Part 19 (1/2)

Everyone in the room gulped, and I could tell they were thinking, how come he's coming out with this stuff now? But believe me, I needed to say it. Something happened in my head then. I got my motivation back. Just the thought of being able to do my thing again got me fired up that's the truth.

When I'd put my signature on that doc.u.ment and said those words, I became myself again. It was like waking up from a nightmare, and for the first time in a long while I was itching to play football. All those thoughts of quitting were gone, and after that I entered a phase when I played out of sheer joy. Or rather, I played out of sheer joy and sheer rage, joy at having escaped from Bara and rage that a single person had destroyed my dream.

It was like I'd been set free, and I also began to see the whole thing more clearly. When I was caught up in the middle of it, I'd mainly tried to buck myself up: it's not that bad, I'll get back in, I'll show them. I kept that up all the time. But then, when it really was over, I realised it had been tough. It had been hard. The person who was supposed to mean the most to me as a footballer had given me the cold shoulder, completely, and that was worse than most stuff I'd been through. I'd been under immense pressure, and in situations like that you need your coach.

But what did I have? A guy who avoided me. A guy who tried to treat me as if I didn't exist. I was supposed to be a huge star. But instead I'd gone round there feeling unwelcome. b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, I'd been with Mourinho and Capello, the two most disciplined managers in the world, and I'd never had any problems with them. But then this Guardiola ... I was seething when I thought about it, and I'll never forget when I told Mino: ”He wrecked everything.”

”Zlatan,” he replied.

”Yeah?”

”Dreams can come true and make you happy.”

”Yeah.”

”But dreams can also come true and kill you,” and I realised immediately that was true.

A dream had both come true and been crushed at Bara, and I continued down the stairs towards the sea of journalists waiting outside, and that's when it came to me: I didn't want to call that guy by his real name. I needed something else, and I remembered all the drivel he'd spouted, and suddenly there outside Camp Nou in Barcelona, it came to me. The Philosopher!

I would call him the Philosopher.

”Ask the Philosopher what the problem is,” I said with every sc.r.a.p of pride and rage inside my being.

26.

THERE WAS A HUGE UPROAR, and I remember something Maxi said afterwards or two things, actually. The first thing was just funny. He asked, ”Why is everybody looking at you, Daddy?” and I tried to explain the situation: ”Daddy plays football. People see me on TV and they think I'm good,” and I felt proud afterwards Daddy's pretty cool. Then things took a different turn. It was our nanny who told us.

Maxi had asked why everybody was looking at him, because of course, that was something he got a lot during those days, especially when he arrived with me in Milan and worst of all, he added: ”I don't like it when they look at me like that.” I'm sensitive to stuff like that. Was he going to start feeling different now, too? I hate it when children feel they're being singled out, also because it brings back so much of my own childhood: Zlatan doesn't belong here. He's this. He's that. All that's still inside me.

I tried to spend a lot of time with Maxi and Vincent during that time. They're terrific, wild kids. But it wasn't easy. Things were going crazy. After I spoke to the journalists outside Camp Nou I drove home to Helena.

She probably hadn't been expecting to have to move house again so soon, and I bet she would've liked to stay. But she knew better than anyone that if I'm not doing well on the football pitch, I just wilt. It affects everybody in the family, so I told Galliani: I want to go to Milan with the whole gang Helena, the boys, the dog and Mino. Galliani nodded, si, si. Everybody come along! He'd clearly organised something really special, so we all hopped on one of the club's private planes and left Barcelona. I remember when we landed at Milan Linate airport. It was like Obama was coming or something. There were eight black Audis lined up in front of us and a red carpet was rolled out, and I went out carrying Vincent in my arms.

For a couple of minutes I was interviewed by a few selected journalists, guys from the Milan Channel and Sky and some others, and on the other side of the fence there were hundreds of screaming fans. It was great. I could feel it in the air. The club had been waiting a long time for this. Five years earlier, when Berlusconi had booked a table for me and him at Ristorante Giannino, people had thought everything was done and dusted and they'd made all sorts of preparations, including putting a thing on the website, an elaborate thing that first was black, and then there was a light in the centre, and it went boom, boom, like serious sound effects, just before my name appeared Ibrahimovic, like a flas.h.i.+ng, thundering streamer, and then the words 'Finally ours'.

It was crazy, and they put that thing up now, and clearly n.o.body was prepared for the level of interest. The website crashed. It totally went down, and I remember walking past the fences at the airport where the fans stood shouting my name, 'Ibra, Ibra'.

