Autobilography of Zlatan Ibrahimovic

I AM ZLATAN By Zlatan Ibrahimovic as t sexagenarian to David Lagercrantz This book is dedic consumed to my family and friends, to those who need stood by my side, on corking days and drab. I similarly de opusd to dedicate it to e truly(prenominal)(prenominal)(a)(a) the kids bug turn come in t striveher, those who expression diverse and dont find prohibited in. Those who are assuren for the wrong rea passwords. Its OK to be different. Continue creation yourself. It wreaked out for me. CHAPTER 1Pep Guardiola, the jalopy in Barcelona, with his grey suits and trouble face, came up to me feel concerned. I musical theme he was either(prenominal) mediocrely at that era, certainly non a Mourinho or Capello, fair(a) now an ok abuse cable. This was representation in the beginning we started our war. It was the f e very(prenominal)(prenominal) of 2009 and I was living my childhood dream. I was filling in the opera hat team in the ground and had been wel give way it offd by 70 000 hoi polloi at the Camp Nou. I was walking on sullys. Well maybe non entirely, in that respect were dearly(prenominal) bull cheate in the papers. I was the inquisitive boy and either(prenominal) that. I was difficult dealings with. further motionlessness, I was here(predicate). capital of Montana and the kids were besides groovy.We had a n icing the puck class in Esplugues de Llobregat and I mat up fully charged. What could go wrong? Hey you, Guardiola give tongue to. here(predicate) in Barca we keep our feet d ingest on the ground. Sure, I said. Fine. hither we dont drive many(prenominal) Ferraris or Porsches to training. I nodded, didnt go cocky on him, a similar how the fuck is what simple machine Im impulsive your concern? simply I horizon What does he want? What tradeage is he freehanded me? bank me, I dont need any fancy political machines or parking on the sidewalk to show off any more(prenominal) than than. Tha t wasnt it. I love my cars. Theyre a affectionateness of tap, save I sensed intimately companionable sportsmanction else behind his wrangling.Kind of dont conceptualise youre so special. I had al erect at that point soundless that Barca is care a t from each angiotensin-converting enzyme. The request to the woodsers were alone n frosting, postcode wrong with them, and in that respect was Max vigorous, my every send off-the-hill friend from Ajax and secrete. scarce h iodinstly, no(prenominal) of the computed tomographys acted standardized superstars, and I thought that was odd. Messi, Xavi, Iniesta, the full-page gang, was corresponding school kids. The worlds best p reclineers stood there nodding, and I couldnt picture that. It was ridiculous. If a coach in Italy avers leap, the make forers ask what? Why should we jump? Here, each peerless(a) jumped at any command. I didnt fit in, not at each. that I was thinking Accept the fleck. Dont confirm th eir thoughts or so you. So I started adapting. I became too kindly. It was insane. Mino Raiola, my agent, my friend, said Whats wrong with you Zlatan? I dont lie with you. No one recognized me, not my buddies, no one. I became boring, bland, and you should sleep with that ever since Malmo FF Ive had one philosophy I prevail my own race. I dont give a damn what people think and Ive neer tangle up comfortable with authority. I equivalent guys who go along the red light, if you subscribe to love what I mean. and now I didnt say what I cute. I said what I thought people expected of me. It was wack.I bevy the fiats Audi and stood there nodding equal lynchpin in school, or corresponding I should brook stood nodding moxie in school. I didnt give my team compeer any mother fucker. I was boring. Zlatan wasnt Zlatan, and that hadnt happen since back in school when I motto chicks in Ralph Lauren clothes for the move closely while and al most(prenominal) realise my pants when I was asking them out. moreover relieve, I started the season long. I scored mark by and by goal subsequently goal. We won the UEFA Super Cup. I was shining. I dominated. on the dot now I was more or less(a)whatbody else. Some intimacy had happened, no liaison serious, not yet. I had been silenced, and thats dangerous, believe me. I assume to be sick of(p) to play sanitary.I confuse to shout and make scenes. Now I unbroken all that at heart me. Maybe it had to do with all pressure. I dont get laid. I was the hour most expensive transfer in history, and the papers kept saying I was a problem child and had issues with my personality, all kinds of bull grass over, and unfortunately I mat the w eight-spot of it all in Barca we dont stick out, and I habitualise I precious to show that I could fit in. It was the most stupid ending of my entire life. I was still killing on the field. yet it wasnt as fun anymore. I even off thought round quitting fo otball. not that I would break my contract, Im a professional. besides I lost the fun.And thus came Christmas break. We went to atomic number 18 and I rented a snowmobile. Whe neer life stands still, I want action. I forever and a day drive interchangeable a maniac. Ive gone 325 km/hr in my Porsche Turbo, leaving chasing cops behind. Ive finished so many fucked up affairs I however want to think approximately them. And now in the mountains I was giving it my all on the snowmobile, got freeze burns and had the time of my life. Finally close to adrenaline Finally the old, the square Zlatan, and I were thinking to myself Why am I doing this? I puddle money. I dont involve to feel shit with dimwit coaches. I stinker allow fun alternatively and deal out care of my family.It was a great time, plainly it didnt last long. When we diminished to Spain disaster struck. non immediately, however slowly. Disaster was in the air. A light snowfall came. It was athe cares of t he Spaniards had neer seen snow before, and in our hood, in the hills above Barcelona, cars were deflowering to the left(p) and right, and Mino, the fat idiot the wonderful fat idiot I should extend if anyone would misunderstand me froze a a ilk(p) a dog in his summer piazza and light jacket and convinced me to take the Audi. It almost end in disaster. On a prevail every seathill passage we lost control of the car and smashed into a stone wall.The intact right side of the car was demolished. Many had crashed during the bad weather, tho no one as soberly as me. I won the crash contest too, and we laughed a atomic reactor just round(predicate) that. And I was actually feeling identical myself several(prenominal)times. I felt ok. and so Messi started expressing. Messi is awesome. Fucking unbelievable. I dont love him very well. We are very different personalities. He came to Barca 13 years old and is brought up in their culture. He doesnt have any problems with that school shit. In the team, the play revolves about him, which is life desire actually. Hes brilliant, but now I had come, and I was pull a head up more than he did.He went to Guardiola and said I dont want to play on the right side, on the wing, anymore. I want to be in the middle. That was where I was. take out Guardiola didnt give a shit. He changed tactics. From 4-3-3 he switched to 45-1 with me on direct and Messi right behind, leaving me in the shadow. All balls went through Messi and I couldnt play my bouncing. I have to be free as a bird on the field. Im the guy who wants to make a difference on all levels. barely Guardiola sacrificed me. Thats the truth. He locked me in up there. OK, I potbelly understand his situation. Messi was the star. Guardiola has to listen to him. alone come on I had scored goal aft(prenominal) goal in Barca, I was lethal too. He couldnt adapt the team after one single guy. I mean why the hell did he vitiate me wherefore? No one pay s that kind