Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I wasn't really interested in girls. Only football. I was just enjoying football all the time. There was a five-a-side next to the flat, and I used to play there all the time. It was all about football. I wanted to be a professional. That was my goal. I didn't want to be anything other than a footballer.
The teacher would say, 'Not everybody makes it as a footballer, so what do you want to be?' I'd say, 'A footballer.' The teacher would say, 'But not everybody makes it. So what do you want to be?' I'd say, 'A footballer.' Every year that happened! Nothing was going to get in the way of me being a footballer.
Everybody knows that Coutinho is a great footballer - here in England, they call him 'The Magician.' He made his decision to join Barcelona, but every time we meet and play for the Selecao, we have a good chat and maintain that friendship. He is an exceptional guy and one of the best friends football has given me.
When I was living on my own, for a footballer it's easy to do the things that you're not supposed to, or not what the sport science team says. For example, if there's a packet of crisps, you're going to eat them. The same with a packet of sweets. Go to bed at a certain time? You're not going to if you're on your own.
I'll always thank all of the teams I played for from the bottom of my heart because they all helped me grow as a person and a footballer, but the three years I spent in Naples were fantastic. That city gave me everything - my name, maturity, and international recognition. I get very emotional when Naples is mentioned.
The first time I watched a World Cup game was in 2002. That was the first time Senegal had ever qualified for the World Cup, and it was great moment that I will never forget in my life. I was ten years old at the time, and that experience of watching my country in a World Cup is what inspired me to become a footballer.
It is very nice Kasper has now also won the Premier League, too. I am very proud; I think he has done a fantastic job. It has been amazing to bring this lad into the world and bring him up and hear his wishes and hopes for the future, his ambitions; he made it fairly clear early on that he wanted to become a footballer.
Carlos Valderrama was the one I admired most, really. At the time, he was a top player, and I had a lot of admiration for him. I met him once, and he's a great person, someone who provided the country with a lot of joy. He was a very intelligent footballer who could create something out of nothing as well as score goals.
I would have loved to have been a footballer like my great uncle Matt Busby, but I knew quite early on that I wasn't going to make the grade. Luckily I was told by the age of 13 that I wasn't good enough. That's not a bad thing. You see this 'X Factor' generation of kids now who don't accept that they're not good enough.
I was with my mum in the shops, a ladies boutique or something, and I was asked what I wanted to be when I grow up. I think you're supposed to say an ambulance man or a footballer or a soldier or something like that, and I told all my mother's friends that I wanted to be Minister for Health. She was mortified, needless to say.
Hendrix was the first person I had come across who seemed completely free, and when you're nine or 10, your life is entirely dominated by adults. So he represented this thing that I wanted to be. Hendrix was the first person who made me think it might be good to be a singer and a guitarist - before that I wanted to be a footballer.
I've never fancied that footballer lifestyle. I suppose I could live that kind of flash life. People stereotype child actors and kind of expect you to go off the rails a bit, be a bit crazy, but that's not really happened yet. I've got a big family so that helps, and they live really close to the studios so it's just so much easier.
Any footballer's dream would be to play for Manchester United and to play at Old Trafford. The pitch just has this iconic feeling about it. It's elevated like it's almost a stage for the players, and I always enjoyed that you can kind of just slip right off the edges. Seeing the little nuances of it, you know, it's just special to be there.
I still have a picture: three cars, big house, I'm standing there like I'm 50 Cent. I look at it sometimes and say, 'Look how stupid you were.' But that made me who I am, and I can look back and see it. I've learned. I grew up. I woke up one morning, looked in the mirror, and thought, 'No, that's not me. I don't want to be that. I'm a footballer.'