. They we saw the news bill’s.

It must have been the biggest stir for a late arrival ever! It was like an UFO had landed and it was only going to get worse, and the whole time I stayed in touch with Chippen and Mellberg. I was kind of like a dad for them:

“Take it easy, guys. This will only become a merit. No one likes good boys.”

But honestly, I became more and more annoyed about the whole thing. Lagerbäck and the others did this we against them- thing. It was so ridiculous. For not so long ago I got in a fight with a guy in Milan, Oguchi Onyewu is his name. I’ll tell more about it later, it was kind of brutal. No one thought the fight was a good thing. But outwards the management defended me and said that it was good that I was hot and triggered something like that. They held the team together. But here we became good guys and bad guys. It was badly managed, and I also said that to Lars Lagerbäck: “This is forgotten for me”, he said. “You’re welcomed back.”

“Am I? But I won’t come. You could have given me a fine. You could have done anything. But you went to the media and hanged us out there. I don’t buy that” and that was that.

I said no to the NT, and the thing disappeared from my head. Or I don’t know about disappearing, I was reminded of it all the time, and there was one thing I regretted. I should have made a scandal with more class now that I was thrown out. What the hell, to sit at an empty place with one drink, and come one hour too late? What was that? I should have trashed a bar and crashed a car in the fountain up there in Avenyn and wobbled home in my underwear. That would have been a scandal on my level. This was nonsense.

You don’t ask for respect. You take it. It’s easy to become small when you’re new in a club. Everything is new, and everyone has their roles and positions and their talk. The easiest way is to lean back and get a feeling of the atmosphere. But that way you’ll lose the initiative. You lose time. I came to Inter to make a difference and make sure that the club won the league for the first time in seventeen years. For that you can’t be shy, or become careful, just because the media criticize you had people have preconceived opinions about you. Zlatan is a bad boy. Zlatan have problems with his temper, and all that. It’s easy to be affected, and try to prove that you’re the opposite, the good guy. But then you let yourself be handled.

It wasn’t perfect that the event in Gothenburg was up in every paper in Italy in that moment. Like look, the guy doesn’t care about rules, and he’s so expensive. Isn’t he overrated? Or a bad buy? It was a lot of that. The worst of them was a so called Swedish expert, he said:

“The way I see it Inter have always made strange buys, they just go for the individualists... now they’ve bought another problem.”

But like I said, I thought of Capello’s words. You have to take respect. It was like stepping into a new enclosure in Rosengård. You can’t back down, or care if someone has heard this or that about you. You have to take a step forward instead, and I did that thing with the attitude I got from Juventus: Hey, guys, here am I and now we’ll start winning.

I played with black eyes in training. I had a winner and wild mentality and will. I was worse than ever. I got mad if someone didn’t do his best on the field. I yelled and that entire if we lost or played a bad game, and in a whole other way in my life I had a leader role. I saw it in people’s eyes; it was on me now. I was going to bring them forward, and by my side I had Patrick Vieira again. With him by your side you can do a lot. We were two winning monsters who gave everything to raise the motivation of the team.

But the club had problems. Moratti, the president and owner, had done a lot of things for Inter. He has spent over three hundred million Euros on players. He has invested in guys like Ronaldo, Maicon, Crespo, Christian Vieri, Figo and Baggio. He has ventured extremely offensively. But he had also another attribute. He was too generous, and kind. He could give us big bonuses after one single win, and I reacted on that. Not that I have anything against bonuses. Who does? But these bonuses weren’t given after a league- or cup victory. It was after single games, a game that maybe wasn’t even important.

It gave the wrong signals, according to me, and sure, as a player you don’t step up to Moratti just like that. Moratti is from a nice finance family. He’s power. He’s money. But I had been given such a position in the club that I did it anyway. Moratti is not a difficult person. He’s easy to talk to, and I said to him: “You!”

“Yes, Ibra?”

“You have to take it easy.”

“In what way?