of money just to strangle me as a player. Guardiola had to think of both of us, and of course, the mood amongst the club management became nervous. I was their openhandedgest investment ever, and I didnt feel undecomposed in the freshly lineup. I was too expensive not to feel high-priced. Txiki Begiristain, the sports director, was force-up-and-go me he said I had to speak with the coach. Work it out I didnt uniform it. Im a player who accepts the situation. save sure, fine, I did it A friend of mine said Zlatan, its want if Barca bought a Ferrari but are movement it similar a Fiat, and I thought, yeah, thats a good argument. Guardiola had transformed me into a simpler, worsenedned player. And the whole team was losing from that. So I went to the coach. I approached him on the thrash, during training, and I was careful about one thing. I didnt want a fight, and I told him I dont want to fight. I dont want a war. I just want to discuss things. He nodded. ex cept maybe he looked a bit frightened, so I repeated If you think I want a fight, I impart leave.I just want to talk. candid I a alike(p)(p) talking with the players. Listen I continued. You are not using my capa urban center. If it was a goal scorer you wanted, you should have bought Inzaghi or someone. I need space, and to be free. I cant predominate up and polish constantly. I weigh 98 kilos. I dont have the physique for it. He was thinking. He was a great dealtimes doing that. I think you can play like this. No, and so its crack if you bench me. With all due respect, I understand you, but you are sacrificing me for other players. This isnt works. Its like you bought a Ferrari but are driving it like if it was a Fiat. He continued thinking. OK, maybe it was a mistake. This is my problem. I allow for work it out. I was euphoric. He would work it out. tho thus the ice cold came. He would barely look at me, and Im not one who in reality cares about such things, and despite my new redact I continued to be great. I scored more goals. Not as tight-laced ones as in Italy. I was too high up on the pitch. It wasnt Ibracadabra anymore, but still Against Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium in the Champions League we out contend them completely. The stadium was boiling. The offset twenty legal proceeding were amazing, and I scored one goal deuce goals.Beautiful goals, and I was thinking Screw Guardiola Ill run my own race barely thus I was substituted, Arsenal came back and scored devil goals. It was shit and afterwards my thigh hurt. Normally a coach cares about such things. An injured Zlatan is a serious thing for any team. only when Guardiola was ice cold. He didnt say a single word, and I was out for one-third workweeks. Not once did he face me and ask How are you feeling, Zlatan? Can you play the next game? He didnt even say hello. Not a word. He avoided looking at me. If I entered a board, he would leave. Whats handout on? I was th inking.Have I done something? Do I look eerie? Am I speaking eerie? My mind was spinning in circles. I couldnt sleep. I was thinking about it constantly. Not that I needed Guardiolas love or anything. He could hate me all he wanted. Im triggered by hate and revenge. only if now I lost focus, and I talked to the other players. No one understood what was dismission on. I asked Thierry Henry, who was on the bench during this time. Thierry Henry is the top scorer in the history of the French discipline team. Hes cool. He was still amazing, and he was to a fault having problems with Guardiola. He doesnt greet me.He doesnt look me in the look, what has happened? I asked. No thought, Henry said. We started joking about it. Hey, Zlatan, has he looked at you today? No, but I saw his back Congratulations, things are improving Shit like that, and it helped a diminished bit. but it was actually acquiring on my nerves, and I asked myself every hour What have I done? Whats wrong? just I never got any answers. nought more than that the ice charge must have had to do with our talk about my position. at that place couldnt be any other explanation. solely that would be twisted. Was he psyching me out beca wont a chat about my position?I tried confronting him, Id walk towards him sieve looking him in the eyes. He turned or so. He seemed scared, and sure I could have booked an appointment and asked What is this about? merely never. I had done enough crawling for that guy. This was his problem. Not that I knew what it was. I still dont know it. Or, well I dont think the guy can handle noticeable personalities. He wants nice school boys. And worse he runs away from his problems. He cant look them in the eye, and that make everything so very much worse. It got worse. The ash cloud from the volcano on Iceland came.No flights at all in Europe and we were passing to San Siro to face lay. We took the bus. Some brain-dead person in Barca thought that was a goo d idea. I was free from injuries accordingly. only when the trip became a disaster. It took 16 hours and we were all worn out when we arrived in Milano. It was our most meaning(a) game so farthest that season, semifinal in the Champions League, and I was sympathisey for mayhem, booing and whistling at my old arena, no problems, that drive me. merely the situation a digress from that was terrible. And I think Guardiola had a hang up on Mourinho. Jose Mourinho is a big star.He had won Champions League already with Porto. He was my coach in Inter. Hes cool. The first time he met Helena he whispered to her Helena, you and have one mission. Feed Zlatan, let him sleep, keep him content The guy says what he wants. I like him. Hes the leader of an army. But he too cares. He was sending me text messages all the time in Inter asking how I was feeling. Hes the opposite of Guardiola. If Mourinho lights up a room, Guardiola pulls the blinds. I envisage Guardiola now tried to measur e up to him. Its not Mourinho we are facing. Its Inter, he said, like we thought wed play ball with the coach.And then he pulled his philosophy crap. I was barely comprehend. Why would I? It was advanced crap about blood, sweat and tears, shit like that. Ive never heard a coach talk like that. Pure garbage. But now he finally came up to me. It was during the practice at San Siro, and people were there watching, like Wow, Ibra is back Can you play from start Guardiola asked. Definitely, I answered. But are you prepared? Definitely. I feel fine. But are you ready? He was like a parrot, and I got some nasty vibes. Listen, it was a terrible trip, but Im in good form. The injury is gone.Ill give it my everything. Guardiola looked as though he doubted me. I didnt understand him, and afterwards I called Mino Raiola. I call Mino all the time. Swedish journalists use to say Mino is bad physique for Zlatan. Mino is this and that. You want the truth? Mino is a genius. I asked him What d oes the guy mean? no(prenominal) of us understood. We started losing it. But I got to play from start and we scored 1-0. Then the game turned, I was substituted after sixty minutes and we lost 3-1. It was shit. I was furious. But in the earlier days, like Ajax, I could dwell on a loss for days or even weeks.Now I have Helena and the kids. They help me go away and move on. And I was focusing on the return game at Camp Nou. The return game was improbably important and the excitement was building up, day by day. The pressure was incredible. It was like smooch in the air, and we had to win big to advance. But then I dont even want to think about it, or, well, I do. It made me severeer. We won by 1-0. But that wasnt enough. We were eliminated from the Champions League, and afterwards Guardiola looked at me like it was my fault, and I was thinking The nursing bottle is unfilled now. Were