I've played in a few Champions League matches and got into quarter-finals - sometimes unluckily knocked out - but you have to prepare like any other football match: you have to play the game, not the occasion. That's been instilled in me since I was a kid.
It's not like I played my first football match in England. For me, football is pretty much the same everywhere; the ball is round, but maybe tactically, things are different than at other clubs I've played for.
Losing produces a weird reaction in me. I surrender all sense of perspective. It's ridiculous, really. All this over a football match.
Opera is credible drama now, and it costs less than going to a football match. What have you got to lose?
I met Jack Bruce, one of my heroes, in a studio while doing some recording. England had just beat Scotland in a big football match and I saw Jack trying to break into this refrigerator in the lounge, drunk out of his brain, and I didn't know what to say.
I'm concerned that Islam has not just been politicised but that it's becoming an identity. This is like turning religion into a football match; it's a distraction from the real thing.
I got a couple of front teeth knocked out during a football match when I was hit by a flying elbow.
The only thing I ever wanted to be was a professional football player.
I started out as a football player. I liked to inflict pain. In basketball, it was the same thing.
Over the years I've learnt to live with two persons in my heart. One is Edson, who has fun with his friends and family; the other is the football player Pele. I didn't want the name. 'Pele' sounds like baby-talk in Portuguese.
I think, as quarterback and as a football player, you always want to get better.
When you go into a game, and there's something that was drawn up the way it was supposed to be drawn up, and you missed the throw or the catch, as a receiver, it's something where you feel bad about that. You can always regret just missing it, but as a football player, you have to move on to the next play.
I was a good football player, and I had a chance to play with some great players.
If I got a football scholarship, I was going to be a football player.
You're going to hurt, yes. You're going to have tweaks and problems. But you're a football player; you can play through those.
I wanted to be a football player. Football is a sport that I love, but the more I started playing basketball, the more I started dreaming of playing in the NBA.
If I believe that I became the best quarterback that I could possibly be, the best football player that I could possibly be... That's how I'm going to measure my career as a success or not.
I don't judge my success in life as a football player.
I want to improve as a football player, but even more importantly, I really want to improve as a person.
What's so amazing in today's society is people look up to football players. And as a football player, you have a platform. And it's so much more important than any touchdown or trophy or anything you could win with football. Its taking that platform and be able to influence people.
