t was said that he was the kindest person in the world. Oguchi Onyewy resembles a heavy weight boxer. He was about two meters tall and weighed around a hundred kilo. Even to he didn’t have a spot in the team he had been chosen as the best foreign player in the Belgian league and the best American player of the year. But he couldn’t handle me. He wanted to get me. “I’m not like the other defenders”, he said.

“Alright, that’s good!”

“I don’t get psyched by your talk. By your mouth that’s running all the time.” “What are you talking about?”

“You, I’ve seen you at the games, with your mind games all the time”, he continued, and that bugged me.

Not only because I was tired of all the defenders who wanted to provoke all the time. I’m not the talking type. I get revenge on the pitch. I’ve heard so much shit during the years, fucking gipsy, stuff about my mom, all that. The worst thing is: I see you after the game! What the fuck is that? Are we going to meet at the parking lot or what? It’s just silliness. I remember Giorgio Chiellini, a central defender in Juventus. We h ad played together, and later when I was in Inter we met on the pitch and then he was on me all the time: “Come on, it’s not like before, isn’t it?” He tried to provoke, and then he tackled me from behind. It’s cowardly, you know. You don’t see the guy come, and I went down and was in pain. I had a lot of pain. But I didn’t say a thing. I don’t do that in situations like that. I tackle instead. I go of like a bomb in the tackles. But that time I didn’t get a chance, and then after the final whistle I went up to him and grabbed his head and dragged him like a bad dog, and then Chiellini got scared. I saw it in him.

“You wanted to fight. So why are you shitting yourself now?” I sputtered and went to the locker room.

Yeah, I give back with my body and not with words and I told that to Oguchi Onyewu. But he just kept on

going and when I shouted: “That was not a free kick!” he hushed with his finger, like: See, you’re just

talking shit, and I thought: That’s it, it’s enough now.

“Watch yourself”, I said.

He hushed again and then everything turned black. But I didn’t say anything, not a word. That bastard will know how I speak in moments like this and the next time he got the ball I rushed towards him and jumped with my feet and studs in front of me, it’s the worst type of tackle. But he saw me. He threw himself away and both of us fell on the grass, and at first I thought, damn, a miss. I’ll get him next time. But when I was getting up and walking away I got a punch on my shoulder, and that wasn’t a good idea, Oguchi Onyewu.

I head butted him, and then we got in a fight. I’m not talking about a little one either. We wanted to beat the shit out of each other. It was brutal and we were two guys over ninety kilo, and we were rolling around and used knees and fought, and of course, the whole team rushed towards us and tried to break us up. It wasn’t easy, not at all. We were crazy and furious, absolutely, sure, I admit, you’re supposed to have adrenalin on the pitch, you’re supposed to fight. But this was over the limit. It was like life and death. But still the weirdest thing happened afterwards.

Oguchy Onyewu started to pray to God with tears in his eyes. He made the cross sign and I thought: What is this? Then I flipped out even more. It felt provoking, and in that moment Allegri, the coach, came forward: “Calm down, Ibra.” It didn’t help. I just picked him up and put him away and ran towards Onyewu again. But then I was stopped by my team mates, and that was probably good. This could have ended badly, and afterwards Allegri called the both of us in. We shook hands and apologized. But Oguchi was cold like a fish, and fine by me. If he’s cold then I’ll be cold back, no problem, and afterwards I was driven home. Then Galliani, the boss, called, and you have to know one thing, I don’t like to blame others. It’s not a manly thing to do. It’s shit, especially in a team were you have a leading role.

“Listen”, I told Galliani. “It has happened a bad thing in training. It was my fault and I take the responsibility. I want to apologize and you can give me any punishment you want.”

“Ibra”, he said. “This is Milan. We don’t work like that. You have apologized. Now we look forward.”

But it wasn’t over, not yet. There had been some supporters around the ground and the thing was spread to the newspapers. No one knew about the background. But the fight got famous. It took ten people to

break us apart, it was said, and there were talks about bad atmosphere in the team and Ibra as a bad boy, and all those usual things. I didn’t care about any of that. You just write what you want! But I felt, damn, pain in my chest, and we looked it up. I had a broken rib and you can’t do much about broken ribs. The doctors just put bandage around me.

It wasn’t exactly the best thing that could happen. The preparations for the derby against Inter had started. We had Pato and Inzaghi on the injury list and the newspapers wrote about it all the time, and a lot of it was about the duel about me and Materazzi. It was going to be hateful, it was written. Not just because Materazzi was a tough guy and we had been in fights before and played together. Materazzi had mocked me for that kiss on the Barca badge at Camp Nou. It was this and that. There were talks about everything, but one thing was sure: Materazzi was going to be tough against me because it was his job. It was important for the team to stop me and in situations like there’s only one way to answer. You have to be tough back. Or else you’ll lose the initiative and risk to get injured.

