Zlatan: ‘Americans are watching football again because of Messi – Guardiola wanted to sell me’

A full interview was given to Gazzetta dello Sport by Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

The Swedish superstar referred to, among others Mino Raiolato Pep Guardiolabut also in his future.

Read Zlatan’s interview in detail below:

For Raiola: “My career started with him. When I met him, I was arrogant and so was he. The first meeting was in a Japanese restaurant. I arrived well dressed, obviously not as well as today, I had a different budget. Mino ordered sushi for eight people, said he would pay. He took out some sheets with the statistics of the appearances and goals of Vieri, Inzaghi, and other strikers. I had 20 games and 5 goals and he said “where am I taking you like this?”. I told him that if I had more goals, my mother could sell me too. We grew and became strong together. His last months were very difficult. He tried not to talk about his illness, to give strength to it and always thought of others. Until his last days he only talked about his players.”

On the transfer to Milan: “Guardiola wanted to sell me at all costs. Galliani came to my house, my wife didn’t know who he was and asked me. I told her “he is the boss of Milan and he loves me”. Elena’s response was: “And who are we waiting for?” Then we went to eat, Galliani took out his Milan card to pay and it wasn’t working. After they signed me, they ran out of money.”

On his transfer to Paris Saint-Germain: “It wasn’t easy. I didn’t want to leave Milan, but when your cell phone starts ringing once, twice, three times, you know something is wrong. I asked Galliani to promise not to sell me. He said “yes, yes, don’t worry”. I went on holiday and three weeks later Mino calls me: ten missed calls in 30 minutes. I picked up my phone and said I wasn’t going anywhere before I even said hello. He replied: “Everything has already been done: Paris Saint-Germain.” Before you go to a club, you imagine yourself wearing their shirt, on their pitch, scoring goals. I told Leonardo that I couldn’t go and play in fields of 2,000 people, but they explained the vision and the concept to me. I put terms in my contract that I thought were impossible and it took 20 minutes for them to accept them. Mino said to me: ‘Do you also want a bike in the contract?’. I replied ‘yes, yes… put that too'”



For Manchester United: “Mourinho called me and the club was one of the best in the world, but all the players I asked said ‘don’t go, if you do badly there they will call your whole career into question’. This is exactly what convinced me: I’d rather walk on fire than on water. I arrived when I was 35, they said I didn’t have pace, a lot of people hated me and said I never got the ball rolling against the English. Three months later, they were all my fans.”

For the MLS: “With Messi, Americans can watch soccer again, since I left they only watched baseball.”



On the scandal with illegal betting in Italy and Tonali: “I know very little about this story. Tonali never told me about it, I never saw him bad. If he has a problem, you have to help him. We have to see if he went to the casino to play, I did once too, he may like it or not. Everyone does what they want with their money. If he bet on football as a professional footballer, that’s another story. You must know the facts.”

For his future: “Now I have my freedom, I do things for myself, I don’t have a boss telling me what to do. I take my time. I have more suggestions now compared to when I was playing. I want to be myself, get to a place where I can start from scratch and help, not just be a symbol of my past. I had a meeting with Milan… We’ll see.”