Then I got into one of the Audis and we drove through the city. It was chaos, I'm telling you. It was like, Zlatan has landed. There were cars and scooters and TV cameras after us, and sure, I got a buzz out of it. The adrenaline was pumping, and I realised even more the kind of black hole I'd been living in at Bara. It was like I'd been locked up in jail and then greeted by a festival outside the prison walls, and everywhere I sensed one thing: all of Milan had been waiting for me, and they wanted me to take charge. I was going to lead them to trophies again, and honestly, I liked it.

The street outside the Boscolo Hotel where we were going to be staying was cordoned off. All around Milan residents were shouting and waving, and inside the hotel, the management stood in a row and bowed. In Italy, footballers are like G.o.ds, and we were given the deluxe suite. We could tell straight away: everything was really well organised. This was a solid club with traditions, and honestly, my body was trembling. I wanted to play football. That same day, AC Milan were playing against Lecce in the Serie A season opener and I asked Galliani if I could play.

It wasn't possible. My papers hadn't been finalised. But I still went to the stadium. I was going to be introduced at half-time, and I'll never forget that feeling. I didn't want to go into the changing room. I didn't want to disturb the players as they regrouped. But there was a lounge just next door, so I sat in there with Galliani and Berlusconi and some other bigwigs.

”You remind me of a player I used to have,” Berlusconi said.

Of course I could guess who he was talking about, but I wanted to be polite.

”Who's that?” I said.

”A guy who could take care of situations on his own.”

He was talking about van Basten, of course, and then he welcomed me into the club: ”It's a great honour,” and all that stuff, and then we went up into the stands. I had to sit two places away from him for some political reason or other. There's always loads going on around that guy. But it was pretty calm then, at least compared to what followed. Two months later the whole circus surrounding Berlusconi blew up, with rumours of young girls and court cases. But now he sat there and seemed pleased, and I started to feel the vibes. People were screaming my name again and I went down onto the pitch, and they rolled out a red carpet and put up a little stage down there, and I waited on the sideline for a long time, at least that's what it felt like. The stadium was at boiling point. San Siro was full to capacity even though it was August and the holiday season, and I stepped out onto the pitch. There was a roar all around me, and I was like a little boy again. It wasn't long since I'd stood in Camp Nou in the same situation, and then I went out to all the cheering and applause, and there were a load of kids standing by the red carpet. I gave them all high fives, and stepped up onto the stage.

”Now we're going to win everything,” I said in Italian, and the roar got even louder.

The stadium was shaking, and afterwards I got a match s.h.i.+rt. It had my name on it, but no number. I didn't have a number yet. I'd been given a few to choose from, but none of them were any good and I there was a chance I could get the 11, which Klaas-Jan Huntelaar currently had. Huntelaar was on the transfer list, but because he hadn't been sold yet, I'd have to wait. In any case, it was starting now. Now I was going to make sure AC Milan won their first Scudetto in seven years. A new era of glory was about to begin. That's what I'd promised.

Both me and Helena had bodyguards, and some people might think, what kind of luxury is that? But it's no luxury. In Italy, football stars are surrounded by hysteria, the pressure is terrible and some bad things had happened, not just that fire outside our door in Turin. When I was at Inter and was going to play a match at San Siro, Sanela came to visit us. She and Helena drove to the stadium in our big new Mercedes. There was chaos and traffic jams outside the stadium. Helena could only inch forwards in the car, and people around her had plenty of time to gawp in and see who she was. Then a guy on a Vespa drove past a little too fast and a little too close and clipped her wing mirror.

In that situation, Helena couldn't tell whether it was intentional or not. It was more like, oh no, what's he done? She opened the window to adjust the mirror and saw something out of the corner of her eye: another guy in a cycle helmet was rus.h.i.+ng towards her and then she realised: this is something dodgy a trap. She tried to close the window, but it was a new car and she wasn't familiar with all the controls so she didn't manage to get the window up in time. The guy came up and punched her in the face.

It turned into a vicious scuffle and the Merc crashed into the car in front, and the guy tried to pull her out through the window. But fortunately Sanela was there. She grabbed hold of Helena's body and held her in it was completely crazy. It was a tug-of-war for life or death, that's what it felt like, and finally Sanela was able to drag Helena back inside the car, and then Helena managed to turn herself round somehow.

She landed a kick in the b.a.s.t.a.r.d's face from an impossible angle, and she had on, like, four-inch heels. That must have hurt like h.e.l.l, and the guy ran off. People had started to gather round the car. It was absolute chaos, and Helena was bruised.

It could have ended really badly. There have been a few things like that, unfortunately. That's the truth. We needed protection. Anyway, my bodyguard, a good guy, drove me out to Milanello, the club's training facility, on the first day.