“With the bonuses. The guys can become satisfied. Damn, one win, that’s nothing. We get paid to win and absolutely, if we get the Scudetto, give us something nice if you want to, but not after one single win!”

He got it. It came to an end, and don’t misunderstand me, I didn’t think that I could run the club better than Moratti, not at all. But if I saw something that was a negative influence on the motivation I pointed it out, and the thing with the bonuses was just a little thing. The real challenge was the alignments. That bothered me from day one, and it wasn’t only because I was from Rosengård, where everyone got on in a mess, the Turks, the Somalian, the Yugoslavs, the Arabs. It was also because I’d seen it so clear in football, both in Juventus and in Ajax: every team performs better when the players stick together. In Inter it was the other way around. Over there the Brazilians sat in a corner. The Argentineans in another, and then the rest of us in the middle. It was so shallow, so flaccid.

Alright, sure alignments happen in the clubs. It’s not good but it happens. But then at least people chose their friends, and go after the people they get along with. Here they went after nationality. It was so primitive. They played football together. But then they lived in different worlds, and that made me furious and I got it right away, this needs to change. Or else we won’t win the league. Some maybe said: What does it matter who we eat lunch with? Believe me, it mattered. If you don’t stick together outside the pitch you’ll notice it in the game.

It affects the motivation and team spirit. In football there’s a small margin and stuff like that can be decisive, and I saw it as my first big test to end all that. But I noticed, talking wasn’t enough.

I walked around and said: What is this silliness? Why do you sit there in groups like little children? And

absolutely, many agreed with me. Others got a little embarrassed, but nothing happened. The habits were

strong. Those invisible barriers were to sharp. That’s why I went to Moratti again, and this time I was as

clear as I could. Inter hadn’t won the league in ages. Would it continue like this? Would we be losers just

because people didn’t talk to each other?

“Of course not”, Moratti said.

“Then we have to break these alignments. We can’t win the league if we don’t function as a team.”

I don’t think that Moratti knew how bad it was, but he understood my reasoning. It was a part of his philosophy, he said.

“We must be like a big family in Inter. I will talk to them”, and not much later he came down to the guys, and you could tell right away what kind of respect the guys had for him.

Moratti was the club. He didn’t just say how things were. He owned us as well. He held a little speech. He was burning and talked about staying together and everyone looked at me of course. It sounded like my words. Is it Ibra who has talked? Most of them were probably assured of that. I didn’t care. I just wanted the team to stick together and the atmosphere also became better, step by step. The alignments were broken and everyone started to hang out with each other.

We became much more hungry and welded as a group and I went around and talked to everyone and tried to herd everyone together even more. But of course, winning the league wasn’t easy just because of that. I remember my first game. It was against Fiorentina in Florence. It was in 2006, and Fiorentina obviously wanted to beat us at every price. That team had also been dragged into the scandal and starter the league with minus fifteen points, and the crowd at Artemio Franchi-stadium was hateful.

Inter had gotten away completely from the scandal, and many people thought that sucked. Both of us were whipped to win; Fiorentina because they wanted to restore their honour and we because we wanted to gain respect at once to finally be able to get the Scudetto.

I played from start with Hernan Crespo in attack. Crespo was an Argentinean who came from Chelsea and we got a good start together, at least on the field, and sometime in the second half I got a long pass in the penalty area and shot a half volley in goal, and you know. It was such a release! It was my debut and after that I grew in the team more and more, and it felt right to say no to the NT for the EC-qualifications against Spain and Island. I wanted to invest time in Inter and the family. Helena and I were counting the days then. We were going to have our first child, and we had made up our minds, it was going to happen in Sweden at Lunds Hospital. We trusted the Swedish medical service more, after all. But it wasn’t easy. There were some problems.

