Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Do you know what I love about hunting? That I am no one in the woods, no one at all. I thought the animals might recognize me, but they didn't. They did not even ask me for any autographs.
What I do when speaking in public is trying to do it as best as possible and trying to make everybody comfortable with my words. Sometimes getting this is very difficult, but I try my best.
It was the best 10 years of my career, in fact they are the only team I ever actually played for. That’s what happens when you play for Everton, you forget the rest, the rest means nothing.
Footballers are an easy target. They are offered big lines of credit. Every sport is vulnerable; its such a big gambling industry, and there are problems with syndicates in other countries.
I know so many players who say they wouldn't entertain coaching, until they retire that is, and then they want to take their coaching badges. I suspect this might happen with David Beckham.
When you talk about obesity, there's so many things that can cause that. It can be a medical thing, or down to the individual. There's a lot of other things involved than eating a Mars bar.
It doesn't matter what anyone tells me, I know that I can rely on myself. It comes from my parents. They are the same strong-minded people as I am and I just don't let anyone bring me down.
If I don't get the service or if I don't the ball in the box, where I want it, I start drifting into midfield. I go and look for the ball. I try to be important for the team in other areas.
I don't want to be an invisible coach. I want to provide guidelines to solve problems, coming from the base I have, as I had to work a lot considering I did not play at Barca until I was 17.
I'd been ill and hadn't trained for a week and I'd been out of the team for three weeks before that, so I wasn't sharp. I got cramp before half-time as well. But I'm not one to make excuses.
Footballers are an easy target. They are offered big lines of credit. Every sport is vulnerable; it's such a big gambling industry, and there are problems with syndicates in other countries.
In the last year my wife has noticed me struggling to get downstairs on a Sunday morning. I've two young children and football has been so good to me over the years I don't want to spoil it.
I don't go looking for the post-match team pictures posted by players on Instagram, but usually, someone ends up showing them to me, or I notice them when they get printed in the newspapers.
For sure, I would like to continue my life with the strings of football by being a coach, manager - I don't know. But one thing is clear: I will continue doing something related to football.
I apologise now to everybody for being the way I've been. What I was doing, torturing myself over an illness, is horrible. You push them away because you're trying to quantify what's gone on.
I remember, when I was 24, I said 34 was going to be the limit I will play to. But as everyone says, the older you get, the longer you want to go on because it gives you so much satisfaction.
If you'd asked me at the start of my career I would have said I was going to be a manager. I may still be in future, but there seemed to be an expectation it was a natural progression for me.
I never expected to adapt so quickly, but if you are a foreigner it's up to you to adapt to English football because you can't change it. I think I've achieved something in the way I adapted.
I started playing with my dad, and football was my dream forever. Step by step, I learnt a lot. I worked really hard, and finally when I was eighteen, I signed my first professional contract.
People think racist abuse stops on the football pitch, but that's just the beginning. When you go home, you are still confronted with it. Football is just a magnifying glass of the real world.
When I was 18, I never expected to be what I was - you hope to make your debut, to play for the national team, and I want to achieve something similar off the pitch to what I did on the pitch.
We are trying to educate players to use their spare time to train for a life after football, which comes to everybody. You can lead a lot of horses to water, but you can't make them all drink.
I've just completed Mike's [Mann] Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e. from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's [Briffa] to hide the decline.
So much of my career was affected by injuries. Not just the well documented surgery, but the hamstring pulls and other things. Injuries hit me hard, and they always seemed to come at key times.
I would like Ajax to be people's favourite second team. Like in Spain, if you are a Real Madrid fan, then you can't be a Barcelona supporter. It's the same in Italy. But you can be an Ajax fan.
I love playing football. I always look at it as there's a lot worse things you can be doing than coming into a training ground in the morning and playing footy and having a laugh with the boys.
As a goalkeeper you need to be good at organising the people in front of you and motivating them. You need to see what's going on and react to the threats. Just like a good manager in business.
When I was switching around in my early stages, people underestimated how difficult it was just to go from playing centre midfield to right-back to centre-back to right-back to centre midfield.
People always say it's a shame someone as talented as Ryan Giggs or George Best before him never played in a World Cup or European Championship and I don't want my name to be added to that list.
I don't like the showy nationalism - a tattoo, wrapping yourself in a flag - that doesn't matter to me. The way to show your patriotism and commitment is to go and support or play for your team.
As a coach or manager, if it was something that had to be done I'd be comfortable doing it but I'd still be true to myself. I wouldn't turn into a madman or start throwing teacups and screaming.
Certainly every manager I've played under you take things from them. That's just part of gaining all that knowledge over the years. Some good, some not so good, but it's all part of the process.
People say, 'Pep won in Barca, but it was boring,' or, 'Pep won in Bayern, but it was boring.' I understand that. But games won, goals scored, goals conceded, titles... sorry, guys, it was good!
People say that Andrea Pirlo is the main player and that everything goes through him, but that's an illusion. Pirlo is a brilliant player but doesn't dominate Italy's play as much as people say.
In France, the gastronomy is one of the best in the world. But when you move to England, everybody tells you to be careful about fish & chips. And avoid fried English breakfasts. I now know why.
I believe to have shown that, at times, the impossible can become possible. It all depends on how much each and every one of us believes in our dreams, in our strength, and in our determination.
Football is a game with tight results in which you don't need to be the dominant team; if you're a bit lucky and make the right decision at the right time, then you can be as successful as well.
The way I see it, Messi is the best player in history. He is the one who changes the course of games; he's the best. There is no comparison in my view; he's the world number one and by a margin.
To implement a new sport aside your tradition takes time. You definitely need a strategy for the entire country. You need highly qualified coaches for all regions that work with the same concept.
China has great potentials; the people are hard-working and focused. But they have to close the gap as far as the pace of the game is concerned. Football in the future will get faster and faster.
We won't ever see another one like Paul Scholes. He is a legend and a real benchmark. He is not interested in the modern-day footballer's life off the pitch, but he is a world-class player on it.
I'm never going to be seen as an attacking midfielder who's going to dribble past anyone, create untold chances, and score lots of goals, but going forward is something I've always enjoyed doing.
Liverpool is no different to any other city in the country for footballers. If you are famous and people know you have money, there will always be someone who wants to make a name for themselves.
Capello put me behind Demetrio Albertini, so I had the right position. I had to follow him like a shadow. It was to learn the basics, but at the same time, it was also a great vote of confidence.
If you're a senior player, and you really want to make an impact in the dressing room, it's difficult if you have players there who are not as committed as you are and they have a certain status.
The midfielders are important: they have to offer themselves to receive the ball and make good use of it, take choices, try not to lose the ball and defend. But I don't feel like a leader at all.
I love my films. I have stacks and stacks of DVDs. I put Last of the Mohicans on the other day with Daniel Day-Lewis. It hurts me to say it because he's a Millwall fan, but I think he's fantastic.
I was lucky enough to play at Old Trafford, and we always talked about the atmosphere on a Tuesday night, the special atmosphere you create, and the crowd is rocking when you go out for a warm-up.
I'll play anywhere for Arsenal, but hopefully, given my chance up front, I can do something, because I've always been more of a striker than a winger, and I think I could show a bit more up front.
Ibiza is a popular vacation place for a lot of the players in Spain. If you go in the summer, there are some of the world's most famous movie and music stars, so nobody cares about soccer players.