Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
When I retire, the only thing that concerns me is that no one can say that I was a bad team-mate or disrespectful or self-important.
I like to play. It doesn't matter if it's just me up front on my own or alongside another striker. I always want to play in the first XI.
Living in Brooklyn it's a very fend-for-yourself place. Maybe it's made me a little bit harsh but I don't consider that to be pejorative.
Winning the European Championship was a great thing for me, and I understood what it was to win a major trophy and what I had been missing.
Football is not a sport populated by honest people. You can't tell the truth or be up front with people. It's a business, and no one is friends.
When you have a bad result, you want the next game to come as quickly as possible because a good result will make people forget about the bad result.
The songs can be dark, but the adrenaline doesn't really change, regardless of what it is I'm singing, I still have the adrenaline, it's still a high.
In your life, you go through a difficult situation or a very good situation, and you have different moods, but you learn things from your experiences.
When I was a boy, I was really thin, small, long-haired. I always looked young. People thought, 'He can't play football.' I used that to my advantage.
Each player has one place in the world where he is happy, and as a result, he plays well. My place is Anfield. Every game I can play there, I feel good.
You always have to aspire to everything; winning titles is what I've been missing. And I will give my life and everything I have in order to achieve it.
Fitness is important, but the most important thing is how you adapt and the way you feel physically. To adapt to a new position. To try to change your game.
If we win the Champions League, everyone is a better, more recognised player, but if you win an individual award and nothing with your team, it means nothing.
You have to know what club you are playing for, or you just play for yourself. Every time I put on a Liverpool shirt, I know it is more than just a football game.
The Premier League is very difficult football and very different to when you play in Europe, but the player has to have experience to adapt, and this is the key point.
Liverpool is a fundamental part of my life. They don't remember me that way, but time will change that. I could not have chosen a better place to go when I left Atletico.
I've always been a sad person. I'm a happy person too, but it's a thing in my brain or my spirit or something, I'm just sad and really acutely aware of mortality and loss.
English football has an enormous following across the world, not just because of the players but because of its history, its tradition, the excitement, the capacity crowds.
The live show allows me to transcend myself, because it's not about me anymore. The writing process is very much about me but then the live show is not. They feel really different.
My head is in Liverpool and on helping save our season. I am professional and I always fulfil my deals. I haven't considered leaving, although in football that depends on the club.
I don't know what to say about myself. I don't know myself (laughs). People say my humility but I believe we're all humble in our own way. I try to stay close to my family and friends.
If the manager thinks there is another player better than you, he is going to play, and this is the way. You have to try to improve and keep fighting and try to change the manager's mind.
Liverpool gave me a second home. I was 24, I left my team, my town, and I went there. My memories there are just amazing. I have no words to thank them enough, and that's why I will always be a fan.
Sometimes I'd like to have a conversation with a friend in a restaurant without feeling I'm being watched. At this rate I will have to go on holiday to Greenland. But maybe the Eskimos would know me.
After winning the European Championship with Spain, I know exactly how it feels to win a major trophy, and I know that, if we can win at Liverpool, it will feel the same or even better than it did with Spain.
Big clubs in Europe always go through difficult spells where it appears as though there is no light at the end of the tunnel. But because they are big clubs, they always come back, and they do so with a vengeance.
I guess just personally I've become a bolder person in my day-to-day. I think a lot of it came from moving to Brooklyn. I just sort of became an adult and started speaking up for myself and not apologising for myself.
I didn't realise how my life was changing. When I was 17, 18, 20, I didn't realise how big football was and everything around football. How many people live for football and love football. I was a professional, but I was a supporter.
Liverpool is a massive club in reputation, but as soon as I came here, it felt like Atletico to me. It is a working city, an honest city. The people work all week, and on Saturday they want to go to Anfield and watch the best team in the world.
When I played against Chelsea, there was always a big motivation because it was a special game; it was always one of the biggest games of the season. This is one of the reasons why I wanted to join Chelsea: because I want to be part of this kind of team.
The biggest ambition in my career is still to win the European Cup. I want to have a picture of that to look at later; I want to have that medal. You can have a contract that is better than your friends, but no player looks back and says: 'I won more money.'
The worst part about not playing is when you think that you are ready to do it. You try to get more minutes, taking the chances, but you end up in a situation where things have not gone well for you for weeks - or for years. That is like swimming wet clothes.
It's not easy to come somewhere new and have to find your place. You might feel someone doesn't like you, or you might need to find new friends. It's not easy, and I don't like this kind of thing. It's not easy, so you want to protect the players who are alone.
I was captain in Atletico at 19, playing in the same team as Demetrio Albertini, who won three Champions Leagues, and Sergi Barjuan from Barcelona, who had won everything, and they were 32, 33. I was a kid as captain, so I wasn't the real captain, just a kid learning from them.
When you play, you do not ask yourself how it feels to be on the bench. You have to live it to understand how difficult it is to be there without being there. To enter a match knowing you do not have the confidence of the coach. To play when you simply don't have the habit of playing.
Madrid is not as big as London, but it is true when you are coming from a big city like Madrid, nothing is going to surprise you, and I am very happy to move to a city like London. It is a big city, and you can do everything you want with the respect that the English people always have.
The writing is therapeutic for me, it's an introverted process, I'm really inside my head. It's a really obsessive process. The live show, though, is the opposite. It's an extroverted process. It pushes me to connect with people, and so it pulls me out of my head and just pulls me out of myself.
Real Madrid is like Manchester United or Liverpool or Bayern Munich. There is so much history, and you need to play and win against that history. It's difficult to play against them because you fight against everything - the history, the players - but because of that, the motivation is always so high.
One of the reasons I chose to come to Liverpool was because of the mentality of the club. It's a working club and a working city. I don't know why but I feel like one of the people here. They recognise me and wish me luck but in Spain they surround you and you can't do anything. I think they're happy with me here.
One of the reasons I chose to come to Liverpool was because of the mentality of the club. It's a working club and a working city. I don't know why, but I feel like one of the people here. They recognise me and wish me luck, but in Spain, they surround you and you can't do anything. I think they're happy with me here.
I was always fighting with everyone when I was a kid. I was playing with people two or three years older than me, and I had to survive. So I love the physical game, the contact. And I don't know why, but I think football is like this. It is not just touching the ball and stringing together 50 pretty passes consecutively.
I am a big fan of the Gallagher brothers. At Liverpool, they came a few times; they are friends of Steven Gerrard. It was nice to meet them. When I was in Spain, I couldn't speak English, so I couldn't understand the lyrics. When I came to England, I started studying music and trying to understand what my favourite songs said.
I remember when I first came to Liverpool, Pepe Reina helped with everything, and he made it easy for me. When I was Atletico Madrid captain, I tried to help everyone. These are the basics in football: you need to create an atmosphere and try to create a group of friends. It's not easy, and it doesn't always happen, but you have to try.
When you become an adult you just make that transition and you're right... it's fun and exciting to be an adult and exciting to have independence, but once you're out from under the cover of your family's protection and love, you sort of have to take a step back and come to terms with the fact that you won't really ever have that again in the same way. You'll never be a kid again.