It was the media, and the paparazzi. It was the whole hysteria and we brought along security personnel, and informed the hospital management who closed a section for us at the women’s clinic. Everyone who came in was controlled. Outside the police were patrolling, and both of us were nervous. It was a special smell in there. People were running in the halls, and you could hear yelling and voices. Have I said that I hate hospitals? I hate hospitals. I feel good when others feel good. If people are sick around me I get sick, and least it feels like that. I can’t explain it. But I feel really bad being in a hospital. It something in the air and the atmosphere, and most of the time I try to get away as soon as possible.

But now I had decided to stay and be a part of everything, and that made me tense. I get a lot of letter from all over the world and most of the time I don’t open them; it’s some sort of fairness thing. Because I can’t read and answer them all, I often let be unopened. No one should benefit whilst others don’t. But sometimes Helena can’t resist and then we’ve heard the most horrible stories, like a child who’s going to die within a month and has me as a idol, and then Helena usually asks: What can we do? Can we get them match tickets? Send signed shirts? We really try to help. But I feel bad about it. It’s a weakness I have, I admit it, and now I was going to sleep at a hospital, and I was worried about it, but Helena had it worst obviously. She was really wound up. It’s not easy being chased when you’re having your first child. If something goes wrong, the whole world will know about it.

Was something going to go wrong? I had those thoughts. But it went good, and afterwards I felt joy, happiness. If was such a nice little boy and we had done it. We were parents. I was a dad and that something could be wrong with the boy wasn’t in my head, not when we had taken ourselves through this ordeal and all the doctors and nurses seemed so happy. I wasn’t even on the map, but the drama wasn’t over, not at all.

We named the boy Maximilian. I don’t really know where we got the name from. But it sounded powerful. Ibrahimovic was powerful itself. Maximilian Ibrahimovic was even more powerful. It was nice and powerful at the same time but we called him Maxi in the end, but that was also good. It felt overall very promising, and I got out of the hospital almost right away. Not that it was easy though. There were journalists everywhere outside. But the security guy put a doctor’s coat on me, doctor Ibrahimovic you know. After that they put me in a laundry basket, sick, a big fucking basket, and I laid there crouched together like a ball and was driven through the halls down to the garage, and there I jumped out of the basket and put on my clothes and went to Italy. It fooled everyone.

Helena didn’t have it as good as me. It wasn’t easy for her at all. It had been a difficult childbirth, and she wasn’t used to all the attention as I was. I wasn’t even thinking about it anymore. It was just a part of my life. But Helena got more and more stressed, and she and Maxi were smuggled out to my mom’s house in Svågerstorp in different cars. We believed she could take a breather there. But we were naive. It just took an hour. Then all the journalists were outside, and Helena felt hunted and closed in so she flew to Milano.

I was already there and was going to play a game against Chievo at San Siro. I was benched. I hadn’t slept much. Roberto Mancini, our coach, didn’t think I could focus properly and it was probably wise. My thoughts were fluttering and I looked at the pitch and up towards the crowd. Ultras, Inter’s hardcore supporters, had hanged a very big banner in the stands. It looked like pirate sail that was floating in the wind, and on the banner it was written, or sprayed, with black and blue. It said “Benvenuto Maximilian”, Welcome Maximilian, and I wondered: “Who the hell is Maximilian? Do we have a player with that name?”

Then I got it. It was my son. The Ultras had welcomed my boy to this earth! It was so beautiful that I wanted to cry. Those fans can’t be messed with. They’re tough guys, and I was going to have some hard fights with them. But now... what should I say? It was Italy at its best. It was the love to football and love to the children, and I took my telephone and took a picture and sent it to Helena, and honestly, few things have gone right to her heart like that. She still gets tears in her eyes when she’s talking about it. It was like San Siro was sending its love.

I had gotten a puppy as well. We called him Trustor after that tangle where they had stolen money from a company. So now I really had a family. I had Helena, Maxi and Trustor. At this time I played my Xbox all the time. I really went over the limit. It became like a poison. I couldn’t stop, and often I sat with little Maxi in my lap and played. We lived on a hotel in Milano because we were waiting for an apartment, and when we called the reception and ordered food we really felt: they’re tired of us and we’re tired of them. The hotel got on our nerves and we changed to hotel Nhow at Via Tortona, and it got better, but still chaotic.

