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Most of my best games were when I felt crap - I could hardly move on the morning of the World Cup semi-final in 1990 - but there's a thing called adrenaline that gets you through.
People have no idea how hard football is, absolutely no idea. It's all about pace. You can say, 'Yeah, you've got speed of thought' - but you've got to have a little bit of a zip.
That's one of the magical things about the Olympics, Team GB will have someone challenging in a sport that we've never watched and all of a sudden it'll be the biggest thing ever.
The competitive nature of most mums and dads is astounding. The fear they instil in our promising but sensitive Johnny is utterly depressing. We need a parental cultural revolution.
When Bob Wilson left the BBC for ITV, I got the 'Football Focus' job, and it went from there. It came completely out of the blue, but the fact I had a high profile certainly helped.
I've known Mark Hughes for half a lifetime. We joined Barcelona in the same summer of 1986, played together under Terry Venables and Luis Aragones, and have kept in touch ever since.
We're all concerned about sports rights being so expensive. Obviously, we are funded by the licence fee payers, so it's not always easy to compete with those who can get greater revenue.
I don't feel that I'm particularly political. I'm interested in politics; I'll express my view if I feel strongly about something, but humanitarian issues, I think, are slightly different.
In the old days, you had an audience of about 400, half of whom were committee members from somewhere or other sitting in their suits. It's become a real sports event with sports fans now.
I think medically, football is generally well looked after. There are always checks made. Anything which can be done to make footballers or sportsmen of any area safer has to be encouraged.
The two centre-backs, Rob Huth and Wes Morgan, are in many ways journeyman pros, but they have that wonderful attitude and never-say-die spirit that has culminated in them being top of the league.
Messi doesn't have to do it in the Premier League to prove himself. The Champions League is the ultimate club competition. If he was in the Premier League, he'd be the best player by some distance.
My fiancee's brother-in-law was recently paralysed in an accident and it really brought home the fact that thousands of young people live with spinal injuries. It's an issue I wish had more coverage.
I've been in the public eye so long, I can't remember how it was when it was different - from my mid-20s onwards, when my career started to blossom and I became an international, world cups and things.
In the time I spent with him, Jurgen Klopp was enigmatic, larger than life, and extremely quick-witted. He is quite unique as a football manager in many ways, and that is what makes him so entertaining.
I think the important thing we have to remember about football in this country is that it is very vibrant, and it's very good to watch, not only in the flesh but also on TV, because our stadiums are full.
The train's always full of football fans going up to see matches. Oh, they make sure I hear their points of view all right. They all want to have their say about their team, and make their opinions known.
Diving is a really, really difficult one because a player is the only one who genuinely knows whether they have dived. You can look at it at 40 different angles and not know. And you can just fall over, too.
We have got too many kids around the house to have a romantic meal at home. But Danielle is a fantastic cook. She does a brilliant lasagne, great roasts and a great chilli dish. She knows the way to my heart.
You never know how long a player has left, especially with strikers. Once you turn 30, as a striker, you are usually on the way down, and playing from the age of 16, at such a high level, has to take its toll.
We have got too many kids around the house to have a romantic meal at home. But Danielle is a fantastic cook. She does a brilliant lasagne, great roasts and a great chilli dish. She knows the way to my heart.
Fella’s a genius. Best ever by a distance in my life time. Never really saw Pele… Souness, Gullit, Venables and now Rooney agree Messi is the best they have seen. He plays a game with which we are not familiar.
Looking at the way the game is played, I'm envious of the conditions. We played on some ropey World Cup surfaces. I genuinely never look back and wish I earned the money they do today, but I do think of that element.
The best, most successful managers in the modern era are those who can keep a player happy even if he is not in the team. Given the size of the squads and the use of rotation nowadays, that's tougher than it's ever been.
I can't understand why someone wouldn't have a degree of sympathy for people that had to flee their country, travel to try and find their home somewhere, and nobody wants them. How could you not be a little bit sympathetic?