out of do cards.After that game it felt like I wasnt welcome in the club anymore, and I felt bad driving their Audi. I felt like shit sitting in the training room and Guardiola would stare at me like I was a problem, some freak. It was insane. He was a wall, a stone wall. I didnt get a single sign of life from him, and I wanted to get far away every second. I was no longer part of the team, and when we compete Villa Real he let me play five minutes. Five minutes I was boiling inside, not because I was on the bench. I can deal with that if the coach is man enough to say Youre not good enough, Zlatan.But Guardiola didnt say a single word, slide fastener, and at this point Id had it. I could feel it in my entire body, and if I was Guardiola, I would have been scared. Not that Im a fighter. Ive done all kinds of crazy shit. But I dont fight, well, on the pitch Ive knocked one or two out. But still, when I get angry, my eyes turn black. You dont want to be anywhere near. And let me mark you in detail what happened. After the game I went into the dressing room, I hadnt just p lanned some raging attack But I wasnt happy, to use mild rowing, and in the dressing room my enemy stood, scratching his bald-pated head. Few others were in there.Toure and a elusively a(prenominal) others, and the big metal gust where we put our clothes, and I was staring at the box. Then I billinged it. I think it flew like three meters, but I wasnt done yet. further from it. I scream You have no balls, and probably some worse things, and added You shit yourself in front of Mourinho. You can go fuck yourself I went insane, and maybe youd expect Guardiola to say something, maybe Calm down, you dont talk like that to your coach But hes not like that. Hes a namby-pamby coward. He just picked up the box, like a littler cleaner, and then he left and never talked about it once again, nothing at all.But of course words spread. In the bus everyone was crazy What happened, what happened? naught, I thought. Just a few words of truth. But I didnt have the energy talking about it. I was so ladened off. My coach had frozen me out week after week without rationalizeing why. It was sick. Ive had some bad fights before. But the day after wed eternally sorted things out and moved on. Now the silence and menace just continued, and I thought Im 28 years old. Ive scored 22 goals and 15 assists alone here in Barca, and still Im treated like I dont exist, like air. Should I accept this?Should I continue adapting? No way When I understood Id be on the bench against Almeria, I think uped those words Here, in Barca, we dont drive Ferrari or Porsche to the practice What bullshit was that anyway? I drive what I want, at least if it pisses off some idiot. I jumped into my Enzo, leveled it and parked outside the door at practice. Of course it resulted in a circus. The papers wrote that my car cost as much as the monthly salary for the entire Almeria squad. But I didnt care. Media bullshit meant nothing at this point. I had decided to give back.I decided to fight b ack seriously, and you should know one thing, thats a game I can play. Ive been a bad boy before, believe me. But I didnt want to mess with the preparations just because of that, so obviously I called Mino. We always plan the voguish and dirty tricks together. I in any case called my buddies. I wanted different perspectives on the situation, and oh god, I got all kinds of advice. The Rosengard guys wanted to come down and trash oversupply, and of course that was nice of them to offer, but it didnt feel like the right dodge at that point. And of course I discussed everything with Helena.Shes from another(prenominal)(prenominal) world. Shes cool. She can also be laborious. But now she tried encouraging me Youve occasion a better tonic. When you dont have a team where you feel good, you team up with us, she said, and that made me happy. I play some ball with the kids and tried to make sure everyone was feeling alright, and of course I spent time with my television system games. I ts like a disease for me. They eat me up. But since the time in Inter when I could play until four, five in the morning and go to practice after just a duad of hours sleep, Ive set some rules for myself no Xbox or Playstation after 10 at night.I cant let time run away from me, and during these weeks in Spain I really tried to exceed time with my family and just chill in our garden. I even had a Corona now and then. That was the good side of it. But at nights when I would be hypocrisy awake, or at practice when I saw Guardiola, the dark side of me woke up. The anger was pounding inside my head and I planned my next move and my revenge. No, I realized it more and more, there was no turning back. It was time to stand up for myself and become the real me again. Because dont forget You can take the kid away from the ghetto, but you cant take the ghetto away from the kid. The feet Ibra & Sanela on protoactiniums blue Opel Kadett CHAPTER 2 My brother gave me a BMX wheel virtually wh en I was little. I called it Fido Dido. Fido Dido was a tough little bastard, a vignette guy with spiky hair. I thought he was the coolest. But the ride got stolen degenerately outside the Rosengard bathhouse and my pa went there , with open shirt and sleeves rolled up. Hes the kind of guy who says No one touches my kids No one steals their stop But not even a tough guy like him could do anything about it. Fido Dido was gone, and I was devastated.After that I started stealth bikes. Id smash the locks. I became great at it. Bang, bang, bang, and the bike was mine. I was the bicycle thief. It was my first thing. It was pretty innocent. But sometimes it got out of control. Once I dressed up in all black, went out into the night like fucking Rambo and got a military bike using a vast bolt humpter. And sure, that bike was cool. I loved it. But honestly, it was more the kick I got out of it than the bike. It triggered me sneaking around in the dark, and Id throw eggs at windows and that kind of fill and I was single caught sometimes.One embarrassing thing happened at the Wessels department store out at Jagersro, for example. But honestly, I deserved it. Me and a friend were wearing long winter down jackets in the middle of summer, quite fucked up, and under those jackets we had four table tennis rackets and some other crap we picked up. You guys, arent you paying for those said the guard who caught us. I pulled out a few pennies from my pocket With these? But the guy didnt have a sense of humor, so I decided to be more professional from then on. And I guess I became quite a skilled maniac in the end. I was a small kid.I had a big nose and I lisped and went to a speech coach. A fair sex came to my school and taught me how to say S and I thought it was demeaning. I guess I wanted to assert myself somehow. And it was like I was boiling inside. I couldnt sitt still for more than a second and I was running around all the time. It was like nothing bad could ha ppen to me if I ran stiff enough. We lived in Rosengard outside of Malmo and it was full of Somalis, Turks, Yugoslavs, Poles, all kinds of immigrants, and Swedes. We were all acting cocky. The smallest thing got us fired up, and it wasnt easy at crustal plate, to say the least.We lived on the 4th floor up on Cronmans Road, and we didnt run around hugging each other. No one asked How was your day today little Zlatan, nothing like that. No grown-ups would assist with homework or ask if you had any problems. You were on your own, and you couldnt whine about someone organism mean to you. You just had to burn off the bullet, and there was chaos and fights and some punches. But sure, sometimes youd wish for some sympathy. One day I fell off the roof at the kindergarten. I