It's considered by many as one of the great sporting memoirs of our time.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic - a man who once claimed he can do with an orange what John Carew could with a football - released his feverishly anticipated autobiography, I Am Zlatan Ibrahimovic, in 2011.
Except the above quote about his fellow Scandinavian, written in the book in response to criticism from the then-Aston Villa striker, is garbage. He never said it. He never really said anything in I Am Zlatan.
It strikes as inexplicable that it wasn't bigger news - at least amongst the internet football generation - when the Swedish striker's ghostwriter, David Lagercrantz, admitted he had doctored almost every quote in the book. Lagercrantz, in his own words, discovered "a literary illusion of Zlatan" and began to scribe a novel.
I started to read ghostwritten football books and I must say I’ve never read such boring books in my whole life. I said to myself, ‘I can’t do it.’ Then – I shouldn’t really admit it – I decided to write it as a novel. I didn’t really quote him. I started to find this literary illusion of Zlatan Ibrahimovic and then I got into writing it,
the Swedish author said at Hay Festival, Wales in May of last year.
The key thing is that I was not working as a journalist. I was not quoting him. I know this – if you want to find something that sounds true and authentic, the last thing you want to do is quote. I don’t think I have any real quotes from him. I tried to get an illusion of him, to try and find the story. I tried to find the literary Ibrahimovic.
At the time, Lagercrantz was in the process of writing a follow-up to Stieg Larsson's Girl With A Dragon Tattoo trilogy. And despite I Am Zlatan's fictional or, at least, 'exaggerated' nature, he managed to reveal one of the all-time great Zlatan quotes while explaining why he wasn't willing to simply ghostwrite the autobiography from Ibrahimovic's own point of view:
I told him I had just read David Beckham’s book and that was such a boring book, actually. And he had a good answer: ‘Who the f--- is Beckham?’
The 35-year-old Manchester United striker is quite obviously capable of producing gold both on and off the pitch, which really begs the question as to why there would be any need to fictionalise pen the literary illusion of his story. And it's disappointing, too, considering how many bizarrely beautiful Zlatan quotes originated from Lagercrantz's book - with my own personal favourite (until my entire belief system was destroyed on discovery of this farce last summer) being the Carew/orange one recounted above. And he didn't even bloody say it.
Why, then, do people still view the book in such high regard - a bible of sorts? Or more pertinently, why are so few people aware that the book essentially amounts to bullshit? And why did publications still include such quotes when compiling his 'best of' the day he joined Manchester United?
Maybe people just didn't want to know the ugly truth and, as such, those who had the misfortune of being exposed to it via a May 2015 Telegraph article were so devastated they decided not to perpetuate it and ruin the Zlatan experience for others. My apologies, though I shan't apologise for saving you two weeks of your life if you've not read it yet.
The thing is, Ibrahimovic remains, and always was, an iconic figure regardless. His actions both on and off the pitch - the acrobatic goals, the legendary interviews, the Taekwon-Do black belt - have long-since solidified him as social media's first true footballing kingpin. It's worth remembering, too, that much of his mystique as a sporting personality was built on a foundation of fake quotes long before (and after) the launch of I Am Zlatan; just think of the memes you've scrolled past on The Sport Bible or its likes, for example, or the images dropped in your Whatsapp group by your one gullible mate who sees a Benchwarmers graphic and takes it as gospel.
That's possibly why the news that his book is a pile of malarkey didn't make a bigger splash on your newsfeed last year - it simply wasn't a big deal. The truth has always played second fiddle to Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
You can imagine the moment when I, the fake Zlatan Ibrahimovic, had to send the manuscript to the real Zlatan Ibrahimovic. He wasn’t really a book reader. He doesn’t really like journalists who take liberties and I really took liberties, so you can imagine how nervous I was. I remember he said, ‘You must come to my house and speak about the book.' I was so nervous I arrived 20 minutes early, and the police came because there were rumours there was some crazy guy walking outside Zlatan’s house.
The first thing he said was: “What the f--- is this? I never said this!’ But after a while I think he understood what I was trying to do. Nowadays he thinks it’s really his story,
concluded Lagercrantz.
It just seems a shame for football fans that he missed the opportunity to do the story justice.
[Quotes via Anita Singh - Telegraph]
