Zlatan Ibrahimovic (Malmö)The Bicycle Thief

“When Zlatan was a boy, he had a bike that meant the world to him. The bike got stolen, so Zlatan started stealing bikes himself...

“Aside from a few other foreigners, Malmö FF’s youth side were mostly made up of middle- and upper-class Swedish kids – though of course for a kid from Rosengård the difference between the two was negligible. Where his teammates lived in villas and were driven to training in Volvos, Zlatan lived in a block in Rosengård and cycled in on stolen bikes. They passed, he dribbled. They played, he fought.

“One time after training his stolen bicycle had been stolen, so he picked up a particularly nice-looking bike he found outside the dressing room. He liked it and he made sure to park it far away when he took it to training so its owner wouldn’t recognise it. Three days later the players were called in for a meeting, and there was considerable commotion among the staff. Apparently the assistant manager’s bicycle had been stolen.”

Taken from Lars Sivertsen’s ‘The Bicycle Thief’ in Issue Eight of The Blizzard