Part 15 (1/2)

He had such gravity. Such an eye for the game. There was quality in every single movement, and in that '97'98 season he and Inter were absolutely amazing. They won the UEFA Cup, and Ronaldo scored 25 goals and was voted the best player in the world for the second year in a row. They dominated Serie A. And yet they lost it in early spring, same as us now in the run-up to the fight against Parma. Inter had bad luck and troubles and s.h.i.+t, and they played a cla.s.sic match against Juventus at the Stadio delle Alpi in Turin in the spring of 1998. There was only one point, maybe two, between the teams. This was a real season finale with incredible tension in the air, and Ronaldo was dribbling in the penalty area, on the left side. But he got a brutal block, and the entire stadium started screaming. People went mental. The stadium was at boiling point. But the referee never blew his whistle. He let play continue, and Juventus won the match 10 and later the league t.i.tle, and it was in that moment that everything was decided. That's how it's usually seen. It was Inter's tragic second. People still talk about it. It was considered to be a blatant penalty. But nothing happened, and there was anger and protests throughout Italy, and talk that the referee had taken a bribe, or that all referees were on the take and corrupt and stupid in general, and all the older players at the club had clear memories of all that, especially as a number of similar things had happened to the club around the same time. They'd had the Scudetto within their grasp the previous season as well, but lost it in the final stretch in an awesome match against Lazio, and the year after that, Ronaldo was injured. Everything went to h.e.l.l, as though the team had lost its engine and its drive, and Inter finished eighth in the league their worst-ever finish, I think.

n.o.body said it out loud. n.o.body wanted to unleash a bad omen. But a lot of people were thinking about it before our match against Parma. There were bad premonitions. People remembered and obsessed over it, and then there was that penalty that Materazzi had missed. The lads had had several chances to clinch the league t.i.tle, but they'd blown every one. It was little things all the time, bad luck, mistakes. It was all kinds of c.r.a.p, and sure, everybody was gunning for Parma, ready to give their all. But that in itself could also be a problem. There were mutterings about it. There was a risk that the pressure could become too much. Things could get deadlocked, and the club's management banned all of us from speaking to the press. We had to maintain total concentration, and even Mancini, who always held a press conference before matches, kept his mouth shut, so the only one who said a word was Moratti.

He turned up at our hotel the evening before the match and said nothing to the journalists other than, ”Wish us luck. We're going to need it,” and it didn't help that Parma were geared up to beat us in order to retain their place in the league. Things were just as deadly serious for our opponents as they were for us. We weren't going to be handed anything for free, and just before we went to the stadium, the decision came in that we weren't going to have the support of our own fans.

It was an issue of fairness. For security reasons the Roma supporters hadn't been allowed to travel to their away match against Catania, and so we wouldn't be able to have our fans there in Parma. Quite a few did manage to get in, though. They were scattered around. Every little thing was scrutinised and discussed, and I remember Mancini. He went spare when he heard that Gianluca Rocchi would be refereeing.

”That b.a.s.t.a.r.d's always got it in for us,” he fumed, and there were dark clouds gathering on the horizon.

It looked like rain, and I started off on the bench. I hadn't played in a long time, and Mancini started with Balotelli and Cruz in front. ”But be ready,” he told me. ”Be ready to jump in,” and I nodded. We all sat there under a canopy and heard the first raindrops fall. Soon the rain was pattering over us and the match got underway, and the spectators were booing. The pressure was terrible, but we dominated. We kept pressing them, and Cruz and Maicon had some incredible chances, but it didn't work out. It looked hopeless, and of course those of us on the bench were following the game on the edge of our seats. We yelled and swore and hoped and feared, but we always kept one eye on the giant scoreboard in the stadium.

