I Am Zlatan Part 17

"How much are we talking about?"

I didn't know. I had no idea and I could tell he had his doubts. He thought I was too expensive, and that made me unsure. Could it really be true? But soon Mino rang me again, and the pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place. Moratti had been surprisingly cooperative.

He'd had just one condition though it wasn't just any condition, that's for sure. He wanted to give AC Milan one in the eye and sell me for more than Real Madrid had paid for Kak, and that was no small potatoes: it would mean the second most expensive transfer in history, and Joan Laporta clearly had no problem with that. He and Moratti had reached an agreement quickly, and it took a while to sink in when I heard the sums involved. My old 85 million kronor in the Ajax deal what was that? Small change by comparison. Now we were talking more like 700 million Swedish kronor.

Inter were getting 46 million euro for me, and along with that they'd receive Samuel Eto'o as part payment, and Samuel Eto'o was not just anybody. He'd scored 30 goals the previous season. He was one of the top goal-scorers in Barcelona's history and was valued at 20 million euro. That amounted to 66 million euro in all, a million more than what AC Milan had sold Kak for, and you can just imagine. There was a huge uproar when it came out. I'd never experienced anything like it.

It was 40C. It was as if the air was boiling. Everybody was after me, and it felt... honestly, I don't know. It was impossible to think straight. We were playing a training match against a Mexican team, and I had that number 10 s.h.i.+rt at Inter for the first time and the last, for that matter. My years with the club were over. It was starting to sink in. When I arrived, Inter hadn't won a league t.i.tle in 17 years. Now we'd triumphed three years in a row, and I'd won the Capocannoniere goal-scoring t.i.tle. It was mental, and I looked at Mourinho, the guy I'd finally got to react to a goal, and of course I noticed he was furious and upset.

He didn't want to lose me, and he put me on the bench for that training match, and I was feeling it too: no matter how happy I was to be going to Bara, it was sad to leave Mourinho. That guy is special. The following year he left Inter for Real Madrid, and at the same time he and Materazzi parted ways. Materazzi is, like, the world's toughest defender. But as he hugged Mourinho he began to cry, and I can understand him in a way. Mourinho arouses feelings in people, and I remember when we b.u.mped into each other the next day at the hotel. He came up to me.

"You can't leave!"

"Sorry, I've got to take this opportunity."

"But if you leave, I will too."

My G.o.d, what can you say to that? That really hit me. If you leave, I will too.

"Thanks," I said. "You've taught me a lot."

"Thank you," he said.

We chatted for a bit, it was nice. But that guy, he's like me. He's proud and he wanted to win at any price, and of course, he couldn't help himself. He had a little dig at me as well: "Hey, Ibra!"

"Yeah?"

"You're going to Bara to win the Champions, huh?"

"Yeah, maybe."

"But we're the ones who're gonna bring it home don't forget. It's gonna be us!"

Then we said goodbye.

I flew to Copenhagen and got back home to our house in Limhamnsvgen and saw Helena and the kids. I'd really been looking forward to having a chance to tell them about everything and get a bit grounded. But our home was practically under siege. There were journalists and fans sleeping outside our house. They were ringing our doorbell. People were yelling and singing out there. They waved Barcelona flags. It was completely crazy and my whole family got stressed out Mum, Dad, Sanela, Keki, n.o.body dared to go out. People were after them as well, and I was rus.h.i.+ng round, and sure, I noticed that my hand was hurting, but I didn't pay much attention to it.

Things were happening all the time details in my contract being ironed out, Eto'o being difficult and wanting more money, Helena and I discussing where we were going to live, all that stuff. There was no way I'd be able to get grounded or think things through properly, so after just two days I headed off to Barcelona. In those days I was used to flying on private planes. It might sound snooty, but it's not easy for me on regular commercial flights. Everybody's after me. It's chaos, both in the airport and on board.

