Zlatan reveals how he tried to sabotage move to PSG | OneFootball

Zlatan Ibrahimović has revealed that he tried to sabotage his own move to Paris Saint-Germain back in 2012 as he didn’t want to join the French giants.

The Swedish striker was, at that point, at AC Milan and loving life back in Serie A.

But in a serialisation of his new book ‘I Am Football’, the veteran goalscorer has admitted that he never wanted to join Les Parisiens and has laid out how he went about trying to call the move off.

“I was in my summer home in Vaxholm and I’d just come back in from jet-skiing. That’s when I noticed that I had five missed calls from [the player’s agent] Mino Raiola,” he said.

Returning the call, Ibrahimovic was told by his representative: “Ok, Leonardo is going to give you a call.”

Ibrahimovic: “I decided I wasn’t going to make it easy for PSG”.

“I thought: ‘who’s Leonardo?’ And then the penny dropped that he was the sporting director at PSG,” Ibrahimovic explained. Feeling betrayed by Milan for going behind his back, the striker picked up the phone again and called Raiola. “I said to Mino: ‘Listen, I’m not to talk to Leonardo because Galliani told me that I wouldn’t be sold this summer.’ Then Mino said ‘yeah, I know, but you’ve been sold already.’”

Incensed, Ibrahimovic formulated a plan to ensure the move would break down. “I spoke to Mino again and told him we weren’t going to make it easy for PSG. We were going to tell them that I wanted the same salary I had at Milan and we were going to ask for so much stuff that they’d think it wasn’t worth it.

“I told Mino to lay out all the conditions of my contract one by one. When we’d finished I said to my wife that they’d never accept all my demands, that there was no way it would go through. But 20 minutes later Mino sent me a text saying it had all been approved.”

“After that, there was no going back,” Ibrahimovic concluded. “So I accepted [the move] because I am a man of my word and when I say something I stick to it.”

Zlatan would go on to spend four years in Paris, scoring 113 goals.