Swedish cute!spam
Okay, so since Sweden does face the risk of elimination tomorrow (though never say never - they did beat Argentina last WC!) I decided to gush about them while there was time.
Cute things about Zlatan Ibrahimovic:
1. He's got the world's sweetest accent. A Bosnian tint to the trademark drawl of southern Sweden. You can even hear it when he speaks Italian - instead of "absolutamente" he'll go "assolutamente" and so on. (Plus he's got a killer body. Just saying.)
2. Some more Nesta/Zlatan:
Zlatan on which defenders have made him "suffer the most":
"Italians, without a doubt. They're the best. If I had to give you one name only then it'd be Alessandro Nesta. I really like him a lot."
Nesta on Zlatan:
"To begin with, he's a phenomenal player. So big, heavy and strong - yet so technical and fast. That's amazing, when you think about that. Of course, he's very difficult playing opposite - and he's also got personality traits that makes it pretty frustrating, having to deal with him on the pitch. But when the whistle's blown it's all forgotten, naturally. Ibra's a great guy."
Word has it you once called him "merda", "shit", on the field. That true?
"Si. Once, twice, three times, four... We do hate each other during matches, but only on the field. Outside of football I have nothing against him, no feelings like that, at all. I like him a lot, I consider him a great football player."
3. Incidently, Zlatan's "most embarrassing moment" is to have been when he was wrestling on the bed with his best friend, footballer Tony Flygare, when they were 17. Tony, "as a joke", put his hand inside Zlatan's trousers and told him he wanted him - at the exact moment when Tony's mother chose to open the door.
4. From a chronicler in our leading paper "Aftonbladet", yesterday:
"All of the guys seem to be falling for Zlatan as well. Football-mad guyfriend:
Me: If I had to sleep with a celebrity I'd choose Zlatan.
He: Me too.
Me: I thought you were all homofobic.
He: But Zlatan is - Zlatan. Though it makes you think, would you be the "giver" or the "reciever"?
Me: Yeah?
He: But I'd do it either way. If it was Zlatan.
Another guy, colleague, football-mad:
Me: My friend, he'd consider sleeping with Zlatan.
He: Did he mention whether he'd be top or bottom?
Me: He said it didn't matter.
He: I guess it doesn't, when it's Zlatan."
5. When Zlatan had just moved to Torino, he stayed at the Juventus hotel for almost half a year. The press found a whorish piccolo, desperate to spill the beans on the star. He told everyone that Zlatan owns 300 pairs of shoes (that he keeps in a giant pile because he's so disorganized), that when he doesn't practise he plays Playstation ("like a little boy"), or watch old b/w movies from the fourties ("he's got a huge collection"), that he's the only footballer the piccolo ever met who was faithful to his girlfriend, and that he acts like a huge diva all the time (when they wouldn't repair his TV he came down to the reception and screamed that it'd go out the window). The journalist:
"Is there, er, anything you don't know?"
Piccolo: "I know everything! I know what kind of underwear he's got!"
"And that would be....?"
Piccolo: "Dolce e Gabbana."
"Boxers or briefs?"
Piccolo: "The long ones, always the long ones."
6. I know this is a slash forum, and believe you me, if Zlatan ended up with Nesta I'd die from joy. But I can't help but love his girlfriend Helena Seger - the one woman of the players' with some personality. She was a model but then became director of Malaco, and then an airway company, and is on the board of the best known publicist company in Sweden. Her last name means "victory" in Swedish. She looks like a mix of a trucker, a transvestite and Pamela Anderson, she's 36 and snared Zlatan, 24, and is pregnant with his child. She never talks to the press, except for the time when she declared herself to be "so much more than a relationship". When the team plays, the player's wives always sit in the stands in their Swedish team T-shirts - this does not apply to Helena, though, who comes dressed in her own clothes and spends the match on the phone. And Zlatan apparently worships the ground she walks on. I'm pretty sure she's introduced him to strap-on sex.
(From the same chronicler as above:
"Best thing about Zlatan, apart from the laugh and all of those things, is his woman. Helena Seger. On this, my girlfriends and I equally agree. Quoting a friend:
Friend: It's such a relief she isn't this Winona chick. This petite Elf girl.
My boyfriend: What?
Friend: Just - it's a relief she isn't an Elf girl.
My boyfriend: And this would be...?
Friend; A Winona chick is a girl with a trembling pout and unruly, naturally shiny hair who doesn't look like she would make it on her own, but who'll still drink beer straight out of the bottle, and who every guy has a crush on. This neurotic Elf girl with big eyes.
I know just what she means, and you girls do too.")
7. Then of course there's Swedish actor Mikael Persbrandt. Twice elected sexiest man in Sweden, he is close friends with Zlatan, ever since they went to Brasil together to promote Unicef. He happily admits to finding Zlatan "damn handsome" with a "gorgeous smile". After the Paraguay game, the team watched his latest movie (about the police struggling with the violence against women), and he and Zlatan went out for coffee.
