I don't know where horse riding could have taken me, and it's something I can always go back to when I've retired from football, but the crossroads came in my life when Chelsea wanted to sign me and make me a professional footballer in 2013 when I was 20.

I had a great career, to go from a small town in Switzerland to play for the Italian national team was a dream come true. So was playing for Lazio and Chelsea, winning trophies. When I look back I am very grateful for what I had, rather than what I missed.

I've always been clear - I feel good at Chelsea. Every week, I repeat the same on PSG. It's a big team but an inferior league. I don't want to return to France, because I've won everything over there - the league title, cup, best player, best young player.

Can space break? I mean the space of art galleries. Over the past 100 years, art galleries have gone from looking like Beaux Arts salons to simple storefronts to industrial lofts to the gleaming giant white cubes of Chelsea with their shiny concrete floors.

Money plays an important role in football, but it is not the dominating factor. When Chelsea play a Carling Cup game in a small city, and it could result in a draw - the excitement, the spirit, the atmosphere - that's the real beauty of football in England.

Out of all the clubs who were interested, I got the feeling that, deep down, Chelsea showed that they really wanted me. There were lots of reasons I came to Chelsea. They showed a real desire to get me to come here. I didn't have to think about it too much.

I was released by Chelsea at 14 years old. I remember it, a Tuesday night. On the Wednesday, I was training with Fulham, five minutes from my house, and then on the Thursday, I was training with West Ham. After one session at both clubs, they both wanted me.

I was still with Sunderland at the time of my first cap in 2010, and I remember getting the text to let me know that I was going to be called up to the squad - it was a Friday night, and I was in a hotel in London because we were playing Chelsea the next day.

Appropriation is the idea that ate the art world. Go to any Chelsea gallery or international biennial and you'll find it. It's there in paintings of photographs, photographs of advertising, sculpture with ready-made objects, videos using already-existing film.

Chelsea was the most difficult time. In the middle of the season, I already knew that I wouldn't play again, because the club had decided I wouldn't play. It was a frustrating decision because I felt rather good, and I thought that I could contribute something.

When I played for Stuttgart, I met Manchester United and Chelsea. With United, I immediately think of the duels with Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes and with Chelsea, it was John Terry. Those players are symbols of their clubs and the success they had at that time.

I know it could be a bit more difficult in England because you are not playing all the time and you play in different positions. But I do expect to score many goals for Chelsea and I hope to keep the average of between 10 to 20 goals a season, that would be good.

I think you've seen the likes of Liverpool, Chelsea, Man City - the top clubs - all now tapping into the women's market and developing that side of the club. It's great for women's football, and I look at how far we've come, and it's great to have teams like this.

I never had problems with injuries as a kid or in the youth team. My injuries started at Chelsea, when I broke my foot during a pre-season game. That was just pure bad luck, but after that, I had some muscular injuries, too, so I had to get to know my body better.

I looked at it, and it was like, 'Can I push and make the Olympic squad?' It is tough going from 18 players, including Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. I thought that might be a push too far for me. I had no Champions League with Chelsea. I lost my motivation.

People think I got loads of money at City and then left for Chelsea to chase more money. I didn't get that money. I moved to Chelsea because they made promises to me. They told me I would get opportunities, I would play and that they believed in me as a young player.

Wolfsburg might be a smaller club when you look at reputations and I thought about it long and hard. I could have stayed at Chelsea. Mourinho told me that I would get my chance. You have to make a decision, though, and in the end I only wanted to play football again.

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.

When Chelsea came calling for me, it was an opportunity, it was a chance and looking from the outset you may not be sure how it's going to go. But it's one you can't turn down, you have to grab it with both hands. Then you have to work as hard as you can to make it work.

The very best hotel I've stayed in is the Intercontinental on Park Lane. We went there for the Chelsea Flower Show a few years ago, and it was sheer luxury. Everybody had a smile on their face. I came home and changed all my pillows because the hotel ones were so beautiful.

I had a good time at Chelsea and was accepted in the team, so it's difficult to explain why I left. My performances were good as well, but there was a time in my second season when I felt I didn't have the manager's trust any more and I didn't play many matches from the start.

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.

I moved to New York on October 21, 2004, and it was the day that the Chelsea Grill, a restaurant in Hell's Kitchen on 9th Avenue between 46th and 47th Street, opened. I had never waited a table in my life, but I walked in and lied to the manager in a very J. Pierrepont Finch way.

I went to UCLA and studied studio art. I thought I was going to be a gallery painter, photographer, or ceramicist. Then, when I graduated, that didn't happen immediately. I didn't suddenly get solo shows in Chelsea, and I realized that is actually kind of difficult to break into.

The whole London football scene is now financially more powerful and ambitious than ever before. That reflects the city's economic might and its multiculturalism. Now West Ham have a new , and Spurs and Chelsea will follow. And the London clubs have widened their areas of support.

Most of our players come from the Championship; Chelsea can get more or less anyone from around the world. Some clubs in this division have owners who say it doesn't matter what they spend. I don't know what happened to Financial Fair Play but it didn't exactly level the playing field.