Speaking Spanish and Japanese has opened doors in my career and helped me bridge cultural differences, both in my personal and business life. During my football career I realised quickly what difference language skills can make
I think people come and go, 'I'm going to find the real Gary. What is it... the real Gary? I've got to find it.' But the thing is, it's pretty much what you see is what you get. I'm just like this. There's no hidden viciousness.
I just think to be a manager you've got to live and breathe and have this incredible enthusiasm for football, the whole thing. And while I love the game, and it's been a large part of my life, it's not the only thing in my life.
Some players are quite homely, and they don't see themselves going abroad; others would relish the challenge. I can only speak personally, but I always wanted the challenge, and to go and live in a place like Barcelona was great.
We are in the entertainment business and we all know if you are top of the tree you get the big money. Those of us who have been in it are the fortunate ones but we understand that we probably don't deserve it as much as the nurses or teachers.
I don't think there was a definite day, but it would have been around my mid-20s. I was always interested in the media side of things. When we travelled with England away, or to World Cups, I used to sit with journos while they wrote their copy.
In terms of the pricing of football tickets, there's no need - given the massive amount of money that's coming in now from television rights, there's no need for them to be greedy. Look after the supporters; make sure they can still afford to go and watch football.
Ooh, it's too embarrassing to share my innermost romantic secrets - although I have written Danielle the odd poem. If anything they are more comedic than romantic. They used to be well-received but that was before she started studying Shakespeare at drama college. Now I feel so inept.
The whole kiss-and-tell thing is a negative approach that often happens in a World Cup. We will see negative stories about the players and it can affect their confidence and the overall performance of the national team on the pitch, let alone the bid to actually stage the competition.
That's what being a footballer is, really: you train at this time, you finish at that time, then you do that, then you go home, then you're not allowed out, then you do this... there comes a point in your career - about thirty, thirty-one - when you get a bit sick of being screamed at.
Ooh, it's too embarrassing to share my innermost romantic secrets - although I have written Danielle the odd poem. If anything they are more comedic than romantic. They used to be well received but that was before she started studying Shakespeare at drama college. Now I feel so inept.
Playing football and presenting TV are totally different things, but there are similarities: it's exciting, it can go well, it can go badly... the difference is when presenting goes badly, it doesn't really affect anyone's life, whereas when you have a bad day on the pitch, it affects people's moods for a whole week.
It's true: a lot of sportspeople really struggle to find something to do when they finish. It tips them into all sorts of strange things. With ex-footballers, it's really scary. I think 70% of them get divorced within five years. It's hard. You go from being really famous to not that famous. Your salary drops through the floor.
I watched Leicester City lose in the 1969 FA Cup final with my dad and granddad when I was eight and cried all the way home. I have seen them get promoted and relegated. I played for them for eight years. I even got a group of like-minded fans and friends to stump up a few quid to salvage the club when they went into liquidation.
This is ludicrous. Seven- and eight-year-olds valiantly trying to cover the same acreage as those grown-up chaps in the Premier League is absurd. To add to the lunacy, a little goalkeeper, barely out of nappies, has to stand between posts that are eight strides apart - adult strides - and under a crossbar more than twice his height.
Fundamentally, footballers don't look around a dressing room and think, 'He's a black player... he's Japanese.' They don't think like that. They think, 'He's a good player; he can help. He's not very good.' I'm not trying to defend anyone's actions, but there are going to be isolated incidents because it's an emotive, passionate sport.
You cannot get involved in debate on 'MOTD'. You can do it on Sky because they've got hours and hours. We've got a couple of minutes. It's a very disciplined show. Our primary purpose is to show the action, and the analysis is very secondary. We have lots of people who would prefer no analysis. We have lots of people who would prefer more analysis.
The big thing is, everybody says it's being in the right place at the right time. But it's more than that, it's being in the right place all the time. Because if I make 20 runs to the near post and each time I lose my defender, and 19 times the ball goes over my head or behind me - then one time I'm three yards out, the ball comes to the right place and I tap it in - then people say, right place, right time. And I was there *all* the time.