Part 6 (1/2)

”I'm not even gonna touch that one!”

”Do the opposing side's fans boo and jeer at you?”

”h.e.l.l yeah, they do.”

”Okay. You're pretty wicked then,” he replied, and I've never forgotten that. Anybody who's any good is on the receiving end of boos and trash talk. That's how it works.

The end of July saw the launch of the Amsterdam Tournament. The Amsterdam Tournament is a cla.s.sic top-level pre-season tournament in the Netherlands, and that year, Milan, Valencia and Liverpool would be taking part, which of course was fantastic.

This was my chance to introduce myself to Europe, and I immediately noticed, good grief, this was nothing like the Allsvenskan League. In Malm I used to have all the time in the world with the ball. Now they were on me straight away. Everything just went so much faster.

We were up against Milan in the first match. Milan was going through a rough patch at the time, but the club had dominated European football in the '90s, and I tried hard not to care about the fact that they had defenders like Maldini. I really put some effort into it and got a few free kicks and some applause, and I made some nice moves. But it was tough and we lost 10.

In the second match we played Liverpool. Liverpool had won the cup treble that year, and they had possibly the strongest defensive partners.h.i.+p in the Premier League with Sami Hyypi, a Finn, and Stephane Henchoz from Switzerland. Henchoz hadn't just been on top of his game that year. He had done something that was the talk of the football world. In the FA Cup final, he'd blocked a shot on the goal line with his hand, and that nasty bit of work that the referee never saw had helped Liverpool to win.

Both he and Hyypi were on me like leeches. A little way into the match, I fought my way to the ball down by the corner flag and went into the penalty area, and there stood Henchoz. He was blocking me on the goal side, and of course I had several choices. I was in a tight spot, but I could make a cross or play it back or try to go in towards the goal.

I tried doing a feint with one foot, a cool thing Ronaldo and Romrio did a lot, which was one of the moves I'd watched on the computer when I was a junior and had practised for hours and hours until I could do them in my sleep and didn't even need to think in order to pull them out of the bag. It just came naturally. This one was called the Snake, because if you do it well it's like a snake slithering alongside your feet. But it's not all that easy to do. You need to have your outer side behind the ball and quickly nudge it to the right and then suddenly angle it with the tip of your boot to the left, and get past, like, boom, boom, quick as a flash, having total control with the ball glued to your foot, like an ice hockey player cradling the puck.

I'd used that move many times at Malm and in the Superettan League, but never against a world-cla.s.s defender like Henchoz. It was just, like, I'd already felt it against Milan, the whole atmosphere got me going. It was more fun to dribble towards a guy like him, and now things got even more intense. Swish, swish, it went, and Stephane Henchoz flew towards the right. He didn't keep up at all and I whizzed past, and the entire Milan squad sitting along the sideline stood up and screamed. The entire Amsterdam Arena screamed.

This was definitely showtime, and afterwards when I was surrounded by journalists, I came out with that line, and I promise you, I never plan what I'm going to say. It just happens, and it happened a lot in those days before I got more cautious around the media. ”First I went left,” I said, ”and he did too. Then I went right, and he did too. Then I headed left, and he went out to buy a hot dog,” and that got repeated all over the place, it became a famous quote. Somebody even made a commercial with it, and people were saying that Milan were interested in me. I was called the new van Basten and all sorts of stuff, and I felt like, wow, I'm awesome. I'm the Brazilian from Rosengrd, and truly, that should have been the start of a brilliant season.

Still, there were tough times ahead, and in hindsight the warning signs had been there from the start partly down to me, I didn't have my s.h.i.+t together. I went home too often and started losing weight and looking spindly, but it was also the coach, Co Adriaanse. He criticised me publicly, not so seriously at first. It got worse later on, after he got the sack. Then he said I was wrong in the head. Now, early on, it was just the usual stuff, that I played too much for myself, and I started to realise that even something like my moves against Henchoz wasn't necessarily appreciated at Ajax unless it led up to something concrete.

Instead it could be seen as an attempt to stand out and show off to the spectators rather than playing for the team. At Ajax they played with three men up front instead of two, like I was used to. I was in the centre. Not flitting out towards the edges and doing loads of individual stuff. I was supposed to be more of a target player, one who got up in there and took pa.s.ses and, above all, scored goals. To be honest, I started to wonder if that stuff about Dutch football being fun and technical was true any more. It was as if they'd decided to become more like the rest of Europe, but it wasn't easy to interpret the signals.