Everything was new with Maxi and we noticed of course, he was throwing up a lot and didn’t gain weight, more of the opposite. He got thinner. But none of us knew how it should be. Maybe it was normal. Someone had said that infants can lose weight sometime after birth, and he really felt strong, didn’t he? But the food came up, and his vomit felt thick and looked weird. He was throwing up all the time. Should it be like that? We had no clue, and I called my family and my friends, and everyone comforted; it’s probably nothing, and I didn’t think it was either, or at least, I didn’t want to think it was, and I tried to find explanations.

It’s cool. He’s my kid. What can go wrong? But we couldn’t stop worrying, and became more obvious that

he could keep the food down, and he lost even more weight. He was three kilo when he was born. Now

he was down on two thousand eight hundred grams, and I felt it in my stomach, this is not good, not at all,

and I couldn’t keep it in my anymore.

“Something’s not right, Helena!”

“I think so too”, she answered, and how can I explain?

What had been a suspicion before, a hunch, had become a total conviction now. My whole body closed down. I had never felt anything like it before, not even close. Before I had kids I was Mr. Untouchable. I could get mad and furious, get all kinds of emotions. But everything would be alright if I just kept fighting. Now there was no such thing. I was powerless. I couldn’t train him to become healthy. I couldn’t do anything.

Maxi got weaker and weaker, and he was so little, it really showed now, he was only skin and bones. It was like life was leaving him and we called around in panic, and a doctor, a woman, came up to our hotel room. I wasn’t at home them. I was going to play a game. But I think we were lucky.

The doctor smelled to vomit. She looked at it and recognized the symptoms and said right away: You must go to the hospital at once, and I remember it very well. I was with the team. We were facing Messina at home, and the phone rang. Helena was hysteric: “Maxi’s going to be operated”, he said, “it’s urgent”, and I thought: Are we going to lose him? Is it really possible? It just started buzzing in me, all kinds of questions and paranoiacs, and I told Mancini. Like many others he was a old player, and he had started his coaching career under Sven-Göran Eriksson in Lazio. He got it, he had heart.

“My kid is sick”, I said and he looked into my eyes, I felt shit.

I had no longer only winning in my head. I had Maxi there, nothing else, my little boy, my beloved son, and he let me decide myself: would I play or not? I had scored six goals that season so far, and had been really good in a lot of games. But now... what to do? Nothing with Maxi would become better if I sat on the bench, it was true. But would I be able to perform? I didn’t know. My brain was boiling.

From Helena I got reports now and then. She had gone to the hospital and apparently everyone was screaming around her and no one could speak English, and Helena couldn’t speak a word Italian. She was totally lost. He didn’t understand anything, only that it was urgent, and a doctor told her to sign a paper. What kind of paper? She had no clue. But she didn’t have time to think. She signed it. I guess in situations like this you’ll sign anything. New papers came. She signed them as well and they took Maxi from her, and it hurt, I really understand that.

Like, what’s happening? What’s going on? She was all torn up, and Maxi got even weaker. But Helena kept it together. She couldn’t do anything else. She had to accept the situation and hope whilst Maxi was taken to another room with doctors and nurses and the whole thing, and just slowly she understood what was wrong. His stomach wasn’t working like it should and they had to operate on him.

I was in San Siro with that crazy crowd and it wasn’t easy to focus. But I had decided to play. I was also starting. I think I was. Everything is foggy, and I guess that I didn’t play any good. How could I, and I remember that Mancini stood by the sideline and gave me a sign: I’ll take you out in five, and I nodded. Absolutely, I’ll leave the pitch. I’m not doing any good here.

But a minute later I scored, and I thought: Mancini, go to hell! Try to take me out now! I played, and we won big. I played on anger and anxiety, and afterwards I just ran out. I didn’t say a word in the locker room and I can hardly remember the trip. My heart was pounding.

