Sweden international and FC Barcelona player Zlatan Ibrahimovic (28) is enjoying his undisputed reputation as an excellent striker. But like any other player, Zlatan had his ups and downs during his professional career.

As a teenager Ibrahimovic was signed by AFC Ajax Amsterdam from Malmo, and his start in the Dutch Eredivision was more than difficult. In fact, it was a total failure.

“I felt so much pressure to perform well and to succeed that I started to try to do too much. I wanted to dribble past 3 opponents, give the cross and then score the goal myself,” he said in an interview for worldcupblog.org.

With the guidance of Marco Van Basten, Zlatan learned to be more patient and sacrifice useless fancy tricks in order to help the team.

“And Marco van Basten spent time with me. He was the youth coach, but we did hang out together and talked. But my real saviour at Ajax, the man who saved my career, was Jari Litmanen. He was so good and committed and experienced. We had three good strikers: Machlas, Mido and myself. And Jari took you by the hand, on the field. He talked, coached, guided and basically made you better on the pitch. He allowed others to play better,” he concluded.