There was a lot that was new, and I didn't understand the language or the culture, and the coach didn't talk to me. He didn't talk to anybody. He was completely stony-faced. It felt wrong just to, like, look him in the eye, and I lost my flow. I stopped scoring goals, and then my excellent pre-season didn't really benefit me any more more the opposite, in fact. All the headlines and comparisons with van Basten were just turned against me, and I started to be seen as a disappointment, a bad purchase. I was replaced in the front line by Nikos Machlas, a Greek who I'd hung out with quite a lot, and in those situations when I get dropped and lose my form, my head starts buzzing, like: what am I doing wrong? How am I going to break out of this?

That's the kind of person I am.

I'm really not one to go round all satisfied, like, wow, I'm Zlatan! Not at all: it's like there's a film constantly playing in my head and I ask myself over and over, should I have done this or that differently? I watch other people: what can I learn from them? What am I missing? I go over my mistakes all the time along with the good stuff. What can I improve? I always, always take something with me from matches and training sessions, and of course that's tough sometimes. I'm never really satisfied, not even when I have reason to be, but it helps me improve. It's just that at Ajax I got bogged down in those thoughts, and I didn't have anybody to talk to, not really.

I talked to the walls at home. I thought people were idiots, and of course I'd phone home and have a moan. There was a cloud hanging over me. Still, I really shouldn't put the blame on anybody else. Everything just felt sluggish, and I wasn't doing well at all. It was like life in the Netherlands just didn't agree with me, and I went up to Beenhakker and asked him, ”What's the coach saying about me? Is he happy, or what's going on?” And Beenhakker, he's a different sort of bloke to Co Adriaanse, he doesn't just want to have obedient footsoldiers.

”It's all right. It's going fine. We're being patient with you,” he replied.

But I was homesick, and I didn't feel appreciated, not by the coach, not by the press, and certainly not by the fans. Those Ajax supporters are not to be treated lightly. They're used to winning they're like, what the h.e.l.l, you only won 30?

When we only managed a draw against Roda they threw rocks, sections of pipe and gla.s.s bottles at us, and I had to stay in the arena and seek shelter. There was a constant stream of s.h.i.+t, and instead of all that 'Zlatan, Zlatan' I'd heard early on, even at Ajax, I was now getting boos and jeers, and not from the opposing fans. That would have been completely normal, but no, this was from our own fans, and it was tough. It was like: what the h.e.l.l is this?

But still, you just have to lump it in this sport, and in a way I could understand them. I was the club's most expensive acquisition. I really shouldn't be a reserve. I was supposed to be the new van Basten and score one goal after another, and I made every effort I could. I made too much of an effort, to be honest.

A football season is long, and you can't put everything on show in a single match. But that's what I tried to do. As soon as I arrived I wanted to do my whole repertoire all at once, and that's why I got stuck, I think. I wanted too much, and that's why it wasn't enough, and I guess I hadn't learnt to handle the pressure yet, in spite of everything. Those eighty-five million kronor were starting to weigh me down like a d.a.m.n rucksack, and I spent a lot of time sitting around in my terraced house in Diemen.

I have no idea what the press thought of me in those days. I'm sure many of them imagined me and Mido were out on the town, partying. In fact, I stayed home and played video games, day and night, and if we had a Monday off, I'd fly home on Sunday evening and come back on the six a.m. flight Tuesday morning and head straight to the training session. There were no night clubs, none of that stuff, but even so, I wasn't being professional.

I was totally irresponsible, to be honest I didn't sleep or eat properly and got up to all sorts of stupid stuff in Malm. I went round with airbombs and stuff illegal fireworks that we'd chuck into people's gardens. We did all kinds of crazy stuff to get our adrenaline going. There'd be smoke and clumps of gra.s.s and c.r.a.p flying all over the place. There was loads of racing round in cars, because that's how I function. If nothing's going on with football, I've got to get my kicks somewhere else. I need action, I need speed, and I wasn't looking after myself.

I continued shedding weight, and as a centre forward at Ajax I was supposed to be st.u.r.dy and able to drive myself forwards. But I was down to 75 kilograms or even less. I got really thin, and I was probably worn out. I hadn't had a holiday. I'd done two pre-seasons in the s.p.a.ce of six months, and as for food, well, what do you think? I ate junk. I could still only, like, make toast and boil pasta, and that whole flood of favourable newspaper coverage had dried up. There was no 'Another triumph for Zlatan'. It was 'Zlatan booed off', 'He's out of balance'. He's this, that and the other, and people were talking about my elbows.