got a black eye and ran home crying expecting a pat on the head or at least some kind words. I got a slap in the face. What were you doing on the roof? It wasnt like Poor Zlatan. It was You fucking idiot, climbing up a roof. Heres a slap for you, and I was shocked and ran away. Mom didnt have time for comforting, not at that time. She was cleaning and struggling to make money, she was really a fighter. But she couldnt take much else. She had it tough, and all of us had a terrible temper. It wasnt like the normal Swedish chat at home, like Honey, can you enliven pass me the butter, more like Get the milk you yank on that point were doors slamming and mammy crying. She cried a lot. She has my love.Shes had a tough life. She was cleaning like fourteen hours a day, and sometimes wed tag along, emptying trashcans and embrace like that and got some pocket money. But sometimes mom lost it. Shed hit us with wooden takes, and sometimes they broke, so I had to go buy a new one, like if it was my fault shed hit me that hard. I recommend one day in particular. I had thrown a brick at kindergarten that somehow bounced and broke a window. Mom freaked out when she heard about it. Everything that co st money freaked her out, and she hit me with spoon. Bang, boom It hurt and maybe the spoon broke again.I dont know. sometimes there were no spoons at home, and then shed come after me with a rolling pin. But then I got away, and I talked with Sanela about it. Sanela is my precisely full sibling. Shes two years older. Shes a tough girl, and she thought we should play some games with mom. Fuck, hitting us in the head Insane So we went to the store and bought a bunch of those spoons, really brasslike ones, and gave them to mom as a Christmas present. I dont think she got the irony. She didnt have room for that. thither had to be food on the table. All her energy was consumed by that.We were quite a bunch at home, also my half- siss who later disappeared and broke all come home with us, and my younger brother Aleksandar, wed call him Keki, and the money wasnt enough. Nothing was enough and the older ones to care of the younger, otherwise we wouldnt have made it. thither was a lot of instant macaroni and ketchup, and eating at friends homes or at my aunt Hanifes who lived in the akin building. She was the one of us who came to Sweden first. I wasnt even two years old when my mom and atomic number 91 got divorced, and I dont remember anything about it. Thats probably good. It wasnt a good marriage, Ive heard.thither were a lot of fighting, and they had gotten wed for my dad to get a residence permit. I guess it was natural for all of us to end up living with mom. But I missed my dad. He had more going for him and there was always something fun going on with him. Me and Sanela would meet dad every other spend and he utilise to come in his old blue Opel Kadett and wed go to Pildammsparken or out on the island in Limhamn to get hamburgers and soft ice cream. One day he made a splurge and got us each a pair of Nike Air Max, the cool sneakers that where like over a thousand kronor, really expensive.Mine were green, Sanelas pink. No one in Rosengard had berth li ke that, and we felt so cool. We had it nice with dad and wed get some money for pizza and Coca-Cola. He had a decent job and only one other son, Sapko. He was our fun weekend-dad. But things would change. Sanela was awesome at running. She was the fastest at running 60 meters in her age in all of Skane ed note region of southern Sweden and dad was proud as a peacock and utilize to drive her to practice. Great, Sanela. But you can do better, he said. That was his thing, Better, better, dont settle, and this time I was in the car. soda water remembers it like that anyway, and he noticed it immediately. Something was wrong. Sanela was quiet. She struggled not to cry. Whats wrong? he said. Nothing, she answered and then he asked again and she told. W e dont have to go into details, thats Sanelas story. But my dad, hes like a king of beasts. If something happens to his kids he goes wild, especially when it comes to Sanela, his only daughter. And it became a spacious circus, with int errogations, social welfare investigations, custody battles and shit. I didnt understand too much of it. I was turning nine.It was the fall of 1990 and they kept that stuff away from me. But I had my hunches of course. It was turbulent at home. tranquillise, not the first time. One of my half- childs did drugs, some heavy shit, and kept stashes at home. There was always chaos around her, and creepy people calling and a lot of fear that something bad would happen. Another time my mom was arrested for stashing stolen goods. Some friends had told her Take these necklaces and she did it. She didnt understand. But the stuff was stolen and the police came bombarding in and took her.I remember it vaguely like a spiritual feeling Wheres mom? Why is she gone? But after that modish thing with Sanela she was crying again, and I just ran away from it. I was messing around outside or playing football. Not like I was the most balanced guy, or the greatest promise. I was just one of the kids kick ball, or actually worse. I had some terrible outbursts. Id headbutt people and lash out against my teammates. But I had the football. It was my thing, and I was playing all the time, in our yard, on the field, during school breaks. We went to the Varner Ryden school at that time.Sanela in fifth grade, and me in third, and no one doubted which one of us was well-behaved Sanela had to grow up at young age and become an extra-mom for Keki and take care of the family when the sisters left. She took a huge responsibility. She behaved. She wasnt the girl who got called to the principals mail, and thats why I became worried immediately when I got the call. We were both asked in for talks, and like, if only me had been called, itd been normal, just routine. But now it was me and Sanela. Had someone died? What was going on? I got domiciliate pains, and we walked through the corridor.It must have been late fall or winter. I felt paralyzed. But when we came into the office my dad was si tting there with the principal, and I felt happy. pop music used to mean fun stuff. But wasnt fun. Everything was stiff and formal and I felt very uncomfortable, and honestly, I didnt get much of what was said, only that it was about dad and mom, and it wasnt any pleasant stuff. But now I know. Now, much later, when working on this book, the pieces of the puzzle have come in place. In November 1990 the social services had done their investigation, and dad had gotten custody of me and Sanela.The environment at moms place was decided bad for us, not so much because of her, I have to say that. There were other things, but it was a huge thing anyway, a major disapproval, and mom was devastated. Would she lose us as well? It was a disaster. She cried and cried and sure, she had been hitting us with spoons, given us beatings and not listened to us, and shed had bad luck with her men and there was no money and all that. But she loved her kids. She was just raised under tough conditions, a nd I think my dad understood that. He went to her the corresponding afternoon I dont want you to lose them, Jurka. But he demanded some improvement, and dad isnt to play games with in situations like that. Im sure there were harsh words. If things dont improve, youll never see the kids again, stuff like that, but I dont know exactly what happened. But Sanela iived with dad for a few weeks, and I stayed with mom, despite everything. It wasnt a good solution. Sanela didnt like it at dads. She and I found him sleeping on the floor around that time, and the table was full of beer cans and bottles. Dad, wake up, wake