I was getting all the usual medical exams. Milanello is nearly an hour's drive from Milan, and of course there were fans waiting down by the gates when we drove in. I felt the weight of all the traditions at Milan, and I greeted all the legends in the squad: Zambrotta, Nesta, Ambrosini, Gattuso, Pirlo, Abbiati, Seedorf, Inzaghi, Pato the young Brazilian, and Allegri, the coach, who'd just arrived from Cagliari and didn't have much experience, but who seemed good. Sometimes when you're new in the gang, you're called into question. There's a fight for your place in the pecking order, like, you think you're the star here? But here, I could sense it immediately. I got respect straight away. Actually, maybe I shouldn't say this, but a number of players told me afterwards: We got a 20 per cent boost when you came. You brought us out of the shadows. AC Milan hadn't just been having a tough time in the league the last few years. The club hadn't been the best side in the city for a long time, either.

Inter had dominated. Inter had dominated ever since I arrived at the club in 2006 with all that att.i.tude I'd got from Capello, which somehow said: training sessions are just as important as matches. You can't train soft and play aggressive. You've got to do battle every minute, otherwise I'll come after you. I went round trying to give encouragement and joke around with the guys, everything that had come naturally to me everywhere except at Barcelona. In a way, it reminded me of my early days at Inter. Lead us, lead us, the guys seemed to be saying, and I thought: now the balance of power is going to wobble a little again. I went into every training session incredibly fired up, and just like I'd done before Barcelona I screamed at people. I made noise and I yelled. I made fun of the ones who lost, and people said to me, what's going on? We haven't seen the guys this fired up in ages.

There was another new guy in the team. His name was Robson de Souza, but people called him Robinho. I'd been involved in that transaction. Galliani had asked me while I was still at Barcelona: ”What do you think of Robinho? Can you play with him?”

”A brilliant player, just bring him here. The rest will work itself out.”

The club paid 18 million euro for him, which was seen as cheap, and Galliani gained a lot of prestige for that as well. He'd managed to buy both me and Robinho at knock-down prices. Not long ago, Manchester City had paid far more than twice that for Robinho. But the purchase had been something of a risk. Robinho was a prodigy who'd lost his way a bit. There's no greater G.o.d in Brazil than Pele, and in the '90s he was in charge of the Santos youth organisation Santos FC had been Pele's home club and they'd been going through a rough patch for many years. People dreamt that he'd discover a new super-talent, though not many believed it would really happen. A new Pele! A new Ronaldo, the kind of player that only comes along a few times in a hundred years. But even in the first training session, Pele just stood there, totally blown away. He even called time out, so the story goes, and went over to a skinny, impoverished kid on the pitch.

”I'm about ready to cry,” he said. ”You remind me of myself.”

That was Robinho, a guy who grew up and became the big star everybody was waiting for, at least at first. He was sold to Real Madrid and later to Manchester City, but more recently he'd had quite a bit of negative publicity. There had been a lot of drama surrounding him. We became close at AC Milan. We were two guys who'd grown up in difficult circ.u.mstances, and there were parallels in our lives. We'd both received b.o.l.l.o.c.kings because we dribbled too much, and I loved his technique. But he was a little too unfocused on the pitch, and did too many tricks on his own over near the touchline.

I was on him a lot about that. I was on everybody in the team, and before my first match away at Cesena I was sizzling with energy, and you can imagine the hype surrounding me. The papers wrote page after page: now I was going to show what I meant for my new club.

It was me, Pato and Ronaldinho in front, and that seemed strong. Robinho started on the bench. But it was useless. I was in overdrive, just like in my early days at Ajax. I wanted too much, so we ended up with too little, and at half-time we were behind Cesena, 20. Losing to Cesena, when we were AC Milan! That was mental, and I was angry and completely crazy on the pitch. But d.a.m.n it, nothing worked. I worked like a dog, and towards the end we got a penalty. Who knows, maybe we could turn it around? I was going to take the penalty, and I stepped up and shot into the goalpost. We lost, and how do you think I felt? I had to do a doping test after the match, and I came into the room so furious that I trashed a table, and the doping guy in there was totally terrified.

”Calm down, calm down.”

”Listen,” I said. ”You don't tell me what to do. Otherwise you could end up like that table down there.”

That wasn't a nice thing to do; he was an innocent doping tester. But that's the att.i.tude I brought to Milan, and when we lost, the red mist descended. That's when you need to leave me to wreck stuff in peace. I was boiling with rage, and was just happy when the papers had a go at me the next day and gave me miserable reviews. I deserved it, and I clenched my fists. But things didn't loosen up in the next match either, or the one after that, even though I scored my first goal away against Lazio, and it looked like we were going to win. But in the final minutes we let in an equaliser, and that time there was no doping check.

I went straight into the changing room where there was a whiteboard that the manager writes the game plans on, and I kicked it with all my strength. The board went flying like a missile and struck a player.