Sportbloggen
Johanna Garå
Johanna Garå
Nu har det gått för lång tid utan någon Zlatanintervju, tycker ni inte? Flera dagar!
Skönt då att min skotske kollega Graham Hunter, som träffade Zlatan i Barcelona för flera veckor sedan, idag kan leverera ett lååångt reportage om svensken i det nya numret av Uefas magazine, Champions Magazine.
Jag har fått lov att ta några bitar från intervjun för att visa er, mina kära bloggläsare. Jag väljer att publicera samtalet på engelska, eftersom intervjun gjordes på engelska.
Hunter är bland annat nyfiken på vad Zlatan tycker om att många britter
anser att han är en överskattad fotbollsspelare. Såhär svarar han:
– English people
don´t like me, I know. I´m pretty sure that it´s because of my style. I say
whatever I want, when I want and let people know the way I feel. Whether I´m
right or wrong, sure, we can discuss that afterwards. But I´m not the kind of
footballer who is political in what he says.
– From the first day I met journalists in England I knew we
were not connecting, that something was wrong. They read stories about me from
Sweden in the beginning of my career, then they read a lot of trash talk about
me and stuff which those journalists didn´t know anything about.
– When I was young, in Sweden, they first lifted me up then cut me down.
They brought up bad stories like what I did outside the pitch. I was young… I
made mistakes. But I don´t see that everybody is perfect! If you don´t make
mistakes then you don´t learn. Perhaps it´s even vital to make the mistakes so
that you learn more?
– I think the English media fed off all that and every time I play an
English team in the Champions League I hear rumours about what their media says
about me. To be honest it gives me strength, makes me work ever harder and
leaves me much more determined.
Reportern frågar också om Zlatans bakgrund och anfallaren svarar:
– I feel 100% Swedish because it is where I was born and raised but I
have a different mentality” he laughs.
– My father is Bosnian muslim and my mother´s from Croatia
and she´s catholic and we share a strong mentality. Speak your mind, live the
way you want to live and be pretty clear when you speak. I don´t think that´s
typical Swedish, absolutely not. In Sweden it´s a bit more like: ‘We are all on
the same level – nobody is up here and nobody is down there” (He uses his
hands to indicate hierarchy). They think ‘we are all the same’ but my mentality
is different.