Because it wasn't just about our match. There was Roma's to think of as well, and it was still 00 there too, and that was cool. We'd still top the league. The Scudetto would be ours. But then it flashed up. The whole team sat up. Please, no goal for Roma! That would be too cruel. You can't lead the league all season and then lose at the last minute. That should b.l.o.o.d.y well be outlawed. But yes, Roma had made it 10 against Catania and suddenly we were Number 2 in the league. It was unreal, and I looked at everyone on the bench, the physios, the doctors, the equipment guys, everybody who'd been there in the '90s, they remembered. They went pale. Is it happening again? Is the old curse back?

I've never seen anything like it. The colour drained out of them, and out on the pitch as well. We're talking pure terror, nothing less. This couldn't happen. It was terrible, it was a disaster, and the rain just kept falling. It was bucketing down, and the home supporters were shouting with joy. The result was to their advantage, because if Catania lost, Parma would remain in the league. But to us it felt like nothing short of death, and the players got more and more tense. I could see it in them. They were bearing crosses on their backs, and I can't say I was particularly upbeat myself, of course not, but still, I already had three Scudettos and I didn't feel any of that old curse. I was too young for it, and with every minute I became more focused and more up for it. It was like there was a fire inside me.

I was going to go in and turn this around, no matter how much pain I was in. I refused to accept anything else, and at half-time when it was still 00 and the league t.i.tle was in Roma's hands, I got the order to warm up, and I remember it so clearly: everybody was looking at me Mancini, Mihajlovic, everybody, the equipment guys, the physio, everybody and I saw, they were counting on me. I could see it in their eyes. They stared pleadingly at me, and obviously it was impossible not to feel the pressure.

”Sort this for us,” they said, one after another.

”I will, I will!”

But I didn't go in after half-time, either. It took another six minutes, and then I stepped onto the pitch. The gra.s.s was wet. Running was heavy and I wasn't completely match-fit, and the pressure was ridiculous. But still, I'd never been so fired up in my life, and I remember I attempted a shot almost right away from the midfield, just outside the penalty area.

It didn't go in. A few minutes later I tried it again. I missed that one too. It felt like I kept ending up in the same position over and over without getting anything out of it, and in the 62nd minute it happened again. I got the ball in the same spot. It was Dejan Stankovic who pa.s.sed it, and I drew a guy who threw himself towards me and ran towards the goal, and every time I nudged the ball, a little stream of water went up, and then I saw a position and shot, not a thundering kick by any means.

It was a ground shot, and it went into the left goalpost and into the goal, and instead of doing a wicked goal celebration I just stood there and waited, and they all came from the bench and the pitch, first was Patrick Vieira I think, and then Balotelli, then the whole gang, the equipment guys, the guys from the supply store, each and every one, all of them who'd given me those pleading looks, and I saw: the fear had subsided. Dejan Stankovic threw himself down onto the wet pitch and it looked like he was thanking the G.o.ds. There was complete hysteria, and way up in the stands Ma.s.simo Moratti was cheering, he was almost dancing in his VIP spot, and we all felt it, everybody in the club, every single one.

A millstone had been released from around their necks. The colour returned to people's faces. It was much more than a goal. It was almost as if I'd saved them from drowning, and I looked towards the spectators. The cheers from our supporters emerged from behind the booing, and I made a gesture with my hand up to my ear, like, what's that I hear? And then the stadium was even more electric, and when the commotion finally died down the match continued.

Nothing was certain yet. A single goal by Parma and we'd be back to square one, and the nerves came back, but not the old fear. Still, n.o.body dared to exhale. Worse things than a draw have happened in football. But then in the 78th minute Maicon dribbled along the right side, past one, two, three guys and then he made a cross and I rushed up. I got there at the same time as a defender, but I got my foot on the ball and shot a half-volley into the goal, and you can just imagine. I'd been away for two months, and the journalists had been writing s.h.i.+t about me and about the team.

They'd been saying all kinds of c.r.a.p, that Inter had lost their winning instinct and everything was going to slip through our fingers and that I wasn't a true great, not like Totti or Del Piero, and even that I wasn't good when it really mattered. But now I'd shown them, and I sank down to my knees on that rain-sodden pitch and just waited for all of them to pile on top of me again, and I could feel it throughout my whole body: this was big, and it wasn't long before the whistle went and the Scudetto was ours.