It's one thing if you live in London and you're rooting for Chelsea or you're in New York and you love the Giants or Jets and no matter who's on the team you're into it. It's different in tennis; you're sort of your own guy, so you have to reach out and grab a person in a different way.

We have a psychologist at Chelsea who goes around seeing the loan players. He said every top, top player has a dark side. So someone like Diego Costa sometimes oversteps the mark. But you can see he plays on the edge. He said I had to develop that. It's not natural for me to be like that.

Perhaps I am influenced by philosophies like the one at Chelsea which was 'If it isn't broken, change it' which saw us win three league titles in five years playing three different formations and tactical strategies so that the opposition could never keep up with our evolution at the time.

When I first came to England I hated football and knew nothing about it. Watching 0-0s and 1-0s having come from Aussie Rules was just dull. The only player I had heard of was David Beckham. But when I was living in Leicester I started watching Match of the Day and really got into Chelsea.

I'm not suited to Bolton or Blackburn, I would be more suited to Inter or Real Madrid. It wouldn't be a problem to me to go and manage those clubs because I would win the double or the league every time. Give me Manchester United or Chelsea and I would do the same, it wouldn't be a problem.

It's tough, as Chelsea's a very special place for me, and I've always had a great relationship with the fans, but it became very obvious that I was not in the manager's plans. I have achieved great things there, but I just needed to play football, and that's why I got the move to Fenerbahce.

I love heels, and as a size 36, I've accumulated a wall of amazing high heels from catwalk shows over the years where designers had to make especially small shoes. Tom Ford's golden versions are my favourite. I do, however, also live in my flat Saint Laurent Chelsea boots or Givenchy sneakers.

I saw 'Brokeback Mountain' in a packed house in Chelsea, New York, when I was filming a Bollywood film there. Chelsea, being a predominately gay neighbourhood, had the most euphoric reaction. I saw couples holding hands and crying at the end. It was the most heartening viewing I have ever been to.

Honestly, the All In women's locker room was such an inspirational group of women. What I love about all the women involved - Chelsea, Britt, Madison, Jordynne Grace, Brandi Rhodes, Tenille Dashwood, Penelope Ford, Mandy Leon - is we all bring something so different to the table for a common vision.

I've never been unfaithful outside 'Made In Chelsea.' I don't care what the reputation looks like. I was unfaithful on that television show because it's a show about that. I'm not saying it was acceptable behavior, but the show wouldn't work without relationships failing. In real life it's completely different.

Manchester United and Liverpool have been bought with huge leverage, and we've got Roman Abramovich at Chelsea who can turn his loans into shares. It is really important for the Premier League to ask itself: if a club is being bought on such a mountain of debt, isn't that a possible recipe for disaster for the future?

I wanted to live in the suburbs and have a white picket fence and my own bedroom. And a staircase - I thought having a staircase meant that you were a normal family. I thought somehow if you could transplant us to the suburbs, we would become a normal family. But in retrospect, I'm so grateful I grew up in the Chelsea.

There is already good organisation at Chelsea, but at Milan, it was about prevention rather than treatment. We want to integrate some of the things we had at Milan here. Some people are surprised when they hear that we solved David Beckham's back problem by fixing his teeth, for example, but we will look at everything.

Here are a few of the actors who have brought my novels to TV life: Bill Pullman, Holly Hunter, Frances McDormand, Julian Sands, Gena Rowlands, Rob Lowe, Julia Ormond, Chelsea Hobbs, Tate Donovan, Anne Heche, Max Martini, Campbell Scott, Kimberly Paisley-Williams, Alexa Vega, and the late legends Richard Kiley and Kim Hunter.

I knew Chelsea had made some offers while I was at Shakhtar so when I eventually arrived here, after a short spell with Anzhi Makhachkala, it was amazing. Having David Luiz, Oscar and Ramires here when I joined was very important for me because they helped me a lot with the language and inside the club, so it was very helpful.

I wouldn't say Pulisic is there to fill Hazard's boots. It's not fair to put that load on him. He's there to bring another way of playing for Chelsea and he will create his own footprints basically and build his own legacy there at the Bridge. He is definitely a player the fans will like. In America he is rated very, very highly.

I'd been at Chelsea for a while and progressed quite quickly until I got to the first team, and then it was different. I was used to playing every minute of every game, but when you get to that level, the step up is massive. There are world-class players in front of you, and no matter how talented you are, breaking in is difficult.

The big players historically hold a lot of influence at Chelsea and while I would never doubt their attempts to win matches for the club, their levels undoubtedly change depending on how they feel about a manager at the time. They're either having him or they're not, and once they're not it spells borrowed time for the guy in charge.

I hope that any expansion of London will learn from the planning examples of some of its most desirable areas such as Chelsea, Notting Hill, Belgravia and Mayfair. All are characterised by high density and a generosity of green spaces. They are all pedestrian-friendly with shops, entertainment, restaurants and pubs within easy walking distance.

People know who I am or are fans of 'Chelsea Lately,' and that makes my shows more fun. People know I'm silly and are on board with what I'm bringing to the table. I see the boyfriends who got dragged to the show by their girlfriends, and by the end, they're laughing harder than anybody. That's the best feeling: 'I knew I was going to get you.'

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