But this time I did take an ordinary flight. I'd spoken to the Bara gang on the phone, and as you know, Barcelona and Real Madrid are at war with each other. They're arch-rivals, and a lot of it is to do with politics, Catalonia against the central power in Spain, all that stuff, but the clubs also have different philosophies. "At Barcelona we've got our feet on the ground. We're not like Real. We travel on regular planes," they told me, and sure, that sounded reasonable. I flew with Spanair and landed in Barcelona at a quarter past five in the afternoon, and if I hadn't understood how big a deal this was before, I did now.

It was chaos. Hundreds of fans and journalists were waiting for me, and the papers wrote pages and pages about it. People were talking about 'Ibramania'. It was mental. I wasn't just Barcelona's most expensive purchase ever. No new player had attracted this level of attention. I was going to be introduced at the Camp Nou stadium that evening. It's a tradition at the club. When Ronaldinho arrived in 2003 there were 30,000 people there. Just as many had welcomed Thierry Henry. But now ... there were at least twice that many waiting for me, and it gave me chills, honestly, and I was taken out through the rear exit of the airport and driven to the stadium in a security vehicle.

We were holding a press conference first. Several hundred journalists were crammed into the room. It was jam-packed and people were restless: why isn't he coming? But we still couldn't go in. Eto'o kept making things difficult for Inter Milan right down to the wire, and Barcelona were waiting for a final confirmation of the deal, and time was ticking and the voices in the room kept getting more agitated and worried; there was a riot brewing. We could hear it just as clearly as if we'd been in the middle of it. Me, Mino, Laporta and the other bigwigs sat behind the scenes and waited, wondering: what's going on? How long are we going to have to keep sitting here?

"I've had enough," said Mino.

"We need confirmation ..."

"Screw that," he said, getting the others on side, and then we finally went in. I'd never seen so many reporters, and I answered their questions, but the whole time I could hear the roar out in the stadium. Everything was nuts, I'm telling you, and afterwards I got out of there and changed into my Bara kit. I'd been given number 9, the same number Ronaldo had when he was at the club, and now things were getting really emotional. The stadium was at boiling point. There were sixty or seventy thousand people out there. I tried to take a few deep breaths, and then I went out. I will never be able to describe it.

I had a ball in my hand, and I went out to that stand they'd set up, and the crowd were roaring all around me. Everybody was screaming my name. The entire stadium was cheering, and the press guy was running around saying stuff to me all the time, like, "Say 'Visca Bara'!" which means 'Go Bara', and I did what he said, and I did some tricks, up and down, on my chest, on my head, backheels, all that stuff, and the spectators were screaming for more so I kissed the club's crest on my s.h.i.+rt. I have to tell you about that. I got a lot of s.h.i.+t for that, like, how could he kiss the club's crest when he'd only just left Inter? Didn't he care about his old fans? All kinds of people grumbled about that. There were comedy sketches on TV and c.r.a.p. But the press guys had asked me to do it. They were going crazy, like, "Kiss the crest, kiss the crest," and I was like a little boy. I obeyed. My whole body was vibrating, and I remember I wanted to go back into the changing room and calm down.

There was too much adrenaline. I was shaking, and when it was finally over I looked over at Mino. He'd never been more than ten metres away. At times like that he's everything to me, and together we went into the changing room and looked at all the names on the wall: Messi, Xavi, Iniesta, Henry and Maxwell, all of them, and then mine, Ibrahimovic. It was already there, and I looked at Mino again. He was blown away. It was like he'd become a parent. Neither of us could take it in. It felt bigger than we could have imagined, and just then a text pinged on my phone. Who was it? It was Patrick Vieira. "Enjoy," he wrote. "This doesn't happen to many players," and honestly, you can hear all kinds of things from all kinds of people. But when a guy like Vieira sends you a message like that, you know you've been involved in something incredible, and I sat down to catch my breath.

Afterwards I told the journalists: "I'm the happiest guy in the world!" "This is the greatest thing that's happened since my sons were born," the sort of things I'm sure other sportsmen have said before in similar situations. But I really meant it. This was big, and I went to the Princesa Sofia hotel, which was also besieged by fans who thought it was a ma.s.sive deal just to have a chance to see me drinking coffee in the lobby.