There was a h.e.l.l of a lot of talk about my elbows.

It started in a match against Groningen, where I elbowed a defender in the back of the neck. The referee didn't see anything, but the defender dropped to the ground and was stretchered off, and people claimed he got a concussion. When the bloke came back in after a while he was still groggy, but worst of all, the football a.s.sociation took it upon themselves to study the TV footage and decided to give me a five-match suspension.

That was definitely not what I needed. It was s.h.i.+t, and things didn't exactly get off to a good start when I returned after my suspension. I elbowed another guy in the back of the neck, and of course, he was stretchered off as well. It was like I'd got a stupid new habit, and even though I avoided a suspension that time I didn't get to play much afterwards, and it was hard, and the fans weren't exactly delighted, and so I phoned Ha.s.se Borg. It was idiotic, but that's the sort of thing you do when you're in a desperate situation.

”s.h.i.+t, Ha.s.se, can't you buy me back?”

”Buy you back? Are you serious?”

”Get me out of here. I can't take it.”

”Come on, Zlatan, there's no money for that, you must realise that. You've got to be patient.”

But I was tired of being patient, I wanted to play more, and I was so homesick it was unreal. I felt totally lost, and I started phoning Mia again, not that I knew whether it was her or something else I was missing. I was lonely and I wanted my old life back. But what did I get? I got another kick in the teeth.

It started when I discovered that I was being paid less than everybody else in the team. I'd suspected as much for a while, and finally it was clear. I was the most expensive transfer, but I got paid the least. I'd been purchased to be the new van Basten. And still I earned peanuts, and I mean, what was that down to? It wasn't hard to figure out.

Remember what Ha.s.se Borg said: ”Agents are crooks”, and all that, and like a bolt from the blue I understood: he'd screwed me over. He'd pretended to be on my side, but in reality he was working only for Malm FF. The more I thought about it, the more furious I got. Right from the beginning Ha.s.se Borg had made sure n.o.body came between us, n.o.body who could represent my interests. That's why I'd had to stand there like a fool at the St Jrgen Hotel in my tracksuit and let the guys in suits with their finance diplomas shaft me, and it felt like a punch in the guts. Let's get this straight: money has never been the main thing for me, but to be tricked and exploited, to be seen as some stupid falafel boy you can cheat and make money out of, that made me furious, and I wasted no time. I rang Ha.s.se Borg.

”What the h.e.l.l is this? I've got the worst contract in the entire club.”

”What do you mean?”

He was playing dumb.

”And where's my ten per cent?”

”We invested it in an insurance policy in England.”

In an insurance policy? What the h.e.l.l was that? It meant nothing to me, and I said, okay, it could be anything, an insurance policy, a carrier bag full of banknotes, a bucket in the wilderness, didn't make a difference: ”I want my money now.”

”That's not possible,” he said.

They were tied up, they were invested in something I didn't have a clue about, and I decided to get to the bottom of it. I got myself an agent, because this much I'd realised: agents aren't crooks. Without an agent, you haven't got a chance. Without help, you'll just stand there and get screwed by the blokes in suits again. Through a friend I got hold of a guy called Anders Carlsson who worked at IMG in Stockholm.

He was all right, wasn't exactly going to set the world on fire. He was the sort of guy who'd never spit out his chewing gum in the street or cross over the line, but who still wants to seem a little tough, though it doesn't really suit him. But still, Anders helped me out a lot in the beginning. He got hold of the insurance doc.u.ments, and that's when I got my next shock. It didn't say ten per cent of the transfer fee. It said eight per cent, so I asked: ”What's this?”

I found out they'd paid something called advance tax on my wages, and I thought: what kind of s.h.i.+t is that? Advance taxes on somebody's wages? I'd never heard of it, and straight away I said: this isn't right. This is a new trick. And what do you think happened? Anders Carlsson got on the case, and that was all it took for me to get those two per cent back. Suddenly there was no more advance tax on my wages, and then it was all over, I was finished with Ha.s.se Borg. It was a lesson I'll never forget. It scarred me, to tell the truth, and don't think for a second that I'm not fully on top of everything when it comes to my money and contracts these days.

When Mino rang me up recently he asked: ”What'd you get from Bonniers for your book?”

”I don't really know.”

”Bulls.h.i.+t! You know exactly how much,” and of course he was right.