Inter Milan hadn't won it in seventeen years. They'd had a long, hard spell, filled with suffering and bad luck and s.h.i.+t. But then I came, and now we'd brought home the league t.i.tle two years in a row, and the whole place was a three-ring circus. People ran onto the pitch and grabbed us, and inside in the changing room everybody was screaming and jumping around. But then people grew silent. Mancini came in. He hadn't always been so popular, especially after he'd flip-flopped about his future with the club and not done too well in the Champions League. But now he'd won the league trophy, and the players went up, one by one, kind of formal, shook his hand and said, ”Thank you so much, you did it for us.” But then Mancini came up to me, completely filled with victory and all the congratulations. The only thing was, he didn't get a thank-you from me. I said, ”You're welcome” and everyone laughed, like, b.l.o.o.d.y Ibra, and afterwards when I was speaking to the journalists, several of them asked: ”Who do you dedicate this victory to?”

”To you,” I replied, ”to the media, to everybody who doubted and dissed me and Inter!”

That's how I roll. I'm always planning my revenge. It's been with me ever since Rosengrd, it's what drives me, and I'll never forget what Moratti told the media: ”All of Italy was against us, but Zlatan Ibrahimovic was the symbol of our struggle.”

I was voted the best player of the year in Serie A, and not long afterwards that stuff about me possibly being the world's highest paid footballer came out, and everything went completely crazy. I could barely go out, and wherever I went there was a commotion. Of course, everybody thought I'd negotiated the contract after the match against Parma. But the deal had been agreed seven or eight months earlier, and I thought, my G.o.d, there's no way Moratti could have any regrets now, not after that finish, and I felt like, things have turned round now. The clouds have cleared up. I've been able to strike back. But there were definitely signs for concern. I noticed right after the Parma match.

My knee had swollen up again. I'd never been completely fit, and I think it came as a shock to a lot of people when I was forced to sit out the Italian cup final, and of course that was no fun. We'd had a chance at the double, to bring home bother the Cup and the league t.i.tle. But without me, Roma got their revenge in the final, and the Euro 2008 tournament was approaching and I had no idea whether my knee was going to hold out. I'd worked myself too hard that season.

I was going to have to pay a heavy price.

20.

I DIDN'T GO OUT that often any more. I stayed at home with my family, and at that time I'd just become a father for the second time. Now we had little Vincent as well. Vincent! He was so lovely, and his name comes from the Italian word for 'winner', and of course I liked that. He'd been born amidst a whole circus as well. But he was Number 2, and the media were a bit more relaxed about it.

But really, two boys! That's no game. I started to realise how things had been for Mum when I was younger, with all her kids and her cleaning job no other parallels besides that, of course. We were very well off, me and Helena shamelessly well off, of course. But at least I had some sense of how tough it must have been for Mum, and after the drama with Maxi I'd become really paranoid: what kind of rash is that? How come Vincent's breathing is so heavy? Why's his belly so swollen? All that.

We had a new girl to help with the kids then. Our previous nanny had med a guy while she was living with us in Malm and had handed in her notice, and we went into a bit of a panic. We needed help, and we wanted a Swedish girl for the sake of the kids, so Helena phoned the foreign department of the employment agency to discuss the issue. How should we do it? I mean, we couldn't just put out an advert: Zlatan and Helena are looking for a childminder. That would hardly attract the right people.

Helena pretended we were amba.s.sadors or something. 'Swedish diplomatic family seek nanny', she put in the ad, and we got over 300 replies. Helena read them all. She was thorough, as ever, and I guess she expected it to be difficult. But she picked one out straight away. It was a girl from a little village in Dalarna in central Sweden, and apparently that alone was a point in her favour. Helena wanted somebody from the countryside. She comes from a small community herself, and this girl was a qualified nursery school teacher and could speak foreign languages and liked to keep fit, just like Helena, and generally seemed nice and hard-working.

