I'd die for Mourinho but Guardiola is a spineless coward - and Wenger made me feel like a little boy... Ibrahimovic gives his verdict on the superstar managers (and reveals how he almost joined City!)

                
Zlatan Ibrahimovic is one of the most talented, controversial and enigmatic footballers of his generation. Here, in excerpts from his extraordinary autobiography I am Zlatan Ibrahimovic, he declares his admiration for Jose Mourinho, his hatred of Pep Guardiola and the times he might have moved to English football.

Jose Mourinho is a big star. He’d been my manager at Inter. He’s nice. The first time he met my partner Helena, he whispered to her: ‘Helena, you have only one mission: feed Zlatan, let him sleep, keep him happy.’ That guy says whatever he wants. I like him. He’s the leader of his army. But he cares, too. He would text me all the time at Inter, wondering how I was doing. He’s the exact opposite of Pep Guardiola.

If Mourinho lights up a room, Guardiola draws the curtains. I guessed that Guardiola was trying to match up to him.

Mourinho would become a guy I was basically willing to die for.

Already during the 2008 European Championship I was told that Mourinho, my new manager at Inter Milan, was going to phone me, and I thought: ‘Has something happened?’

He just wanted to say: ‘It’ll be nice to work together, looking forward to meeting you’ — nothing remarkable, but he was speaking in Italian. I didn’t get it. Mourinho had never coached an Italian club. But he spoke the language better than me! He’d learned the language in three weeks, I couldn’t keep up. We switched to English, and then I could sense it: this guy cares. After the match against Spain I got a text message.

‘Well played,’ he wrote, and then gave me some advice and I stopped in my tracks. I’d never had that before. A text message from the coach! I’d been playing with the Swedish squad, which was nothing to do with him. Still, he got involved. I felt appreciated.

Sure, I understood he was sending those texts for a reason. He wanted my loyalty, but I liked him straight away. He works twice as hard as all the rest. Lives and breathes football 24/7. I’ve never met a manager with that kind of knowledge about the opposing sides. It was everything, right down to the third-choice goalkeeper’s shoe size.

It was a while before I met him. He’s elegant, he’s confident, but I was surprised. He looked small next to the players but I sensed it immediately: there was this vibe around him.

He got people to toe the line, and he went up to guys who thought they were untouchable and let them have it. He stood there, only coming up to their shoulder, and didn’t try to suck up to them. He got straight to the point: ‘From now on, you do it like this.’ Can you imagine! And everybody started to listen. They strained to take in every shade of meaning in what he was saying. Not that they were frightened of him. He was no Fabio Capello, who was a demon manager.

Mourinho created personal ties with the players with his text messages and his knowledge of our situations with wives and children, and he didn’t shout.