That night I had a hard time getting to sleep, no wonder really. My whole body was jumping, and sure, I did feel that my hand wasn't all right. But I didn't give it much thought then, either. There was so much other stuff going round in my head, and I didn't think there would be any problems at my medical the next day. When you join a club it's routine that they give you a thorough check-up. How much do you weigh? How tall are you? What's your body fat percentage? Do you feel match-fit?

"My hand hurts," I said at the medical, and the doctors did an X-ray.

I had a fracture in my hand. A fracture! That was insane. One of the most important things when you join a new club is that you get to be there in the pre-season and get to know the guys and their game. Now that seemed to be out of the question, and we had to make a quick decision. I spoke to Guardiola, the manager. He seemed nice and said he was sorry he hadn't been there to welcome me. He'd been in London with the team, and just like everyone else he declared that I needed to get match-fit as quickly as possible. They couldn't take any chances, so they decided to operate on me straight away.

An orthopaedic surgeon implanted two steel pins in my hand to hold the fracture in place and help it heal faster. The same day I headed back to the training camp in Los Angeles. It seemed absurd, somehow. I'd just been there with Inter Milan. Now I was arriving with a new club and a huge plaster cast round my hand. It would take at least three weeks before it healed up.

24.

WE WERE GOING TO BE PLAYING against Real Madrid at home at Camp Nou. This was in November of 2009. I'd been out again for 15 days. I'd been having pains in my thigh and would be starting on the bench, which of course was no fun. There are few things like El Clsico. The pressure is enormous. It's war, and the papers produce special supplements that are, like, 60 pages long. People talk about nothing else. These are the big teams, the arch-enemies facing one another.

I'd had a good start to the season, despite the fracture in my hand and all the upheaval. I'd scored five goals in my first five league matches and was praised to the skies. That felt good, and it was clear La Liga was the place to be. Real and Bara had invested the equivalent of nearly two and a half billion Swedish kronor in Kak, Cristiano and me, and the Italian Serie A and the Premier League were both worse off. La Liga was on top now. Everything was going to be brilliant. That's what I thought.

Even in the pre-season when I was running round in a plaster cast with pins in my hand, I'd become part of the gang. It wasn't easy with the language, of course, and I hung around a lot with the ones who spoke English, Thierry Henry and Maxwell. But I got on well with everybody. Messi, Xavi and Iniesta are good, down-to-earth guys, awesome on the pitch and easy to deal with there's none of that, 'Here I come, I'm the biggest and best', not at all, and none of the fas.h.i.+on parades in the changing rooms that so many of the players in Italy got up to. Messi and the lads showed up in tracksuits and kept a low profile and then of course there was Guardiola.

He seemed all right. He'd come up to me and talk after every training session. He really wanted to bring me into the team, and sure, the club had a special atmosphere. I'd sensed that straight away. It was like a school, like Ajax. But this was Bara, the best team in the world. I'd been expecting a little more of an att.i.tude. But here, everybody was quiet and polite and a team player, and sometimes I'd think, these guys are superstars. Yet they behave like schoolboys, and maybe that's nice, what do I know? But I couldn't help wondering: how would these guys have been treated in Italy? They would've been like G.o.ds.

Now they toed the line for Pep Guardiola. Guardiola is a Catalan. He's an old midfielder. He won the La Liga t.i.tle five or six times with Barcelona and became team captain in 1997. When I arrived, he'd been managing the club for two years and had been very successful at it. He definitely deserved respect, and I thought the obvious thing to do was to try to fit in. That wasn't exactly something I was unfamiliar with I'd swapped clubs several times and never just barged straight in and started ordering people around. I sound out my surroundings. Who's strong? Who's weak? What's the banter like, who tends to stick together?

At the same time, I was aware of my qualities. I had concrete evidence of what I could mean for a team with my winner's mindset, and I was usually back to taking up a lot of s.p.a.ce quickly, and I joked around a lot. Not long ago I gave Chippen Wilhelmsson a playful kick at a session with the Swedish national team, and I couldn't believe it when I opened the paper the next day. People saw it as this fierce attack. But it was nothing, nothing at all. That's just what we do. It's both a game and deadly serious at the same time. We're a bunch of blokes who are together all day long and pull little stunts to keep ourselves going. Nothing more to it than that. We joke around. But at Bara I got boring. I became too nice, and I didn't dare to yell or blow up on the pitch the way I need to do.