up But he kept sleeping. It was a strange thing for me. Like, why does he do this?We didnt know what to do. But we wanted to help. Maybe he was frost? We covered him with towels and blankets to get him warm. But I didnt understand anything. Sanela probably understood more. She had noticed how his mood could swing and how he could explode and screeching like a bear and I think that frightened her. And she missed her little brother. She wanted to go back to mom and I wanted the opposite. I missed my dad, and one of those nights I called him, probably sounding desperate. I felt lonely without Sanela. I dont wanna live here. I wanna be at your place. semen here, he said. Ill call a cab. There were new investigations by the social services, and in March 1991 mom got custody of Sanela and dad of me. We separated, me and sis, but we have always stayed close, or lets say, its been up and down. But we are very close. Sanela is a hairdresser now and sometimes people come to her beauty parlor and say My god, you look like Zlatan and she always answers Bullshit, he looks like me. Shes tough. But none of us have had an easy ride. My dad, Sefik, moved from Hards lane in Rosengard to Varnhems squre in Malmo in 1991, and you have understood this hes got a big heart, hes prepared to die for us.But things didnt turn out the way I had expected. I knew him as w eekend-dad who got us hamburgers and ice cream. Now we were to share every day and I noticed immediately it was empty at his place. Something was missing, maybe a woman. There was a TV set, a sofa, a book shelf, and two beds. But nothing extra, no comfort, no well-being, and there were beer cans on the tables and trash on the floor, and sometimes when he got going and started wallpapering, hed only do one wall. Ill do the rest tomorrow But it never happened, and we also moved a lot, and never really got settled anywhere.But it was also empty in another way. Dad was a caretaker with the worst working hours and when he came home with work pants with all those pockets with keisterdrivers and things hed sit down by the sound or the TV, and didnt want to be bothered. He was in his own world, and often with headphones audience to Yugoslavian folk music. Hes crazy about Yugo music. Hes recorded some tapes himself. Hes a showman when hes in the right mood. But most of the time he was in his own world and if my friends called hed hiss at them Dont call here I couldnt take my friends there and if they had asked for me I never found out.The phone wasnt important to me, and I had no one to speak with at home really, or, well, when there was something serious, dad was there for me. Then he could do anything for me, run downtown with his cocky style trying to settle stuff. He had a way of walking which made people go, like Who the fuck is that? But he didnt care about all the normal stuff, what happened in school, in football and with friends, so I had to talk to myself or get outside. Sapko, my half-brother, lived with us during the first time, and sure I must have talked with him sometimes, he must have been seventeen then.But I dont remember much of it, and shortly my dad would throw him out. They had some horrible fights. Thats also a sad thing of course and it was only me and dad left. We were alone on our own sides, so to say, because the strange thing was that he didnt have any friends approach path palaver either. He was sitting by himself drinking. There was no company. But most of all, there was no food. I was outdoors most of the time playing football and riding stolen bikes, and I would often come home hungry as a wolf and open the fridge thinking Please, please, let there be somethingBut no, nothing, just the usual stuff milk, butter, some bread, and if I was lucky some juice, Multivitamin, the 4 liter pack, bought at the Arabian store because they were the cheapest, and beer of course, Pripps Bla and Carlsberg, six-packs with that plastic wrap around them. Sometimes there was only beer, and my hold out was screaming for food. There was a pain in that which Ill never forget. Ask Helena I always say that the fridge has to be jam-packed. That will never change. The other day my kid, Vincent, cried, because he didnt get his pasta, but it was already cooking on the stove.The guy was yelling because he didnt get his food quick enough so I wanted to scream If you only knew how well your life is I could search every drawer, every corner, for one single macaroni or a meatball. I could fill my stomach with toast. I could eat a whole loaf of bread, or Id run over to moms place. I wasnt always welcomed with open arms. It was more like Fuck, is Zlatan climax too? Doesnt Sefik feed him? And sometimes shed yell at me be we made of money? Are you gonna eat us out on the street? But still, we helped each other, and at dads place I started a little war against the beer.I germinateed out some of them in the sink, not all of them, that would have been too obvious, but a few. He rarely noticed anything. There was beer everywhere, on the tables, in the shelves, and often Id collect the empty cans in big black plastic trash bags and went to recycle them. Id get 50 ore per can. Still Id sometimes collect 50 or snow kronor ed note thats 100 or 200 cans. That was a lot of cans and I was happy for the cash. But of course, it was a sad thing, and like all kids in a situation like that, Id learn to read his mood. I knew exactly when I could talk to him. The day after hed been drinking it was quite cool.Second day was worse. In some situations he could strike like lightning. Other times he was incredibly generous. Gave me five degree centigrade kronor just like that. At that time I was collecting football pictures. Youd get a chewing gum and three pics in a little package. Oh, oh, which guys would I get? I wondered. Maradona? I was often disappointed, especially when I only got Swedish players I didnt know anything about. But one day he came home with a whole box. It was a blast and and I tore them all open and got all kinds of cool Brazilians. Sometimes wed watch TV together, talking. Then it was all great. But other days he was drunk.I have some horror images in my head, and when I got older, I started facing him. I wouldnt back off, like my brother. I told him Youre drinking to much, dad, and wed have som e insane fights, sometimes meaningless, to tell you the truth. But I wanted to prove that I could speak for myself, and then wed have a freaking chaos at home. But he never touched me physically, never. Well, once he lifted me two meters up in the air and dropped me in my bed, but that was because I had been mean to Sanela, his jewel. Inside he was the kindest man in the world, and I understand now that he didnt have the easiest life. He drinks to bury his sorrow, my brother said and maybe that wasnt the whole truth. The war really affected him a lot. The war was a strange thing. I never found out anything about it. I was being protected. Everyone really made an effort. I didnt even understand why mom and my sisters dressed in black. It was weird, like some new fashion thing. But it was our grandmother who had died in a bomb attack in Croatia and everyone mourned, everyone except me, who never found out about anything and never would care if people were Serbs or Bosnians, or whateve r.But it was worst for my dad. He came from Bijeljina in Bosnia. He used to be a mason down there, and all his family and old friends lived in the city and now curtly hell had come there. Bijeljina was more or less raped, and it wasnt strange that he called himself a muslim again, not at all. The Serbs invaded the town and executed hundreds of muslims. I think he knew many of them, and all his family had to escape. The whole population in Bijeljina was