Ghostwriting an autobiography on Zlatan Ibrahimovic is not an easy business, as Swedish author David Lagercrantz discovered
Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s autobiography may be regarded as one of the great sporting memoirs of our time, but his ghostwriter has admitted that none of the quotes came from the footballer himself.
Instead, writer David Lagercrantz said he had distilled the essence of Ibrahimovic in I Am Zlatan, a book he approached as a novel (and which features gems such as: "I was unhappy. But I carried on being brilliant").
That’s not to say Ibrahimovic can’t master the dismissive one-liner. Told that Lagercrantz had just finished reading David Beckham’s autobiography, Ibrahimovic replied: “Who the f--- is Beckham?”
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In a talk at the Hay Festival, Lagercrantz – a Swedish author who is also writing a follow-up to Stieg Larsson’s Girl With A Dragon Tattoo trilogy – revealed what it was like to collaborate with Ibrahimovic.