The newspapers writing that I was a bad boy and stuff was definitely part of it. It made me want to prove the opposite, and of course it went too far. Instead of being myself, I was trying to be the super-nice guy, and that was stupid. You can't let the rubbish from the media get you down. It was unprofessional. I admit it. But that wasn't the main thing. This was: "We keep our feet on the ground here. We are fabricantes. We work here. We're regular guys!"

Maybe that doesn't sound so strange, but there was something peculiar about those words, and I started to wonder: why is Guardiola saying this to me?

Does he think I'm different? I couldn't put my finger on it, not at first. But it didn't feel quite right. Sometimes it was like in the youth squad at Malm FF. Was this another coach who saw me as the kid from the wrong neighbourhood? But I hadn't done anything, hadn't headb.u.t.ted a teammate, hadn't nicked a bike, nothing. I've never been such a wimp in my life. I was the opposite of what the papers were saying. I was the guy who tiptoed around and always weighed things up beforehand. The old, wild Zlatan was gone! I was a shadow of my former self.

That had never happened before, but for now it wasn't a major thing. Things will work out, I thought, I'll soon be myself again. Things will loosen up, and maybe it's just my imagination, some kind of paranoia. Guardiola wasn't unpleasant, not at all. He seemed to believe in me. He saw how I scored goals and how much I meant to the team, and yet... that feeling wouldn't go away: Did he think I was different?

"We keep our feet on the ground here!"

Was I the guy who didn't keep his feet on the ground, is that what he thought? I didn't get it. So I tried to brush it off. Told myself: focus instead. Just forget about it! But those bad vibes were still there, and I started to wonder more and more: Is everybody supposed to be the same in this club? It didn't seem healthy. Everybody's different. Sometimes people pretend, of course. But when they do, they're just hurting themselves and harming the team. Sure, Guardiola had been successful. The club had won a lot under him. I've got to applaud that, and a win is a win.

But looking back now, I think it came at a price. All the big personalities were chased out. It was no accident that he'd had problems with guys like Ronaldinho, Deco, Eto'o, Henry and me. We're no 'ordinary guys'. We're threatening to him and so he tries to get rid of us, nothing more complicated than that, and I hate that sort of thing. If you're not an 'ordinary guy' you shouldn't have to become one. n.o.body benefits from that in the long run. h.e.l.l, if I'd tried to be like the Swedish guys at Malm FF I wouldn't be where I am today. Listen, don't listen that's the reason for my success.

It doesn't work for everybody. But it does for me, and Guardiola didn't understand that at all. He thought he could change me. At his Bara, everybody should be like Xavi, Iniesta and Messi. Nothing wrong with them, like I said, absolutely nothing at all. It was terrific being in the same team as them. Good players get me fired up, and I'd watch them the way I'd always done with great talents, thinking, can I learn something? Can I make even more of an effort?

But look at their backgrounds. Xavi joined Bara when he was 11 years old. Iniesta was 12, Messi was 13. They were moulded by the club. They knew of nothing else, and I'm sure that was good for them. That was their thing, but it wasn't mine. I came from outside; I came with my whole personality, and there didn't seem to be s.p.a.ce for that, not in Guardiola's little world. But like I said, this was just a feeling, back then in November. Back then, my problems were more basic: Was I going to get to play, and would I be sharp enough after my time out?

The pressure was intense in the lead-up to El Clsico at Camp Nou. Manuel Pellegrini, a Chilean, was the Real Madrid manager then. There was speculation that he might get the sack if Real didn't win. There was talk about me, Kak, Cristiano Ronaldo, Messi, Pellegrini and Guardiola. There was a lot of this guy versus that guy. The city was simmering with antic.i.p.ation, and I arrived at the stadium in the club's Audi and walked into the changing room. Guardiola was starting with Thierry Henry up front, Messi on the right wing and Iniesta on the left. It was dark outside. The stadium was floodlit, and camera flashes were going off everywhere up in the stands.

