Playing for Pep has certainly lived up to the expectations. I knew him from the Bundesliga and saw him coaching Barcelona when everyone saw an excellent manager who is able to get players to improve. He is a great personality and a very nice guy.

We know the Premier League is a spectacular league. We would like to play there, but if you take all the positives and all the negatives, it's very difficult to leave Barcelona. If you feel at home and you're from Barcelona it's difficult to change.

Personally, I would like to face Barcelona in every game because it gives you so much motivation and you learn a lot from it. Pep Guardiola is a really important person in the history of their club. He has a winning mentality and that is fundamental.

Barcelona is one of the best cities in the world. I love it there. I love Big Sur. It's stunning and you get a therapeutic experience there. The drive up the coast is one of the most beautiful I've ever done. Also, Hong Kong. I could easily live there!

Busquets has been a great player for Spain and Barcelona, don't get me wrong. He's a very effective player and is the first pick for every manager because he plays such a simple game. But we laud him as a genius, whereas our own we don't, we criticise.

The truth is my idea has been to always stay at Barcelona and see out the rest of my career here. Like I always say, one doesn't know what can happen in the future, but if it were up to me to decide, I would stay at Barcelona for the rest of my career.

One thing I've done in my life is train year-round to compete at anything, anything. I've got an invitation now to maybe be on the karate team for the Barcelona Olympics. I'm debating whether I want to do that. I just love to compete, and I want to win.

Barcelona focus a lot on what Barcelona does and not on what others are going to do. It creates a different way of working. Of course we studied our opponents to see their weak points and their strong points, but 70 per cent of the time, it was about us.

It was a difficult decision to say no twice to Barcelona. It was never a secret that I have admired them since I was a kid and that I always wished I could play for Barcelona. But life is made of hard decisions that sometimes go against what you dream of.

If you look at Barcelona and the way they press high, or Bayern Munich, the way they press high... that's what makes them the best teams, because when they lose the ball, in the first three seconds, that's when they get the ball back, really, really high.

My best has to be for Barcelona against Villarreal in 2006 - that is the one I am asked most about, and it is the one I am most proud of. Xavi chipped the ball to me, I chested it down, twisted and hit an overhead kick. It was the final goal in a 4-0 win.

As I'm growing up, going into holding midfield, I'm watching Busquets quite a lot for Barcelona. The way he controls the game, his reading of it, technically, defensively - everything about him cuts him out above the rest. I'm really enjoying watching him.

When we are little, we always dream, and the first teams that come into your head are those on the world stage for their marketing, their image, their publicity. That makes you dream about how nice it would be to play for Real Madrid, to play for Barcelona.

I am a believer in passing the ball on the ground, I was lucky to be part of teams like that at Arsenal, with the French national team and with Monaco and at Barcelona. I know you can win in other ways, but I believe that is the way football should be played.

I spend a lot of time in L.A., and when it rains there you get the entire rainfall for the year in two days, raindrops the size of mangoes. And in Barcelona, the Mediterranean storms come up from the sea, thunder and lightning; it's like the end of the world.

I am a curious creature and put my finger in as many cakes as I can: history, film, technology, etc. I'm also a freak for urban history, particularly Barcelona, Paris and New York. I know more weird stuff about 19th-century Manhattan than is probably healthy.

At Barcelona, I was exposed to talent. You had Ronaldinho, who was a marvel to watch. Deco is skilful and talented. Then there are players like Xavi, a good and hardworking man who gave his all. Iniesta is another. Then the name of Messi will come up in that list.

I've always said that I won't be a Barcelona player for 20 years with a secondary role. The moment that I feel my ambition is fading or that I am not able to deliver physically, I will step aside and leave feeling privileged and content of what I gave to the club.

Everybody could use the money, but you don't play for it - you play with your heart - and that's a big difference you see in Barcelona. Everybody wants to play there; everybody wants to enjoy themselves. It's maybe a small percentage, but maybe it's the difference.

I almost missed the chance to join Barcelona because I was on holiday in Mali visiting my parents' family for the first time. We spent all summer there and every day Barcelona were calling my mother's phone and getting no reply because she had left it in Barcelona.

For 'Around the World in 80 Plates' we got to travel all over, having what was like a cross between a culinary competition and races. And in each country we had a chef Ambassador. We went to London, Barcelona, Bologna, Hong Kong, Thailand, Morocco... It was amazing.

I love this style: get the ball back quickly, then play possession with so many combinations. When you watch that, you get the feeling you want to go out on the pitch and play football with your friends and just enjoy yourself. City and Barcelona are great examples.

With what I've already achieved in my career - winning trophies and playing in finals, important matches against Real Madrid and Barcelona, winning the Europa League and the Super Cup, and in the Champions League - sometimes you've earned the right to say something.

When Pep was at Barcelona, I was so young, 16 or 17 years old. I went to training a lot, and Pep Guardiola told me a lot of things, but I didn't stay in the first team. He is an amazing coach, and if he comes to the Premier League, I think he will win a lot of titles.

I admire Arsenal and the philosophy that the young players have. Liverpool, with their Spanish players, they also have an incredible squad. And Manchester United and Chelsea are teams that are very big, like Real Madrid and Barcelona, with money and incredible players.

I am not saying that I am at the same level as Messi or Ronaldo. They are the best two players in the world, but I am very proud that I managed to finish above them in the goalscoring charts, especially as I was playing for Atletico Madrid, not Barcelona or Real Madrid.