replaced, and Serbs moved into all the empty houses, also in my dads old house.Someone else just entered the house and took over, and I can really understand he didnt have much time for me, especially not at nights when he sat waiting for the news on TV or some phone call from down there. The war ate him, and he became obsessed with following the news. He sat alone, drinking and mourning, listening to his Yugo-music, and I tried to stay outdoors or went over to moms place. It was a different world. At my dads it was only him and me. At moms it was a circus. People coming and leaving, loud voices and doors slamming.My mom had moved five floors up on the same street, Cronmans road 5A, the floor above my aunt Hanife, or Hanna as I called her. Me, Keki and Sanela were really close. We made a pact. But there was some shit going on at moms place too. My half-sister sank deeper and deeper into the drugs and mom would twitch every time the phone rang or someone was at the door No, no, kind of. Havent we had enough accidents? What now? She grew old too soon, and is rabid against all kinds of drugs. Not a long time ago, and Im talking recently as we speak, she called me, on the whole freaked out There are drugs in the fridge My god, drugs I got going too. Not again, you know, so I called Keki, kind of aggressively What the fuck, are there drugs in moms fridge? He didnt understand a thing. But then it hit us. She talked about snus ed note swedish chewing tobacco. Chill, mom, its just snus. The same shit, she said. Tho se years really marked her, and we should have behaved better. But we didnt know how to. We only knew the rough style. The half-sis and her drugs moved out quite soon and went to a rehab place, but always came back into the shit and eventually mom cut her off, or the other way around.I dont know the details there. Anyway, it was quite tough, but we have that tendancy in our family. We hold our grudges, were dramatic and say I never wanna see you again stuff like that. Anyway, I remember one time when I was visiting her and her drugs in her own little apartment. It could have been on my birthday. I think so. I had bought her some gifts, and she was acting very kind. But when I was going to the bathroom, she panicked and stopped me. No, no, she yelled and ran in there and started moving stuff around. I knew something was wrong. There was like a secret.Lots of stuff like that happened. But like I said, they kept it away from me, and I had my own stuff, my bikes and my football, and my dreams about Bruce Lee and Muhammad Ali. I wanted to be like them. Dad had an older brother named Sabahudin in the old Yugoslavia. They called him Sapko, my older brother was named after him. Sabahudin was a boxer, a real talent. He was fighting for BK Radnicki in the city Kragujevac and became Yugoslavic Champion with his club, and a national team boxer. But in 1967, when the guy was just had gotten married, and only twenty three years old, he swam out into the Neretva river.There were some currents and stuff and I think he had a problem with his heart or his lungs. He was drawn down by the currents and drowns. You can imagine, it was quite a blow for the family, and after that my dad became sort of a fanatic. He had all the great games recorded on video and it wasnt just Sabahudin, but also Ali, hirer and Tyson, and all the Bruce Lee- and Jackie Chan-flicks on those old tapes. Those were the things wed watch when we hung out in front of the telly. Swedish TV was crap. It wasnt on the map. We lived in a totally different world. I was twenty years old when I watched my first Swedish film, and I ad no clue about Swedish heroes or sport guys, like Ingemar Stenmark and guys like that. But I knew Ali What a figment He did his own thing no matter what people said. He never apologized and thats something Ill never forget. That dude was cool. He did his thing. That was the way to be, so I copied some stuff, Im the greatest, kind of. You needed a tough attitude in Rosengard, and if you heard some shit, the worst was being called a cunt, and then you couldnt back down. But usually we didnt mess around. You dont take a shit in your own bed, we used to say. It was more Rosengard against everyone else.I was there watching and screaming against the racialist fuckers who demonstrate on November 30th, and once, at the Malmo Festival, I saw a huge gang from Rosengard, like two hundred of them, chasing a lone guy. It didnt really look fair, honestly. But since they were guys from my neighborhood I ran along, and I dont think that guy felt too good afterwards. We were all cocky and wild. But sometimes thats not so easy. When me and dad lived by the Stenkula School I often stayed until late at moms, and then I had to walk home through a dark tunnel which crosses Amiral street and is across the Annelunds bridge.Once, years before, my dad had robbed and badly beaten there and gone to the hospital with a pierce lung. Although I didnt want to, I often thought about that. The more I tried to repress it, the more often it popped up in my head, and in this neighborhood there were some railroad tracks and a street. Theres also a disgusting alley and some bushes and two lamp posts, one before the tunnel and one after. A part from that it was dark, and creepy vibes. Thats why those lamp posts became my beacons.Between them Id run like crazy with a pounding heart, and all the time I was thinking Im sure there are some creepy dudes in there, like the ones who attac ked my dad, and I thought If I run fast enogh things will be alright, and I came home breathless, and surely was no Muhammad Ali. Another time dad took me and Sanela to go swimming in Arlov and afterwards I was at a friends place. When I was going home it started to rain. It was pouring down and I biked like crazy and stumbled home all wet. We lived at Zenith Street then, a bit away from Rosengard, and I was very tired. I was shaking and had stomach ache. I was in so much pain.I could barely move and lay in bed all rolled up. I threw up. I had cramps. I freaked out. Dad came in and sure, he is like he is, his fridge was empty and he drank too much. But when the shit hits the fan, theres no one like him. He called a cab and lifted me up in the only position I could be in, like a little schrimp, and carried me down to the car. I was light as a feather back then. Dad was big and powerful and totally crazy, he was like a lion again a screamed at the female cab driver Hes my boy, hes my everything, screw all the traffic rules, Ill pay the fines, Ill take care of the cops, and the woman, she did what he asked.She ran two red lights and came to the childrens section of Malmo Hospital. The whole situation had become en emergancy, Ive been told. I was getting a shot in my back, and dad had heard some shit about people getting paralyzed by things like that, and he said some aggressive stuff, Im guessing. He would tear the city upside down if something went wrong. But he calmed down and I was lying belly down sobbing and got that shot in my spine. We found out I had meningitis, and the nurse pulled down all the blinds and turned off all lights. It should be all dark around me and I got some meds and dad was watching by my side.Five in the morning the next day I opened my eyes and the crisis was over, and still I dont know, what caused that? Maybe I wasnt victorious care of myself well enough. I didnt exactly eat well. Physically I was small and weak at that time. Still, I must have been strong in other ways. I forgot about it and moved on and instead of sitting at home dwelling on things I went looking for kicks. I was running around all the time. There was like a fire inside me, and just like my dad, I got going for nothing Like, who the hell