We sensed it right away: Real Madrid were more fired up. They created more chances, and 20 minutes in Kak made this incredibly elegant, nimble dribble and played it up to Cristiano Ronaldo, who was completely open. He had a brilliant position, but missed. Vctor Valdes, our goalkeeper, saved it with his foot, and only a minute later Higuan was on his way through for Real. It was close, very close. There were a lot of chances, and we were playing too stationary and were having trouble with our pa.s.sing game. Nerves spread through the team, and the home fans booed, especially at Casillas in goal for Real. He was taking his time with his goal kicks. But Real continued to dominate, and we were lucky to hold the score to 00 at half-time.

At the start of the second half, Guardiola asked me to warm up, and that was a good feeling, I've got to say. The spectators shouted and cheered. The roar enveloped me, and I returned the applause as thanks, and in the 51st minute Thierry Henry came off and I went in. I was desperate to play. I hadn't been away for all that long. But it felt like it, maybe partly because I'd missed a Champions League match in the group stage against my old side, Inter Milan. But now I was back, and after only a few minutes Daniel Alves, the Brazilian, got the ball over on the right. Alves is quick on the ball, and the offensive was swift. There was some confusion in Real's defence, and in those situations I don't think. I just rush towards the penalty area, and then a cross ball came. I powered ahead.

I broke free and made a volley shot with my left foot bang, boom into the goal, and the stadium erupted like a volcano and I felt it in my whole body: nothing could stop me now. We won, 10. I was the match winner, and there was praise from all quarters. Now no one was questioning that I'd cost 700 million kronor. I was on fire.

Then came the Christmas break. We headed up to northern Sweden and I drove my snowmobile, like I said, and had fun. But it was also the turning point. After New Year's everything that had been difficult in the autumn got even worse, and I was no longer myself. That's how it felt. I'd become a different, uncertain Zlatan, and every time after Mino had a meeting with the management at Bara I'd ask him: "What do they think of me?"

"That you're the world's best striker!"

"I mean personally. As a person."

I'd never worried about that before. I never used to care about that sort of thing. As long as I got to play, people could say whatever they wanted. But now it was important all of a sudden, and it showed that I wasn't doing well. My confidence took a nosedive and I felt inhibited. I hardly celebrated when I scored. I didn't dare to be angry, and that's not a good thing, not at all. I was bottling things up, and I'm really not over-sensitive. I'm tough. I've been through a lot. But still, getting looks and comments day after day that I wasn't fitting in or that I was different, it gets under your skin. It was like going back in time, to the years before my career took off. A lot of it isn't worth mentioning, just little things like looks, comments, turns of phrase, stuff I'd never cared about before. I'm used to hard knocks. That's what I'd grown up with. But now I was getting this feeling, like, am I the foster kid in this family, the guy who doesn't belong? And how messed-up was that?

The first time I'd really tried to fit in I was given the cold shoulder, and as if that wasn't bad enough, there was the thing with Messi. You remember from the first chapter. Messi was the big star. In a way, it was his team. He was shy and polite, definitely. I liked him. But now I was there, and I'd also dominated on the pitch and caused a ma.s.sive uproar.

It must have been a bit like I'd gone round to his place and got into his bed. He told Guardiola he didn't want to play on the wing any more. He wanted to be in the centre, and I was locked in up there and didn't get any b.a.l.l.s, and the situation from back in the autumn was now reversed. I was no longer the one who scored goals. Messi was, and so I had that conversation with Guardiola. The directors had been pressuring me.

"Speak to him. Sort it out!"

But how did it go? It started a war, and I got the silent treatment. He stopped speaking to me. He stopped looking at me. He said good morning to all the others. He didn't say a d.a.m.n thing to me, and it got uncomfortable, I'm sad to say, it really did. I would've liked to say I didn't care. What do I care about a bloke who resorts to bullying? In another situation I'm sure that's what I would have done. But I wasn't strong then.

