Football brings changes and different direction in your life. It's about how you adapt to it and move on.

As a football coach, everything in your life comes after your football schedule. I just could not make that commitment.

I want to be so far removed from the idea that it's like, 'Oh, right, he won a Super Bowl.' Football is only a small part of your life.

Football is strange like that. People become a big part of your life and then they lose a job and you might never see them for the rest of your lives. It's the worst thing about football, really.

'Athletico Mince' started life as a football podcast but has dropped the football, unless the latest on the state of the 'hair island' atop Steve McLaren's head is your idea of football coverage.

To have a platform to make a difference ultimately, which is what I want to do with my life, we've got to win football games. When you're highly paid and your losing, no one really cares what you have to say.

I like tricks; I like to dazzle. Dribbling and leaving your opponent on his backside is what life is for. If I achieve what I want to, then I'll mark a distinct era in football. I'm the Che Guevara of modern soccer.

I played basketball my whole life. It definitely helps. It translates to going up for rebounds and going up for balls in the end zone. Quick feet. It helps with getting in and out of your cuts. It definitely all translates to football.

If you say you're going to do something, you do it. If you start it, you finish it. Yes sir, no ma'am. And you've got to have that kind of structure in your life. It kind of helped me be that disciplined person that I am, whether it's with workouts, film or just the game of football.

The most important thing for me was talking to players like Xavi, Andres Iniesta and Javier Mascherano - they would tell me about the life away from football. All I wanted to do was play football but they explained how important everything is away, how you prepare and live your life.

For most players it's hard to accept you've ended your football career and that you have to go out and do something else. But the way it happened to me, so suddenly... I went into depression and had to deal with that, being depressed, something that had never happened to me in my life before.

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