SOMETIMES THINGS CAST a long shadow. There are memories within clubs that can be toxic, like the entire decade of the ’90s at Inter Milan. Even though the team had Ronaldo then, they didn’t win a single league cup. The club always stumbled at the finishing line. Take the 1997–98 season, for example.
I was 16, 17 years old and knew nothing of Ravelli and the gang, or anything much about Sweden in general. But I knew all about Inter Milan. I knew all about Ronaldo. I studied his feints and his acceleration. A lot of us did, like I said. But nobody took it as far as I did. I didn’t miss a single detail. Without him, I believe I would’ve been a different kind of player, and I’m not a guy who’s easily impressed. I’ve met all kinds of people. I once sat next to the king of Sweden at a dinner in Barcelona, and okay, maybe I did think, am I holding my fork wrong, or am I saying ‘you’ when I should be saying ‘your majesty’? But it was cool. I’m me. I just go for it. But it was different with Ronaldo. When I was with Inter he was playing for AC Milan, and there’s a video on YouTube where I’m chewing some gum and just watching him and watching him, as if I can’t believe that he and I are on the same pitch.
He had such gravity. Such an eye for the game. There was quality in every single movement, and in that ’97–’98 season he and Inter were absolutely amazing. They won the UEFA Cup, and Ronaldo scored 25 goals and was voted the best player in the world for the second year in a row. They dominated Serie A. And yet they lost it in early spring, same as us now in the run-up to the fight against Parma. Inter had bad luck and troubles and shit, and they played a classic match against Juventus at the Stadio delle Alpi in Turin in the spring of 1998. There was only one point, maybe two, between the teams. This was a real season finale with incredible tension in the air, and Ronaldo was dribbling in the penalty area, on the left side. But he got a brutal block, and the entire stadium started screaming. People went mental. The stadium was at boiling point. But the referee never blew his whistle. He let play continue, and Juventus won the match 1–0 and later the league title, and it was in that moment that everything was decided. That’s how it’s usually seen. It was Inter’s tragic second. People still talk about it. It was considered to be a blatant penalty. But nothing happened, and there was anger and protests throughout Italy, and talk that the referee had taken a bribe, or that all referees were on the take and corrupt and stupid in general, and all the older players at the club had clear memories of all that, especially as a number of similar things had happened to the club around the same time. They’d had the Scudetto within their grasp the previous season as well, but lost it in the final stretch in an awesome match against Lazio, and the year after that, Ronaldo was injured. Everything went to hell, as though the team had lost its engine and its drive, and Inter finished eighth in the league – their worst-ever finish, I think.
Nobody said it out loud. Nobody wanted to unleash a bad omen. But a lot of people were thinking about it before our match against Parma. There were bad premonitions. People remembered and obsessed over it, and then there was that penalty that Materazzi had missed. The lads had had several chances to clinch the league title, but they’d blown every one. It was little things all the time, bad luck, mistakes. It was all kinds of crap, and sure, everybody was gunning for Parma, ready to give their all. But that in itself could also be a problem. There were mutterings about it. There was a risk that the pressure could become too much. Things could get deadlocked, and the club’s management banned all of us from speaking to the press. We had to maintain total concentration, and even Mancini, who always held a press conference before matches, kept his mouth shut, so the only one who said a word was Moratti.
He turned up at our hotel the evening before the match and said nothing to the journalists other than, “Wish us luck. We’re going to need it,” and it didn’t help that Parma were geared up to beat us in order to retain their place in the league. Things were just as deadly serious for our opponents as they were for us. We weren’t going to be handed anything for free, and just before we went to the stadium, the decision came in that we weren’t going to have the support of our own fans.
It was an issue of fairness. For security reasons the Roma supporters hadn’t been allowed to travel to their away match against Catania, and so we wouldn’t be able to have our fans there in Parma. Quite a few did manage to get in, though. They were scattered around. Every little thing was scrutinised and discussed, and I remember Mancini. He went spare when he heard that Gianluca Rocchi would be refereeing.
“That bastard’s always got it in for us,” he fumed, and there were dark clouds gathering on the horizon.
It looked like rain, and I started off on the bench. I hadn’t played in a long time, and Mancini started with Balotelli and Cruz in front. “But be ready,” he told me. “Be ready to jump in,” and I nodded. We all sat there under a canopy and heard the first raindrops fall. Soon the rain was pattering over us and the match got underway, and the spectators were booing. The pressure was terrible, but we dominated. We kept pressing them, and Cruz and Maicon had some incredible chances, but it didn’t work out. It looked hopeless, and of course those of us on the bench were following the game on the edge of our seats. We yelled and swore and hoped and feared, but we always kept one eye on the giant scoreboard in the stadium.
Because it wasn’t just about our match. There was Roma’s to think of as well, and it was still 0–0 there too, and that was cool. We’d still top the league. The Scudetto would be ours. But then it flashed up. The whole team sat up. Please, no goal for Roma! That would be too cruel. You can’t lead the league all season and then lose at the last minute. That should bloody well be outlawed. But yes, Roma had made it 1–0 against Catania and suddenly we were Number 2 in the league. It was unreal, and I looked at everyone on the bench, the physios, the doctors, the equipment guys, everybody who’d been there in the ’90s, they remembered. They went pale. Is it happening again? Is the old curse back?
