Ljungberg: I love dressing up

For a little guy, Freddie Ljungberg sure knows how to make an entrance. He bursts in to our appointment, almost an hour late, wearing a broad grin, an asymmetric, Inuit-style sheepskin coat, a hooded sweat top and flared jeans. A floppy, chunkyknit beanie hat, which appears to have been designed for a Rastafarian Smurf, is pulled over his trademark, crazy-coloured hair. Which today, by the way, is dyed bright aubergine.

But, I know what you're thinking. Freddie Ljungberg is gay, right? I mean, come on, the evidence is irrefutable, isn't it? After all, here is a young man who is so good looking he must have been genetically engineered. He has the bone structure of a comic-book hero, cheeks you could shave white truffles on and eyes like back-lit sapphires. He doesn't have a steady girlfriend, he wears outrageously camp designer clothes by the likes of Roberto Cavalli and - this appears to be the clincher - he absolutely adores musicals.

Since moving to London he's seen Mamma Mia! three times, Miss Saigon and Saturday Night Fever. Saturday Night Fever is his favourite.

There is also the fact that, whenever Freddie Ljungberg runs out on to the pitch, he is serenaded by rival fans with an unrepeatable mantra to the tune of the Village People's Go West. Not what one would call an Oscar Wilde level of wit and sophistication, but there you go. But he doesn't let the Neanderthal chanting and the constant gossiping get to him. "I am not gay," he tells me wearily. "But gay men can be very fashionable, so maybe it's a compliment."

While Ljungberg is not a homosexual, the disadvantage of growing up in a blond, vital Sweden where even the ugly girls look like cover models has made him decidedly fussy. Indeed, ask around a bit and you'll discover that the boy is a bit of swordsman on the quiet. There's the stunning Canadian model he dated last year, and the beautiful Swedish receptionist he took out for a while.

He confesses that he doesn't have sex before a match, though. "I feel that girls are going to make me lose my concentration before a game," he laughs. "I want to keep the feeling in my feet. It sort of disappears if you have sex before a match. I've tried it and my feet felt like concrete when I was supposed to kick the ball," he says. "After the game, though - well, then it's different."

Much of the conjecture about Ljungberg's private life seems to stem from his low profile off the pitch. He might have a cockatoo barnet and sport ostentatious catwalk clothes, but he is actually rather shy. There are no 48-hour benders, no tales of ugly, excessive shopping sprees or outsize, off-road 4x4s.

"I don't dress like this and dye my hair to attract attention," he says. "I don't do it to make people look at me in the street or on the pitch. I do it for me. It's a personality statement. I've been dying my hair ever since I was a 14-year-old kid in Sweden. It's just something I do."

When he's not playing football he likes to hang out at bars and restaurants with friends and his brother Filip, a fashion student who shares his Hampstead apartment. Freddie is particularly fond of the fashionable Wellington Club and Zuma, the modish Knightsbridge honeypot where London's rich Eurotrash set gorge on blackened cod and tempura. Of late, however, he has been staying in because he thinks going out would be inappropriate. "I like to be out and about, but when you're injured it's not right for the fans to see you having a good time."

Does he get upset when he leaves Nobu after a quiet dinner with a (male) friend and the picture is all over the papers the next day, with less than subtle implications? He is anxious to put the record straight.

"I think I have a pretty good press in this country on the whole," he says. "But when you play football at my level there are so many stories and rumours and a lot of what is written and talked about is not true."

Ljungberg has yet to cash in on his fame and good looks, one of the reasons he has just signed up with David Beckham's publicist. Since last year's amazing season, the offers have been coming in thick and fast.

"I get approached all the time to do sponsorships, fashion shoots and the like, but I turn down just about all of them," he says. "I can't complain about my wages [said to top £25,000 a week], so I can afford to be choosy. I see myself as a footballer first of all. I want to be good. And I want to win, whatever it takes."

Highbury's punk-rock darling was born in 1977 and grew up in Halmstad, just north of Gothenburg, where he excelled at handball before realising that his future lay with his visceral talent for football. He joined his home-town club when he was only five and was playing in the Swedish first division by the time he turned 17. At school he was nicknamed "Sid", after Sid Vicious. According to Freddie, Halmstad is "a bit like Brighton - a seaside town that doubles in population during the summer".

He enjoyed winter snowboarding breaks, while summer holidays were spent on Gotland, Sweden's equivalent of Sardinia, an island rumoured to have the highest intensity of beautiful girls anywhere on the planet during July and August. Freddie confirms that the rumour is true with one of his broad trademark grins.

At 18 he went to university to study information technology and economics but found it tough to combine an academic timetable with the physically demanding commitments of professional football.

He quit to concentrate on the beautiful game. He starred in Sweden's 2-1 victory over England in 1998 before transferring to Arsenal for just £3 million, a fee that seems like a bargain now. He had a dream debut with the Gunners, coming on as a sub to score a scorcher of a goal in a threenil drubbing of Manchester United ("It felt great," he says) but soon began to find life in London tough. He was lonely, disorientated, bored, girlfriend-less and exhausted.

Ljungberg had arrived in London at the start of the English football season, which dovetailed painfully with the end of the Swedish season (where they play spring to autumn) so, in effect, he was expected to play for 18 months, non stop.

"It had a very bad effect on me," he recalls. "I had injury after injury. My body couldn't take any more. A very big difference is the way they kick you over here. You get kicked all the time in the Premiership, it's much more physical here."

Arsenal fans quickly grew to love Freddie because he looked like a pop star and played like a turbocharged pit-bull. "The longer I play in the Premiership, the stronger I get," he says. "I'm quite small, so people were advising me to play in Spain or Italy, but I always wanted to play in England - the game is quicker here and that suits my mentality." Not that he's played much football recently - until last weekend, when he took part in his first match for Arsenal since 21 December.

He had been off with an Achilles tendon injury. Keyhole surgery, physiotherapy and gym work have been his thing since Christmas. He tries to be upbeat but you can tell he hates being idle. "I get very depressed and frustrated," he says. "Every week you see your teammates playing and winning without you. I'm really pleased for them but ..."

HIS World Cup last year was also ruined by injury. Despite winning the so-called "group of death" (which also included England), and becoming a massive Japanese icon ("I noticed that several players were copying me a bit - maybe trying to make a career with their hair"), Sweden proved a pretty lame act without a fully fit Freddie to rely on.

Ljungberg's competition was further marred by an unsightly training-ground bust-up with fellow Swede Olof Mellberg.

"I felt maybe he made a bad tackle a couple too many times," says Freddie. "It's over now, we are friends again." Perhaps his hair and his penchant for trendy clobber might make him a bit of a target sometimes? (Freddie even had the temerity to look stylish in the brawling photos that followed the incident, setting a trend for clamdigger tracksuit bottoms.)

"No," he says. "My game is all about speed and dribble, so I'll always be a target, but sometimes I do get a little bit of stick when I buy something new, and sometimes the other players will laugh at what I'm wearing when I turn up in the dressing room, but then, at the end of training, they come up to me and say quietly, 'Hey, Freddie! Where did you get that jacket?'"

Freddie Ljungberg ... Close up, Sunday, 9pm. on Sky 1.