The situation broke me down, and that wasn't easy. Having a boss with such power over you, who consciously ignores you, it ends up getting under your skin, and now it wasn't just me who noticed it. Others saw it, and they wondered: What's going on? What's this about? They told me: "You've got to speak to him. This can't go on."

No, I'd spoken to that guy enough. I had no intention of crawling to him, so I gritted my teeth and started playing well again, despite my position on the pitch and the disastrous mood in the club. I got into a groove where I scored five, six goals. But Guardiola was just as distant, and it was no wonder, I realise now.

It was never about my game. It was about me as a person. Thoughts were whirling in my head, day and night: Is it something I said, something I did? Do I look strange? I went over everything, every little episode, every encounter. I couldn't find anything. I'd kept quiet, been a ma.s.sive bore. But I carried on, asking, is it this, is it that? So no, I didn't just respond with rage.

I was searching for faults with myself just as much. I thought about it all the time. But the guy didn't give in, and that wasn't just nasty. It was unprofessional. The whole team suffered as a result, and the management were getting more and more worried. Guardiola was about to wreck the club's biggest investment, and there were important matches coming up in the Champions League. We were going to be facing a.r.s.enal away. Meanwhile the stalemate between the manager and me continued and I'm sure he would've preferred to drop me completely. But he probably didn't want to go that far, so I started up front with Messi.

But did I get any instructions? Nothing! I just had to go for it on my own. We were at the Emirates Stadium. This was big, and as usual in England I had the spectators and the journalists against me, and there was a load of rubbish, like: he never scores against English teams. I gave a press conference. I tried to be myself, in spite of everything. I was like, "Wait and see. I'll show you."

But it wasn't easy, not with that manager. I stepped onto the pitch and things started off tough. The pace was blinding, and Guardiola vanished from my mind. It was nothing short of magic. Never played a match as good as that, I don't think. But it's true, I did miss some chances. I shot right to a.r.s.enal's goalie, or in front of him. I should've made that one, but it didn't happen and we went into half-time on 00.

Guardiola is sure to pull me out, I thought. But he let me play on, and the second half had barely started before I got a long ball from Pique and rushed in deep. I had a defender close on me and the goalkeeper ran out and the ball bounced, and then I lobbed it. I lobbed it over him and into the goal. That made it 10, and just over 10 minutes later I got a nice pa.s.s off Xavi and I ran off like an arrow. But I didn't lob it this time. I thundered in there. I shot with tremendous force to score 20, and we seemed to have the match in the bag. I'd been brilliant. But what did Guardiola do? Was he applauding? He subst.i.tuted me out. Smart move! After that, the team fell apart and a.r.s.enal managed to equalise, 22 in the final minutes.

I hadn't felt anything during the match. But afterwards my calf hurt, and it got worse, and that was s.h.i.+t. I'd regained my form. But now I was going to be out of the return leg at home against a.r.s.enal and the El Clsico that spring, and I didn't get any support from Guardiola. I got more knock-backs. If I went into a room, he'd leave. He didn't even want to be near me, and now when I look back on it, it feels completely messed up.

n.o.body understood what was going on, not the management, not the players, n.o.body. But there's something strange about that man. Like I said, I don't begrudge him his successes and I'm not saying he's not a good coach in other respects. But he must have some serious problems. He doesn't seem able to handle guys like me. Maybe it's something as simple as a fear of losing his authority. That sort of thing isn't too unusual, is it? Managers who probably have certain qualities but who can't deal with strong personalities, and solve it by shutting them out. Cowardly leaders, in other words!

Anyway, he never asked me about my injury. He didn't dare to. Well, actually, he did speak to me before the Champions League semi-final away against Inter Milan. But he was acting strange and it all went wrong, like I said. Mourinho was right. It wasn't us, but him who won the Champions League, and afterwards Guardiola treated me like it was all my fault, and that's when the real storm started brewing.

It was scary in a way, the feeling that everything you've been keeping bottled up needs to come out, and I was happy I had Thierry Henry. He understood me, and we'd joke around, like I said. That eased the pressure, and at some point I stopped letting the whole thing get to me. What else could I do? For the first time, football didn't seem so important. I focused on Maxi, Vincent and Helena, and I became closer to them during that time. I'm grateful for that. My kids mean everything to me. That's the truth.

