Has anyone read the book yet? Supposedly its interesting about how football is behind the scenes in clubs like Inter, Barcelona, Milan, etc... It also insults Josep Guardiola a lot.
Here are some excerpts I found to get an idea of the book:
Also
Here are some excerpts I found to get an idea of the book:
1. “I got a bike when I was little, a BMX. I called it ‘Fido Dido’ after the tough little cartoon guy with spiked hair. I thought he was the coolest thing ever.
“The bike got stolen outside of the Rosengård swimming baths and Dad went there with his shirt open and sleeves rolled up. He’s the kind of person that says: ‘No one touches my kids! No one takes their stuff’. But not even a tough guy like him could do anything about it. Fido Dido was gone, and I was crushed.”
2. “I felt like **** when I was sitting in the locker room with Guardiola staring at me like I was an annoying distraction, an outsider. It was nuts. He was a wall, a stone wall. I didn’t get any sign of life from him and I was wishing myself away every moment with the team.”
3. “Then Guardiola started his philosopher thing. I was barely listening. Why would I? It was advanced bullshit about blood, sweat and tears, that kind of stuff.”
4. “Jose Mourinho is a big star…He’s cool. The first time he met [my wife] he whispered to her: ‘Helena, you have only one mission. Feed Zlatan, let him sleep, keep him happy!’ The guy says what he wants. I like him.”
5. “Mourinho is Guardiola’s opposite. If Mourinho brightens up the room, Guardiola pulls down the curtains and I guessed that Guardiola now tried to measure himself with him.”
6. “An injured Zlatan is a pretty serious thing for any team.”
7. “Lionel Messi is awesome. He’s unbelievable, but I don’t really know him. We are totally different. He came to Barça as a 13-year old. He’s raised in that culture and has no problems with that ‘school’ ****. In the team, the play is all around him, pretty naturally actually. He’s brilliant, but now I had arrived [at Barca] and scored more goals than him.”
8. “It was a childhood dream [to play for Barca] and I was walking on air. It started well but then Messi started to talk. He wanted to play in the middle, not on the wing, so the system changed. I was sacrificed.”
9. “I barely yelled at my teammates any more. Something had happened, nothing serious, not yet, but still. I became quiet and that’s lethal, believe me. I have to be angry to play well. I have to scream and shout. Now I kept it in.”
10. “I asked for a meeting with Guardiola – for a discussion, not an argument. I said I was being used in the wrong way and that they shouldn’t have bought me if they wanted another type of player.
“I told him what a friend had said to me – ‘you bought a Ferrari but drive it like a Fiat’. The chat seemed to go well but then Guardiola started to freeze me out.”
11. “I would walk into a room; he would leave. He would greet everyone by saying hello, but would ignore me. I had done a lot to adapt – the Barca players were like schoolboys, following the coach blindly, whereas I was used to asking ‘why should we?”
12. “At Barca, players were banned from driving their sports cars to training. I thought this was ridiculous – it was no one’s business what car I drive – so in April, before a match with Almeria, I drove my Ferrari Enzo to work. It caused a scene.”
13. “(Guardiola) was staring at me and I lost it. I thought ‘there is my enemy, scratching his bald head!’. I yelled to him: ‘You have no balls!’ and probably worse things than that.
“I added: ‘You are ******** yourself because of Jose Mourinho. You can go to ****!’. I was completely mad. I threw a box full of training gear across the room, it crashed to the floor and Pep said nothing, just put stuff back in the box. I’m not violent, but if I were Guardiola I would have been frightened.”
14. On reports of ‘excessive behaviour’ following Juventus’ 2005 title win: “It was the fault of David Trezeguet, who made me do one drink of vodka after another. I slept in the bathtub. Now I hold my vodka much better.”
15. When asked about Mario Balotelli’s recent tomfoolery: “I like fireworks too, but I set them off in gardens or kebab stands. I never set fire to my own house.”