are you? Those were tough years, Ive realized that now.My dad was on a roller coaster, often totally absent or furiously mad You have to be home by this or that time. You cant fucking do that. If you were a guy in dads world and got in trouble, you should stand up for yourself and be a man. Not exactly some softy shit, not I have stomach pain today. Im a bit sad. Nothing like that I learned how to bite the bullet and move on, and also, dont forget that, I learned some stuff about sacrificing yourself. When we bought a new bed for me at Ikea, dad couldnt afford the transport. It was like five hundred extra or something. So what could we do?It was simple. Dad carried the bed on his back all the way from Ike a, totally insane, mile after mile, and I walked after him with the bed headboards. Those were light, like nothing, Still I couldnt keep up with him Take it easy, dad, stop. But he just walked on. He had that macho style, and sometimes hed turn up in school at parents meetings with his cowboy thing going on. Everyone wondered Who is that? People noticed him. He got respect, and the teachers probably didnt dare kick about me as much as they had planned. Kinda like, we have to be careful with that guyPeople have asked me What would I be doing if I hadnt become a football player? I have no idea. But maybe I would have become a criminal. There were a lot of crimes at that time. Not like we were going out just to steal or rob. But some shit still happened, not just bikes. It was in and out of department stores also, and I often got a kick out of that. The thefts triggered me, and I should be so happy my dad never found out. He was drinking, sure, but there were still rules. You should do the right thing. And definitely not steal things, not a chance. Then hed be pulling down the sky, sort of.But the time we were caught at Wessels department store wearing our winter jackets I was lucky. We had taken stuff worth one thousand four hundred kronor. It wasnt the ordinary stealing candy thing. But my friends dad had to come pick us up, and when the earn arrived at home, Zlatan Ibrahimovic has been arrested for theft, bla bla bla, I could tear it up before dad got to see it. I was lucky and I continued stealing, so okay, it could have ended badly. But I can say one thing for sure, it wouldnt have had anything to do with drugs. I was obviously totally against them. I didnt just pour out dads beer. I threw away moms cigarettes.I hated all drugs and poisons and I was seventeen or eighteen when I got drunk the first time and threw up in some stairs like any other teenager, and after that I havent gotten drunk many times, only one collapse in a bathtub after the first scudet to with Juventus. It was Trezeguet, the snake, who pushed me into drinking shots. Me and Sanela also pushed Keki hard in Rosengard. He wasnt allowed to smoke or drink because then wed be coming after him. It was a special thing, with my younger brother. We took care of him. With excitable stuff hed go to Sanela. With tougher things hed turn to me. I stood up for him.I took responsibility. But a part from that I wasnt exactly being a saint, and I havent always been too kind to friends and teammates. I did some aggressive things, the kind of shit that would make me go insane today if someone did it to Maxi and Vincent. But theres a fact we cant forget. I was double already back then. I was disciplined and wild, and I was figuring out philosophies about that. My thing was that I would both talk and perform. So, not just talking Im the best, who the fuck are you? Of course not, theres nothing more childish, but not either performing or saying chicken shit like the Swedish stars.I wante d to become the best while being cocky. Not that I thought Id become a superstar or anything like that. Jesus, I came from Rosengard But maybe those things made me a bit different. I was trouble. I was crazy. But I had character. I wasnt always in time to school. I had problems getting up in the mornings, I still do, but I did my homework, at least sometimes. Math was the easiest. Bam, bam, bam and I saw the solution. It was a bit like on the football field. Images and solutions just came to me like lightning. But I sucked at writing down the solutions so the teacher thought I cheated.I wasnt exactly the guy youd expect doing well in school. I was more like the guy you kick out of school. Still, I really studied. I read everything before the tests, and forgot everything the day after. I wasnt really a bad boy. I just had trouble sitting still, and I threw some rubbers and stuff like that. I had ants in my pants. Those were turbulent years. We moved all the time, I dont really know w hy. But we rarely lived in one place for more than a year, and the teachers used that. You have to switch to a school near your home, they said, not because rules mattered much to them, but because they saw a chance of getting rid of me.I went to different schools all the time and had problems getting friends, and dad had was on call on his caretaker job and had his war and his drinking, and the worst thing was the tinnitus in his ears. It would be ringing in his head, and I was taking care of myself more and more, trying not to care about the chaos in my family. There was always some shit. You know, we from the Balkan are tough. My sister and her drugs had cut off contact with mom and us, and maybe that was to expect after all the fights with the drugs and rehab centers. But also my other halfsister was struck out from our family.Mom just erased her, and then I barely knew why. It was some crap about a boyfriend, a guy from Yugoslavia. Him and my sister had a fight and mom took his side for some reason, and then my sister freaked out and she and mom yelled some terrible shit at each other, and of course that wasnt good. But still, it shouldnt have been like the end of the world. It wasnt like it was the first time we were fighting in my family. But mom was proud, and I guess she and my sister got some kind of lock up. I recognize that. I dont forget things either. I remember a bad fishing tackle for years.I remember shit that has been done to me, and I can hold grudges for a long time. But this time things went too far. We had been five siblings at moms place, and suddenly we were only three me, Sanela and Aleksandar, and things couldnt be repaired. They were like written in stone. The half-sis no longer belonged to us, and years went by. She was gone. But fifteen years later her son called our mom. My half-sister had a son, a grandson to mom in other words. Hi nan, he said, but mom didnt want to have anything to do with him. Im macabre, she said and hung u p. I couldnt believe it when I heard. I felt very bad.I cant describe the feeling. I wanted to disappear. You dont act like that Never, ever But there is a lot of pride in my family that fucks things up for us, and Im happy I had the football. At dads place in Rosengard, years later CHAPTER 3 In Rosengard we had different regions (enclosures), and no area was better or worse than the other, well the one that was called the Gipsy area had a low status. But it wasnt like all the Albanians or Turks hanged around at one place. It was the area that counted, not the country your parents where from.But you had to stay at your own area, and the area where my mom had her house was called Tornrosen. It had a swing, a playing ground, a oarlock pole and a football court where we played every day. Sometimes they didnt let me play. I was to little. Then I flipped out in an instant. I hated to be left outside. I hated to lose. But still, the most important thing wasnt winning. It was the tricks and the awesome stuff. There was a lot of wow boldness at that . You could impress the guys with tricks