But I remember the hospital halls and the smell and how I was rushing forward and was asking, where, where, and how I eventually wandered to a big room where Maxi was in an incubator with other children. He was smaller than ever, like a little bird. He had tubes in his body and in the nose. My heart was ripped out of me, and I looked at him and Helena, and what do you think? Was I the tough guy from Rosengård?

“I love you guys”, I said. “You’re everything to me. But I can’t take it. I’m going to flip out. Call me if there’s anything, anything!”, and then I got out of there.

It wasn’t kind towards Helena. He was alone with him. But I couldn’t take it. I panicked. I hated hospitals more than ever, and I went to the hotel and probably played the Xbox. It usually calms me down in situations like this, and all night I laid there my phone close to me, and sometimes I twitched, like I was expecting something horrible. But it went well. The operation was a success and Maxi is fine nowadays. He has a scar on his stomach. But other than that he’s as healthy as everyone else, and I think about that thing sometimes. It gives me perspective, honestly.

We really won the Scudetto that first year with Inter and later in Sweden I was nominated for the Jerring-price. There’s no jury picking the winner. The Swedish people do. The Sweds vote which athlete has been the best one that year, and of course, that kind of prices almost always are given to athletes in individual sports, Ingemar Stenmark, Stefan Holm, Annika Sörenstam and people like that, or, a couple of times had teams won it as well. The Swedish NT won it in 1994. But then in 2007 I was nominated to win it alone. It was at the Sports gala. Me and Helena were there together, I had a tuxedo and before the award ceremony I was mingling and met Martin Dahlin.

Martin Dahlin is a former great player. He was in the NT that took a WC-broze and got the Jerring-prize in

1994, and he had been a pro in Roma and Borussia Mönchengladbach and scored a lot goals. But like

always, it’s once generation against the other. The elders want to be the best ever. The young one’s want

to as well. We don’t want to get the old stars banged in our heads, and we really don’t want to hear: You

should have been there in our time, and shit like that. We want football to be best now, and I remember

that gibe in Martin’s voice:

“Oh, are you here?”

“Why shouldn’t I be here?”

“And you to?” I said with the same gibe, or like I was really surprised that he of all people had been let in. “We won the price in 1994”

“Like a team, yes. I’m nominated individually”, I answered and smiled, it was nothing, just a little cock fight.

But in that moment I felt it in my whole body, I wanted that prize, and I told it to Helena when I got back to my table. “Please, I hope I win!” I had never said anything like that, not even about the cups of leagues. I had been given a lot of prizes, but had never been touched like that, and maybe, I don’t know, I understood that it could be a confirmation, a sign that I had been accepted for real, not only as a football player, but also as a person, despite all my outrages and my background. That’s why I was all tense whilst they were doing their thing up there on the scene and counting candidates.

It was me, that girl Kallur, and the skier Pärson. I had no clue how it would go. I get information before the

Golden Balls. But now I didn’t know a thing, and the seconds went on. Damn it, just say it. The winner is...

They said my name, and then my tears just wanted to come, and believe me, I don’t cry so easily. I was never trained in that type of stuff when I grew up, but now I was all emotional, and I stood up. Everyone was screaming and applauding. On my way to the scene I passed Martin Dahlin again and I just couldn’t resist telling him:

“Excuse me Martin, I’m just going up there too get a prize.”

Up there on the scene I got the prize form prince Carl Philip and took the microphone, and I’m not the type who prepares thank you speeches, not at all. I just talk on, and suddenly I started thinking about Maxi and all that we had been through with him, and then I started wondering, it’s really weird. But I had been given the prize because I helped Inter to win their first Scudetto in seventeen years, and I asked myself the question if Maxi had been born during that season, not this year but the season we had won. It was like I suddenly didn’t know, and I asked Helena:

“Was it that season Maxi was born?” and I looked at her, she could barely nod an answer.

She was tearing eyed, and I’ll never forget that, believe me.