No supporters are worse than the Inter Ultras. They’re not forgiving guys, believe me, and I was enemy number one. No one had forgotten about our fight from the Lazio game, and I knew of course, there was going to be boos and stuff like that. But damn, those things are a part of the game.

I wasn’t really the first Inter player to sign for Milan. I was in good company, Ronaldo came to Milan in 2007 and then the Inter supporters handed out whistles to annoy him. The games between Inter and Milan, the Derby della Madonnina, always steer up emotions, and somewhere there’s politics and shit involved as well. There an enormous rivalry.

It’s like Real – Barca in Spain, and I remember the players on the pitch. You could see it in their eyes. This was big. This was important. We were at the top of the league and a win would mean a lot. Milan had not won a derby in years. Inter had also won the CL that year. Inter had dominated. But if... if we were going to win, there would be a shift of power in the air, and in the arena you could hear the roars and the loud music from the speakers. It was hate and party in the air at the same time and I wasn’t really nervous.

I was just pumped. I was itching to get in and have a war. But of course, I knew, you can have all the adrenalin. But you can still fall out of the game, not get a shit done. You don’t know, and I remember the match start so well and the roars in the San Siro. You never really get used to it. It’s boiling around you, and almost at once Seedorf had a header just over the bar. The game was back and forth.

In the fifth minute I got a ball on the right side of the pitch. I dribbled and got into the box and I had Materazzi on me. Materazzi wanted to say right away: You’re not getting away, just wait! But he made a mistake. He took me down and I fell on the grass, and of course I thought: Is it a penalty? Is it a penalty?

It should be. But I didn’t know. It was a big noise and all the Inter players waved their hands of course; like, hell no.

But the referee ran towards the penalty spot and I took a deep breath. I was the one who was going to take the penalty and can you imagine. My team was behind me and no one needed to doubt what they were thinking: Don’t miss Ibra! For god’s sake don’t miss!

In front of me were the goal and the goal keeper and behind them the Inter Ultras. They were crazy. They were booing and shouting. They did everything they could to mess with me and some of them had these things with laser beams. I had a green light in my whole face, and Zambrotta got mad. He went to the referee.

“What the hell, they’re bothering Ibra. They’re dazzling him!”

But what was there to do? Search through the whole stand? You couldn’t do that and I was fully focused. They could have put a head beam and head lights on me. I just wanted to step up the shot and this time I knew exactly: the ball was going in the right corner of the GK, and I stood there for a couple of seconds, and of course, somewhere I felt: I had to score this one. I had started my season my missing a penalty. It couldn’t happen again. But I wasn’t allowed to think about it. You should never think too much on the pitch. You should just play and I ran and took a shot.

I took the shot just as I had planned, and it went in, and I raised my arms and looked the Inter Ultras straight in the eyes, like: your fucking tricks don’t work. I’m stronger than that, and I must say, the whole

stadium was thundering and I looked at the big screen: “Inter – Milan, zero – one, Ibrahimovic”, it felt good then. I was back in Italy then.

But still, we had only started the game, and the fight got harder. Fifteen minutes into the second half Abate got a red card, and it’s no game to play with ten men against Inter. We fought like animals. Materazzi was on me like a leech, and in a duel a couple of minutes later I rushed towards the ball and ran into him and I totally floored him. It was involuntarily of course. But he remained on the ground, and doctors and all the Inter players ran to us and the hatred from the Ultras just grew, especially when Materazzi was carried out on a stretcher.

The last twenty the pressure on us was terrible, and I was all done. I wanted to puke due to fatigue. But we made it. We kept our lead, and won. The day after I was getting my fifth Golden Ball in Sweden. They gave me information about that beforehand, and honestly I wanted to get in bed early, as early as one can with a game like that on your mind. But we decided to go out and party at a night club named Cavalli. Helena also came. We sat quietly in a corner with Gattuso while Pirlo and Ambrosini and everyone were partying like crazy. It was such a relief everywhere, a crazy joy, and we didn’t get home until four in the morning.

In December Milan bought Antonio Cassano. Cassano kind of had the same bad boy reputation like me, and he likes to be seen and talk about himself as a fantastic player. The guy have been through a lot and often got in fights with players and coaches, amongst them Capello in Roma. Cappelo had even come up with an expression – Cassanata, which means irrational and crazy. But Cassano has a wonderful quality in his game. I really liked him, and we became a better team.

But there was one problem. The feeling sneaked up on me. I started feeling burned out. I had given everything in every game, and I don’t think I’ve ever felt such a pressure. That can sound strange given everything I’ve been through. It was rough to come to Barca. It wasn’t easy in Inter either. But here I felt it more than ever, we must win the league and I was the leader. I played every game like it was a WC final kind of, and I paid a price. I got worn out.