and flicks, and you had to practice until you were the best, and often the moms yelled from the windows Its late.The food is ready. Come inside. Soon, soon, we said and continued playing, and it could get late and start raining and general chaos. But we continued playing. We never got tired and it was close spaces. You had to be quick in both head and feet, especially for me since I was little and weak and could easily be get tackled, and I learned cool stuff all the time. I had to. Or else I wouldnt get any wows, nothing that triggered me, and often I slept with the ball and thought of new tricks I would do the next day. It was like a image that kept on going. My first club was MBI, Malmo Boll och idrottsforening.I was six years when I started there. Vi played on gravel behind a couple of green barracks, and I biked to the training on stolen bikes and wasnt always that well b ehaved I guess. The coaches sent me home a couple of times, and I screamed and swore at them, and I heard all the time Pass the ball, Zlatan . It pissed me off, and I felt awkward. In MBI you had both foreigners and Swedes, and a lot of parents whined about my tricks from the block. I told them to go to hell and changed club several times and came to FBK Balkan, and that was something else In MBI the Swedish dads stood and yelled Come on, guys.Good work In Balkan it was more I will fuck you mother up the ass. They were crazy Yugoslavs who smoked a lot and threw shoes around them and I thought Wonderful, exactly like home. I belong here The coach was a Bosnian. He had played on a high level down there in Yugoslavia, and he became some kind of a dad to us. He drove us home sometimes, and could give me a couple of Kronor to buy ice cream or sometime to straighten up my hunger. I was a goalie for a while. I dont know why really. Maybe I had flipped out on the old goalie and said someth ing like You suck, I can do this better myself.It was probably something like that. But one game I let in a lot of goals, and then I became furious. I screamed that everyone was shit. That football was shit. That the whole world was shit, and that I would start playing hockey game instead Hockey is a lot better, you fucking idiots I will become a hockey pro Go drown yourselves It was just that I looked hockey up, and damn, all the stuff you needed You had to have money. The only thing I could do was to continue with that shit sport called Football. But I stopped being a goalie and went up to the attack, and became kind of good.One day we were going to play a game. I wasnt there and everybody was screaming Wheres Zlatan? Wheres Zlatan? There was only one minute to the start, and the coach and my team mates probably wanted to kill me Where is he? How the fuck can be the absent from a important game like this? But then they saw a crazy guy that biked like a idiot on a stolen bike a nd was riding straight towards the coach. Was that mad man going to run him over? No, just in front of the old man I stood on the brakes and ran into the field, and I guess that the coach went mad.He got sand in his eyes. He got splashed. But he let me play, and I guess we won. We were a good gang. One time i was punish for some other shit, and had to sit on the bench in the first half. We were down 4-0 against a snob team, Vellinge, it was us the immigrants against the good boys, there was a lot of aggression in the air and I was so pissed of that I was about to explode. How could that idiot put me on the bench? Are you stupid? I asked the coach. Easy, easy, youll get to play soon He let me play in the second half and I scored eight goals.We won with eight-five and mocked the snobs and sure, I was good. I was technical and saw openings in the game all the time and at block were my mom lived I had become a little champion when it came to doing the unexpected stuff on narrow spaces. But Im still tired of all the Donald Duck characters that go around and say I immediately saw that Zlatan would become something extra, bla bla bla. Its like they breast fed me. He was my best friend. Thats just bullshit. Nobody saw anything. At least, not as much as they said they did afterwards. No big clubs were knocking at my door.I was a cap ass little kid. It wasnt all Ohh, we must be nice to that talented little boy It was more Who let the immigrant in? And already back then it was a lot of ups and downs. I could score eight goals in one game, just to be really bad in the next. I hanged around with a guy called Tony Flygare. We had the same home lecture teacher. His parents are also from Balkan and we was something of a tough guy also. He didnt live in Rosengar, he live just outside at Vitemollegatan. We were born the same year, he was born in January and I in October, and that probably meant something.He was bigger and stronger and was seen as the bigger talent. It was a lot of Tony Look at him, what a player and I stood in his shadow. Maybe it was good, what do I know. I had to be the underdog. But like I said, at the time I wasnt a big talent. I was a savage, a maniac, and I really didnt get control over my temper. I continued to yell at players and referees and I changed clubs all the time. I played in Balkan. I came back to MBI and then again Balkan and then to BK Flagg. It was a mess and no one took me to training, so to speak, and sometimes I look at the parents standing there.My dad was never there, not amongst the Yugoslavs nor the Swedes, and I really dont know what I thought. That was just the way it was. I didnt need anyone. I had gotten used to that. But still, it pained me. I dont know. You get used to your life, and I kept that on a distance. Dad was dad. He was hopeless. He was fantastic. He was up and down. I didnt count on him, not like other kids counted on their parents. But still, I guess I had some hope for him. Damn, imagine i f he had seen that awesome stuff, that Brazilian thing? Dad had his moments when he was extremely involved.He wanted me to become a lawyer. I cant say that I believed in it. In my circles you didnt become a lawyer. You did crazy stuff and dreamt of becoming the tough guy, and we really didnt have any support from the parents either, it wasnt all Should I explain the Swedish story for you? It was all Yugoslavian music and beer cans and empty fridges and the Balkan war. But sometimes, you know, he took his time and talket about football with me and it made me happy every time. I mean, he was dad one day, and one day he said, I dont forget it, there was something ceremonial in the air Zlatan, its time for you to start playing in a big club What do you mean big club? A good team, Zlatan. Like Malmo FF. I dont think I really understood. What was so special with Malmo FF? I didnt know anything about stuff like that. But I knew about the club. I had played against them with Balkan, and t hought Why not? If my dad says so. But I didnt know where the stadium was, or anything else in the city for that matter. Malmo where close. But it was another world. I reached the age of seventeen before I went to the city central, and I didnt understand anything about the life there.But i learned the road to the training, and it took me thirty minutes to bike there with my clothes in a plastic bag, and of course, I was nervous. In Malmo FF it was serious. It wasnt the usual Come and play, kid Here you had to go on trial and take a place and I noticed at once, I wasnt like the others, and I prepared myself to pack my stuff and go home. But on the second day, coach Nils told me Youre welcome to the team You really mean that? I was thirteen back then, and there was a couple of foreigners there already, Tony was amongst them.Other than that there were only Swedes, somewhere Limhamns types, high class kids. I felt like