But I still couldn't shake off the atmosphere at the club, and that outburst that had been smouldering inside me finally came out. In the changing room after the match against Villarreal, I screamed at Guardiola. I screamed about his b.a.l.l.s and how he'd been s.h.i.+tting himself in front of Mourinho, and you can just imagine. It was war, and it was me against him. Guardiola, the frightened little over-thinker who couldn't even look me in the eye or even say good morning, and me, who'd been quiet and cautious for such a long time, but who finally blew up and became myself again.

This was no game. In another setting, with another person, it wouldn't have been so bad. Outbursts like that are no big deal to me, whether I'm on the giving or receiving end. They're something I grew up with. They're run of the mill to me, and things like that have often actually turned out well. The outburst clears the air. Vieira and I became friends after an almighty row. But with Pep... I could tell straight away.

He couldn't deal with it. He completely avoided me, and I would often lie awake at night thinking about the whole situation. What's going to happen next? And what should I do? One thing was clear: it was like in the Malm FF youth squad. I was seen as different. So I had to become an even better player. I had to get so d.a.m.ned good that not even Guardiola could put me on the bench. But I had no intention of trying to become a different person any more, no way. Screw that. 'We're like this here. We're ordinary guys here.' I was realising more and more how immature it was. A proper manager can deal with different personalities. That's part of his job. A team works well with different types of people. Some are a bit tougher. Others are like Maxwell, or like Messi and the gang.

But Guardiola couldn't take that, and felt he had to get back at me. I could sense it. It was hanging in the air, and apparently he didn't really care that it was going to cost the club hundreds of millions. We were going to be playing our last match in the league. He put me on the bench. I hadn't expected anything else. But now, suddenly he wanted to speak to me. He called me into his office at the stadium. That was in the morning, and on the walls in there he had football s.h.i.+rts and photos of himself and that sort of thing. The atmosphere was icy. We hadn't spoken since my outburst. But he was nervous as well. His eyes were darting around.

That man has no natural authority, no proper charisma. If you didn't know he was the manager of a top team, you'd hardly notice him entering a room. In that office now, he was fidgeting. I'm sure he was waiting for me to say something. I didn't say a thing. I waited.

"So then," he began.

He didn't look me in the eye.

"I'm not really sure what I want to do with you next season."

"Okay."

"It's up to you and Mino what happens. I mean, you're Ibrahimovic. You're not a guy who plays in every third match, right?"

He wanted me to say something. I could tell. But I'm not stupid. I know very well: whoever talks the most in these situations comes out worst off. So I kept my mouth shut. I didn't move a muscle. I sat still. Of course I understood: he had a message, exactly what wasn't clear. But it sounded like he wanted to get rid of me, and that was no small matter. I was the club's biggest investment ever. Still, I sat there in silence. I did nothing. Then he repeated: "I don't know what I want to do with you. What do you say to that? What's your comment?"

I had no comment.

"Is that it?" was all I said.

"Yes, but ..."

"Thanks then," I said and left.

I guess I looked cool and hard. That's how I wanted to look, at least. But I was fuming inside, and when I came out I rang Mino.

25.

SOMETIMES MAYBE I GO too hard on people. I don't know. That's been a thing with me from the very beginning. My dad would go off like an angry bear when he drank, and everybody in the family would be scared and get out of there. But I stood up to him, man to man, and I'd shout things like, "You have to stop drinking!" He'd go mad. "b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, this is my home. I'll do what I want. I'll chuck you out!"

Sometimes it was absolute chaos. The whole flat would shake. We never came to blows. He had a big heart. He'd be prepared to die for me. But honestly, I was prepared to fight.

I was prepared for anything, and sometimes, sure, I understood there was no point. It'd just lead to confrontation and rage. We wouldn't take a single step in the right direction quite the opposite. Still, I kept it up. I took those fights, and don't think I'm trying to brag about me being the tough guy in the family. Not at all. I'm just telling it like it was.