I didn't get involved. But Helena phoned up that girl without telling her who she was. She was still, like, the amba.s.sador's wife, and the girl seemed interested and easy to talk to, and Helena sent her an email, saying, ”Come and have a week's trial with us!”

They decided they'd take Helena's hire car to the airport in Stockholm and fly to Milan together with the boys, so the girl was going to meet up with Helena in Lindesberg. Her dad drove her. But before they set off, Helena sent over the travel doc.u.ments, and that made the girl wonder. According to the tickets, this diplomatic family's children were called Maximilian and Vincent Ibrahimovic, and that was a little odd. Maybe there could be diplomats' families with names like that as well, couldn't there? There could be lots of Ibrahimovics in Sweden, for all she knew. She asked her dad about it.

”Have a look at this,” she said.

”It looks like you're going to be nanny to Zlatan's children,” he told her, and that made her want to back out. It was like, help!

She was scared. I'm sure it sounded daunting. Then again, it felt too late to back out now. The tickets were booked and everything, so they set off, she and her dad, and now she was really nervous, she told us later. But Helena ... what can I say about Helena? She's the Evilsuperb.i.t.c.hdeluxe when she gets all dressed up. It takes some courage to go up to a woman like that. But honestly, she's incredibly laid-back. She's an expert at making people feel comfortable, and during that journey she and the girl had a long time to get to know one another far too long, in fact.

The problems started at Arlanda airport. They were going to fly Easyjet, because only Easyjet had a flight to Milan that day. But there was something wrong with the plane. The flight was delayed an hour, then two, three, six, 12, 18 hours. It was mental. It was an absolute scandal, and everybody was tired and irritated and climbing the walls, and finally I went spare. I couldn't stand it. I phoned a pilot I know, the guy who flies the private plane I have access to.

”Go and fetch them,” I told him, and that's what happened.

Helena and the girl collected their bags and were taken to the private plane, and I'd made sure there was catering on board with strawberries dipped in chocolate and all that stuff, and I hoped they enjoyed it. They deserved it after that ordeal, and then I finally got to meet the girl. She was really nervous then too, from what I understand. But we got on well and she's helped us and lived with us ever since. She's part of the family, you could say, and we wouldn't manage for a day without her. The kids are crazy about her, and she and Helena are like sisters who exercise and study together. At nine o'clock every morning they go and train together. We gained some new routines and habits in general.

One year we went off to St Moritz. Do you think I felt at home there? Not exactly! I'd never skied in my life. The thought of going to the Alps with Mum and Dad was like going to the moon.

St Moritz was for posh people. They drank champagne with breakfast. Champagne? I sat around in my pants and wanted cereal. Olof Mellberg was there as well and tried to teach me to ski. It was no use. I was all over the place like an idiot, while Mellberg and the others in our gang danced down the slopes. I looked completely ridiculous, and to be on the safe side I put on one of those balaclavas and some ma.s.sive sungla.s.ses. n.o.body would know who I was. But one day I was on a chairlift and there was an Italian kid sitting next to me with his dad, and the lad started staring. No worries, I thought. He won't recognise me in this outfit. No way. But after a while the kid said: ”Ibra?”

It must have been my d.a.m.n nose. I flat-out denied it. Ibra, what? Who's that? But what did I get? Helena started laughing. That was, like, the funniest thing she'd ever experienced, and the kid carried on with his Ibra, Ibra, and finally I said, ”Si, it's me,” and then there was a bit of a pause. The guy was well impressed. But that was a problem. He wasn't going to be so impressed when he saw me ski, and I thought about how I was going to solve it. I was the sporting star. I couldn't reveal myself to be rubbish on the slopes. But things got worse than I feared. Word got round. A whole crowd turned up, and they all stood there to watch me ski. I had issues with my gloves. Paid special attention to how they fit around my fingertips.