Reporter: "So what did you two talk about?"
Persbrandt: "We talked about his thighs. And other things, but that's private, and I intend to keep it that way."
(To the right, playing Danish Mads Mikkelsen's gay lover.)
8. About those thighs. Zlatan's got his own personal "thigh masseur". This person is said to have been waiting by the stands the very second he limped of the pitch in the Paraguay match. Unsurprisingly.
9. And Leo Beenhakker's got good taste:
10. Lastly. While in Ajax, he was interviewed by the host of the queer oriented kid's show Grynet's Show. "Grynet" started off going into the Vondelpark and interviewing two adorable boys. One of them said Zlatan was "like a Greek god!" and she gushed that he was "a Swedish god!". The interview took place in the middle of the Ajax Stadium, on chock-pink blankets and fluffy pillows.
Snippet from the interview:
Grynet: "Isn't it SO annyoing, having to shower all the time?"
Zlatan: "Nah. It's nice to shower after a hard practise. You've sweated a lot, run around a lot."
Grynet: "But don't you get prune fingers?"
Zlatan: *laughs* "Er...well, you have to keep in shape. That's important."
Grynet: "I think that's really nice... And you smell so nice!"
Zlatan: *gets embarrassed and makes cute faces*
Grynet: "You can smell it when you're sitting like...real close. I feel sorry for all the people watching, cause they don't get to smell you."
Zlatan: "Yeah I know... pity..."
Then she reads him a poem ("you've got the cutest accent, it tickles my ears like a breeze"), they play football, he teaches her esoteric football jargon, she hugs him for an eternity (he just sits there and sort of giggles). When she leaves, it's in slow motion, to the tune of a Swedish song about someone who is "beautiful, never fake or jaded like the others", looking back at Zlatan who's got this shiny light around him and waving at her. All of it is just mental.
Cute things about Freddie Ljungberg:
1. So, when Freddie was a teenager, he made money off his looks. Friends revealed that whenever they were having a party, they payed him to spread the word he'd attend it, because it meant hundreds of girls would show. A friend from back then states: "I know it sounds strange, but it worked every time. After a while, whenever he was broke, he'd come ask us whether anyone was having a party."
2. He bikes around in downtown Stockholm because he doesn't like taxis. On an old ladies bike.
3. We had a show in Sweden about travels, in which two guys went around the world and smoked pot in NZ and had d/s sex in Japan. Everyone always assumed they were gay, especially in the US (that they made out in front of Freddy Kruger on a beach and did a documentary on gay porn probably probably didn't help) but they were just Swedish. These guys went to Tokyo and presented themselves to women with the words "We're from Sweden. You know Sweden?" And ALL of the Japanese women answered "Oh yes, I know! Freddie Ljungberg!", and went all happy.
4. He spends most of the time at the hotel in Germany getting tanned:
Cute things about The Trio in Rennais:
Erik Edman, Kim Källström and Andreas Isaksson have all been playing in Stade Rennais, though Kim was recently bought by Lyon. Kim and "Isak" are the only ones who share a room at the hotel in Germany, and all three are best friends - back when only Erik had children, Isak used to say that when they got tired of them, they left them with "play daddy" Kim. Isak and Erik both played in Italy when Isak was very young (he was bought by Juventus at 17), and when he was angsty and homesick Erik would comfort him.
From an interview:
Erik: "Back then, he was a completely different 'monsieur Isaksson'. He was a kid then. [...] Every day I had to come over and cook for him, rice and tomato sauce with parmesan on top."
Reporter: "That's why he was so sad?"
Erik: "Maybe, he, he, he. There was this one time when Isak tried to cook, but he burned the rice."
Isak: "He used to cook for me. Rice and tomato he could cook, but how damn hard can it be? That's the only thing he knows how to do."
Erik Edman, blond and pretty like an angel, has the foulest mouth on the team. He says "fuck" thirty times during that interview, I counted. Quote:
Erik: "That kind of fucking journalism... That fucking "Aftonbladet" you work for, they are fucking bad as well, but the British, they're just sick."
Kim:
Isak:
Erik:
(Edman pictures courtesy of nev_smile)
Cute things about Henrik Larsson:
When he was sold to Barcelona, he took a physics test that revealed that, while 34, he's got "the body of a 20 years old":
Lastly, the team captain; Cute things about Olof Mellberg:
1. He regularly calls Zlatan, and says they talk about everything. He enjoys clothes and movies, and said in an interview that he though "Munich" would have been a much better film, had Steven Spielberg dared let his own feelings colour it. The journalist, thus, concluded that it was probable Mellberg and Zlatan discuss the Israel-Palestine conflict on the phone, and was in awe.
2. Oh, and about the fight with Ljungberg after the T&T match, Mellberg's got one thing to say: "What happens in the locker rooms, stays in the locker rooms."