In the end, I had no outlet for my ideas and images on pitch. The body was one step behind, and I probably should have rested in a game of two. But Allegri was new. He also wanted to win at every cost. He needed his Zlatan and he pressed every drop out of me. Not that I blame him, not at all.

He was just doing his job and I wanted to play. I had a nice flow. I had rhythm. I would have wanted to play with a broken leg and Allegri pumped me up very good. We had respect for each other. But I paid a price, and I wasn’t so young anymore.

I was physically big, not like Juventus during the second season, not at all. There was no fast food, no overweight. I was on a strict diet. All of it were muscles, but I was older and a different type of player than the start of my career. I wasn’t a dribbler anymore, no Ajax guy. I was a heavy explosive striker and I had to play smarter to be able to keep up in all games and in February I started to feel tired.

It was supposed to be a secret in the club, but it got out to media and there was a lot of talk about it. Will he hold? Can he make it? We were also starting to lose points in the end of several games. We couldn’t hold it up the whole way and we let in some unnecessary goals, and during one month I didn’t score at all. The body lacked the real explosiveness, and we went out against Tottenham in the CL and that was obviously not good, we were the better team, I believed. But also in the league we lost the initiative, and Inter were playing very good again.

Would they pass us in the table? Would we lose the grip we had on the league? There were talks about that. They wrote about everything, and nothing got better from my suspensions. The first one was against Bari, a bottom team. We were down one- zero and I were in the box and a defender held me and I felt constricted. I reacted instinctively. I hit him with the palm of my hand in the stomach and he went down in the grass, totally idiotic by me. I admit.

But it was a reflex, nothing else, I wish that I had a better explanation. I don’t. Football is a fight. You get attacked and you get even, and sometimes you go too far without knowing why. I’ve done it many times. During the years I’ve learned a lot. I’m not the mad man from MFF anymore, but the thing never goes out of me completely. I winner instinct has a downside. I get pissed, and that time against Bari I got a red car. Red cards can make anyone crazy. But I got off the pitch without saying a word. Cassano scored one for

us not much later. It was a comfort. But damn, I was suspended, not only in the next game against Palermo but also in the new derby against Inter.

The Milan management tried to protest. It was a whole thing around it. But it didn’t work, and that sucked of course. But I didn’t take it as hard as I used to back in the days. It’s true. The family helped there. You can’t bury yourself anymore. The children come in between. But the curse continued. I played again against Fiorentina and it looked like I was going to do good. We were leading and it was only a couple of minutes left. Then I got a throw in against me. I got pissed, and shouted “Vaffanculo”, go to hell, to the lines man and of course, that wasn’t good, especially not with what happened against Bari in mind. But come on? Have you been on a pitch? People say vaffanculo and shit like that all the time. They’re not shown out because of that. They don’t get suspended in several games. The referee’s let it slide, at least most of the time.

You hear rough language out there all the time. But I was Ibra. Milan was Milan. We were leading the league. There was politics in it. They saw a chance to punish us. I believe that. I was suspended in three games. It looked like that idiotic thing could cost us the scudetto, and the club did everything they could to save the situation. We came up with a defense. We said that I had sworn to myself. We had to fight back: “He was mad about his mistakes on the pitch. He was talking to himself.”

But honestly, that was bullshit, sorry for that! On the other hand the punishment was ridiculous. Vaffanculo? It was stupid by me. But still it was nothing. When it comes to swearing, it’s not even a harsh word. You must know, I have heard worse. But it was what it was. I had to accept it and take mockery and stuff like that and an “award” from a TV channel, its called Tapiro d’Oro. That’s the game. You’re hailed. You’re brought down. I’m used to it.

In the league Napoli had taken the number two spot in front of Inter. Napoli had their best period in the eighties when Maradona played for the club but had problems in recent years and was back in the top now.

We were three points in front of them and we had six games left, I was suspended in three of them. It was shit, and still; I got the chance to rest and think about my life. I worked on this book. I had to remember and it hit me, I haven’t been the nicest guy. I haven’t said the right stuff all the time, and I take responsibility for everything of course. I don’t blame anyone else.

But still, there are a lot of people like me out there, young boys and girls who get yelled at because they’re not like everyone else, and sometimes, of course, they should get yelled at. I believe in discipline. But what pisses me of is all those coaches who never could manage to get to the top but still are so sure: We should do it like this and in no other way! It’s so simple. So stupid!

There are thousands way to go, and the one that’s special and awkward is often the best one. I hate it when those you stand out are pushed down. If I hadn’t been different I wouldn’t be sitting here and obviously I don’t mean: Be like me. Try to be like Zlatan! Not at all! I’m talking about walking your own path, what that path now may be, and no one should be fucking go around with lists or freeze you out just because you’re not like the others.

But of course, it’s not good if you mess up the scudetto you had promised your club just because you have a hell of a temper.