I was thorough with my jacket as well, and my ski trousers and bindings especially those, because that was something I'd seen. People were constantly fiddling with their bindings, fastening them and undoing them, and for all anybody knew, maybe I was an extremely thorough pro who needed to have everything done up just so before I went zooming off like Ingemar Stenmark. But it was annoying, obviously: the longer I kept it up, the greater their expectations grew. Like, is he gonna do some tricks? Shoot off like out of a cannon on those footballing legs?

I was forced to adjust my scarf and my cap and my hair, and finally that bunch got tired. They went away. Like, we're not bothered about him. I was definitely Ibra, but that doesn't mean you can stare at me forever, and I could ski down in peace and quiet like the newbie I was, and Olof Mellberg and the others were all wondering, ”Where have you been? What were you doing?”

”I had to adjust a few things.”

But most of the time, it was hard work. The summer after our match against Parma and the second league victory with Inter, I was supposed to play in the Euro 2008 tournament in Switzerland and Austria, and I was still concerned about my knee. A lot was being written about my injury, and I spoke to Lagerbck about it, and neither I nor anybody else knew whether I'd be able to give it a hundred per cent in the tournament. We had Russia, Spain and Greece in our group, and that didn't look very easy. I've got a contract with Nike. Mino was against that deal, but I stood my ground, and sure, it's been fun a lot of the time. We've made some fun videos together, like when I do tricks with a piece of chewing gum and kick it up into my mouth, and Dad's even there pretending to be worried I'm going to choke on it and above all, Nike was there and helped me build Zlatan Court in Cronmans Vg in Rosengrd where I'd played as a kid.

That was great. The pitch was made out of the soles from old trainers. There was a nice rubber underlay and lighting and stuff. The kids wouldn't have to stop playing like we did because it got too dark, and we put up an inscription there: My heart is here. My history is here. My game is here. Take it further. Zlatan. It felt fantastic to be able to give something back, and I was there and officially opened the pitch, and you can just imagine. ”Zlatan, Zlatan”, the kids were screaming. It was a complete circus. It was a homecoming, and I was really touched, honestly, and I played with the kids in the dark and felt like, wow, you didn't think this would happen to the snot-nosed kid from Cronmans Vg!

But at the Euro 2008 tournament, I was p.i.s.sed off with Nike. Nike had made a strict rule that all of us who had a contract had to wear the same colour boots, and I thought, okay then, go for it, I don't care. But then it emerged that another guy was still going to get his own colour. I took it up with Nike: how come you're talking s.h.i.+t? Everybody was supposed to have the same. That's what we decided, they replied, and then I told them what I thought of that, and then they changed their minds. Suddenly I was getting my own colour too. But it wasn't fun any longer. You shouldn't have to talk your way into stuff like that, and I kept my old boots. Maybe it all sounds kind of silly. But people need to be able to talk straight.

Our first match was against Greece. I had Sotirios Kyrgiakos on me. Kyrgiakos is a talented defender. He had long hair which he wore in a ponytail. Every time I jumped or made a rush, I got his hair in my face. I practically got hair in my mouth. He was marking me hard. He did a good job, no doubt about that. He locked me in. But he let up for a couple, three seconds and that was all I needed. I got a throw-in and started to dribble, and suddenly Kyrgiakos was far away, and then I got some s.p.a.ce. I shot straight up into the top corner.

That was a perfect start to the European Champions.h.i.+p tournament. We won 20, and my family, who were there, looked after themselves. We'd all learnt our lesson from the World Cup in Germany. I was playing football. I couldn't be their travel coordinator as well. Everybody looked after themselves, and that felt good. But my knee was hurting and it was swollen, and we had Spain in our next match. Spain were one of the favourites to win the tournament. They'd beaten Russia 40 in their first match, and we knew it was going to be tough, and there was a lot of talk about my injury. Should I play or not? I wasn't sure. It was painful, but sure, I was happy to ignore the pain.