Also
On the training ground row with his former AC Milan teammate, Oguchi Onyewu:
"We were close to killing each other," confessed Ibrahimovic, who in the scuffle, broke a rib. An injury that was not disclosed by the Milan club.
On Swedish teammate, Fredrik Ljungberg:
His former Swedish national teammate, Fredrik Ljungberg, was labeled, 'a primadonna.' "
On His First Meeting with Luciano Moggi of Juventus in 2004 at the airport in Monte Carlo:
"I was dressed in Hawaiian shorts, a Nike tee-shirt and jogging shoes without socks and already completely drenched. We (his agent Mino Raiola) arrived at the famous VIP gate of the airport and inside there was smoke everywhere. Luciano Moggi, in an elegant suit, was struggling with a huge cigar. You understood right away that he was a powerful guy. He was used to people doing as he said. Mino began attentively, 'But look how you are dressed?' 'Are you here to give me fashion advice or to talk about business?' "
On his time at Internazionale Milano:
"I hated it there from the first day and it wasn't only due to the fact that I came from Rosengard. Where we all interacted without problems: Turks, Somalis, Yugoslavians and Arabs. It was also because I had already seen it very clearly whether at Juventus or Ajax: All teams do much better when there is cohesion between the players. At Inter, it was the opposite. There in one corner sat the Brazilians; the Argentineans were in another and all of the rest in a third corner. It was a mess. I considered this my first real test as a leader to clean up that situation.
I went around the room and said, 'What's going on here? Why are you seated like children?' Those invisible barriers were too distinct. For that reason, I went again to Massimo Moratti (President of Internazionale) and was as clear as possible. Inter hadn't won a title in decades. Do we want to go ahead like this? Do we have to be losers only because guys don't want to speak to each other? 'Obviously not,' said Moratti. 'But now we need to break up these damned clans. We can't win if the dressing room isn't united.'"
On AC Milan and Antonio Cassano:
"Cassano has some fame as a bad boy as I do. He likes to showcase himself and speak (of himself) as a fantastic player. The lad often has had past problems with teammates and coaches. Among them Fabio Capello during his spell with AS Roma. But Antonio has a marvelous quality in his play. I really like it. And together with him, we've become an even better team."
On the day that Milan won the Scudetto last year:
"Someone said 'Do something to Cassano up there (while he was being interviewed on television.) 'Like what?' 'Go up and kick him. You are the Kung Fu master, right?' And surely, from the time that my father and I watched Bruce Lee films on television, why not? We were all running around and Cassano was a great guy. A kick could have made him happy."
(Translator's Note: Ibrahimovic earned a black belt in Tae Kwan Do as a teenager.)
On Josep Guardiola:
"The worst episode, according to the excerpt of the book published by the Aftonbladet newspaper, happened after a league game with Villarreal and Barcelona. Ibrahimovic started on the bench and only played five minutes. Barcelona was shortly thereafter eliminated by Mourinho's Internazionale in the Champions League. The Swede recalled in the book how he confronted Guardiola in a semi-deserted area of the dressing room:
I yelled at him. You don't have any balls! And surely worse things, such as, 'Go ask Mourinho,' or 'Go to ****!'"
Ibrahimovic lost control and struck a metal item making it fall to the ground. 'I was really ****** off, and Guardiola looked me in the eyes. If I were him, I'd have been scared.'"
On His Barcelona Teammates:
"Guardiola prohibited the players from arriving at training sessions in luxury cars. 'You have to keep your feet on the ground. No Porshes or Ferraris can come in here,' said Pep. Ibrahimovic, to provoke him, arrived one day at the Camp Nou in a Ferrari. According to him, the Barcelona players behaved like so many 'school children,' obeying the orders of the manager. 'In Italy, it's not like this,' the Swede confirmed. The Catalan manager never responded to the taunts from him."
Pep Guardiola took the higher road yesterday in a quote published by various Italian media: "I continue to wish Ibrahimovic all the best."
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