I’ve never seen anything like it. The colour drained out of them, and out on the pitch as well. We’re talking pure terror, nothing less. This couldn’t happen. It was terrible, it was a disaster, and the rain just kept falling. It was bucketing down, and the home supporters were shouting with joy. The result was to their advantage, because if Catania lost, Parma would remain in the league. But to us it felt like nothing short of death, and the players got more and more tense. I could see it in them. They were bearing crosses on their backs, and I can’t say I was particularly upbeat myself, of course not, but still, I already had three Scudettos and I didn’t feel any of that old curse. I was too young for it, and with every minute I became more focused and more up for it. It was like there was a fire inside me.
I was going to go in and turn this around, no matter how much pain I was in. I refused to accept anything else, and at half-time when it was still 0–0 and the league title was in Roma’s hands, I got the order to warm up, and I remember it so clearly: everybody was looking at me – Mancini, Mihajlović, everybody, the equipment guys, the physio, everybody – and I saw, they were counting on me. I could see it in their eyes. They stared pleadingly at me, and obviously it was impossible not to feel the pressure.
“Sort this for us,” they said, one after another.
“I will, I will!”
But I didn’t go in after half-time, either. It took another six minutes, and then I stepped onto the pitch. The grass was wet. Running was heavy and I wasn’t completely match-fit, and the pressure was ridiculous. But still, I’d never been so fired up in my life, and I remember I attempted a shot almost right away from the midfield, just outside the penalty area.
It didn’t go in. A few minutes later I tried it again. I missed that one too. It felt like I kept ending up in the same position over and over without getting anything out of it, and in the 62nd minute it happened again. I got the ball in the same spot. It was Dejan Stanković who passed it, and I drew a guy who threw himself towards me and ran towards the goal, and every time I nudged the ball, a little stream of water went up, and then I saw a position and shot, not a thundering kick by any means.
It was a ground shot, and it went into the left goalpost and into the goal, and instead of doing a wicked goal celebration I just stood there and waited, and they all came from the bench and the pitch, first was Patrick Vieira I think, and then Balotelli, then the whole gang, the equipment guys, the guys from the supply store, each and every one, all of them who’d given me those pleading looks, and I saw: the fear had subsided. Dejan Stanković threw himself down onto the wet pitch and it looked like he was thanking the gods. There was complete hysteria, and way up in the stands Massimo Moratti was cheering, he was almost dancing in his VIP spot, and we all felt it, everybody in the club, every single one.
A millstone had been released from around their necks. The colour returned to people’s faces. It was much more than a goal. It was almost as if I’d saved them from drowning, and I looked towards the spectators. The cheers from our supporters emerged from behind the booing, and I made a gesture with my hand up to my ear, like, what’s that I hear? And then the stadium was even more electric, and when the commotion finally died down the match continued.
Nothing was certain yet. A single goal by Parma and we’d be back to square one, and the nerves came back, but not the old fear. Still, nobody dared to exhale. Worse things than a draw have happened in football. But then in the 78th minute Maicon dribbled along the right side, past one, two, three guys and then he made a cross and I rushed up. I got there at the same time as a defender, but I got my foot on the ball and shot a half-volley into the goal, and you can just imagine. I’d been away for two months, and the journalists had been writing shit about me and about the team.
They’d been saying all kinds of crap, that Inter had lost their winning instinct and everything was going to slip through our fingers and that I wasn’t a true great, not like Totti or Del Piero, and even that I wasn’t good when it really mattered. But now I’d shown them, and I sank down to my knees on that rain-sodden pitch and just waited for all of them to pile on top of me again, and I could feel it throughout my whole body: this was big, and it wasn’t long before the whistle went and the Scudetto was ours.
Inter Milan hadn’t won it in seventeen years. They’d had a long, hard spell, filled with suffering and bad luck and shit. But then I came, and now we’d brought home the league title two years in a row, and the whole place was a three-ring circus. People ran onto the pitch and grabbed us, and inside in the changing room everybody was screaming and jumping around. But then people grew silent. Mancini came in. He hadn’t always been so popular, especially after he’d flip-flopped about his future with the club and not done too well in the Champions League. But now he’d won the league trophy, and the players went up, one by one, kind of formal, shook his hand and said, “Thank you so much, you did it for us.” But then Mancini came up to me, completely filled with victory and all the congratulations. The only thing was, he didn’t get a thank-you from me. I said, “You’re welcome” and everyone laughed, like, bloody Ibra, and afterwards when I was speaking to the journalists, several of them asked:
“Who do you dedicate this victory to?”
“To you,” I replied, “to the media, to everybody who doubted and dissed me and Inter!”
That’s how I roll. I’m always planning my revenge. It’s been with me ever since Rosengård, it’s what drives me, and I’ll never forget what Moratti told the media:
“All of Italy was against us, but Zlatan Ibrahimović was the symbol of our struggle.”
I was voted the best player of the year in Serie A, and not long afterwards that stuff about me possibly being the world’s highest paid footballer came out, and everything went completely crazy. I could barely go out, and wherever I went there was a commotion. Of course, everybody thought I’d negotiated the contract after the match against Parma. But the deal had been agreed seven or eight months earlier, and I thought, my God, there’s no way Moratti could have any regrets now, not after that finish, and I felt like, things have turned round now. The clouds have cleared up. I’ve been able to strike back. But there were definitely signs for concern. I noticed right after the Parma match.
My knee had swollen up again. I’d never been completely fit, and I think it came as a shock to a lot of people when I was forced to sit out the Italian cup final, and of course that was no fun. We’d had a chance at the double, to bring home bother the Cup and the league title. But without me, Roma got their revenge in the final, and the Euro 2008 tournament was approaching and I had no idea whether my knee was going to hold out. I’d worked myself too hard that season.
I was going to have to pay a heavy price.