I first went to Barcelona in 1975 after university, and I stayed for three years. I learnt Catalan because that's what everyone speaks in the mountains. They speak English to foreigners, but what people say to each other is much more important than what they say to you.

For 'Vicky Cristina Barcelona,' for example, Woody Allen is one of the greatest American directors, and we really had a very good working relationship. We understand each other really well. He gave me one of the best opportunities somebody has ever given me in my career.

I never really understood the game until I saw Cruyff's Barcelona play. The first time that happened it opened up a new world to me. I began to understand that football was a collective thing, and that association between players meant you could keep the ball the whole game.

Because of my job, I get a lot of opportunity to grab a few days here and there in many cool cities for press commitments, magazine shoots and premieres - Barcelona, Madrid, Rome, Paris, Stockholm, New York, Berlin. I always try to get to a gallery or museum if there's time.

The best player I ever played with is probably Cesc Fabregas. I only got to play with him for a year before he went back to Barcelona, but I learned so much from him - the way he knew what he was going to do with the ball before he got it and his passing - and he scored goals.

I really love the Olympics: Daley Thompson's back-flip, Derek Redmond's father helping him finish the 400m after his hamstring snapped at the 1992 Games in Barcelona, Carl Lewis, Michael Johnson, Sir Steve Redgrave - childhood memories are flooded with these moments and idols.

There is definitely a difference when you are fighting for a title against clubs like United or Real Madrid or Barcelona. They are so used to winning, it means that you have to have a different frame of mind when you challenge them because that's the only way to overcome them.

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.

My friends back in Barcelona called me by that name (Picasso). It was stranger, more resonant, than "Ruiz." And those are probably the reasons I adopted it. Do you know what appealed to me about that name? Well, it was undoubtedly the double s, which is fairly unusual in Spain.

The problem is that when Argentina doesn't play well - and the same is true of Barcelona - the press think it is easy to blame Messi. We have seen time and time again that he wins games on his own when the team is not performing - but the media expect him to always be the hero.

Chicago is constantly auditioning for the world, determined that one day, on the streets of Barcelona, in Berlin's cabarets, in the coffee shops of Istanbul, people will know and love us in our multidimensional glory, dream of us the way they dream of San Francisco and New York.

Many great teams have players who have come through the youth system or have been at the club for a long time as their captains. I'm thinking of Steven Gerrard at Liverpool, John Terry at Chelsea, Raul at Real Madrid, as well as Puyol at Barcelona and Gary Neville at Man United.

If you are Cesc, going to Barcelona, he will make more money, more sponsorship, and he is going home. What did Arsenal do to keep him at the club? Absolutely nothing. Now the fans say he is not loyal. When you leave Arsenal, you become a traitor, regardless of what you have done.

Right now I'm living my boyhood dream, which was to play for a European club. The fact that it's a huge club like Barcelona makes it a tremendous honour. I like everything about the city: the climate, the people. It's quite similar to Brazil, which helps a lot. There's even a beach!

Asking Siri where the nearest sushi bar is - that's not interesting. What's interesting is asking your phone where one of your friends have last had dinner in the neighborhood, or having it recommend a cool paella place in Barcelona because it knows you eat paella all the time at home.

When Seoul hosted the Games in 1988, it became a symbol of the Asian Tigers' ascent onto the world stage. In 1992, the Barcelona Olympics represented the unification of Europe. And when Rio plays host in 2016, it will reinforce the growing importance of Brazil and Latin America as a whole.

If you want to keep up with the changes, then you have to watch as much football as you can. Live is the best way but also on television. All the best teams: Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and now City. What are they doing? If possible, go and see them training. You can always learn.

Barcelona is the best education possible. Training with Messi is something I will never forget - he was always the last off the pitch and working incredibly hard in the gym. If he is the best player in the world and works so hard, who are we? You can have all the crazy talent but you need to work.

Watching soccer is my main hobby, really. I'm no tactician or coach, but I enjoy watching the free flow of it, the different styles, and the histories behind clubs. Like Barcelona vs. Madrid - it's not just a soccer game; it's a geopolitical struggle. There are great storylines and no commercials.

People remember the treble in 1999 as if we only had to turn up to collect three trophies. But on that cup run, we were 1-0 down against Liverpool going into injury time, and we turned it around to win 2-1. And everyone remembers the Champions League final in Barcelona, where the same thing happened.

When you get to 16 at Barcelona, it's the age that you sign your main contract. I was about to sign that, but we knew there were a lot of other options because you always get them from other teams at that time. I didn't have the option to come to Arsenal until I was right about to sign with Barcelona.

When I was first writing, I was writing mostly about sporting events, which was really what my assignments were. I was working on the Tour de France bike race and the Barcelona Olympic Games, and those songs tend to be very big, very bombastic-type music, which is the type of music that I love to write.

It was a great time in my career, playing for Barcelona with the best players in the world, in the best team in the world at that moment. It was amazing for me. I can always say to anyone that I played at Barcelona with Messi, with Xavi, with Iniesta, with Pedro, with Pique. And we won a lot of trophies.

I respect opinions, I don't give opinions on them. I learnt to respect them. And I also have a very clear opinion on Rivaldo. He was a great player and the image that comes to me is of him controlling the ball on the chest and scoring in Barcelona. The most beautiful thing in this world. That's my opinion.

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