I'm used to being around kids. Even when I was growing up in London, I had an older sister, I had a younger sister that I used to look after from time to time.

The spotlight will always be on me, but it's something I'm learning to live with as the years go by.

I think the most important goal I scored in Spain was the first one because people were wary about me coming over to Spain as a player - they thought I was just there to sell shirts.

I've played under some of the biggest and best managers and achieved almost everything in football. Of course it hurts when people question it, but I've come to the end of my career and can look back and say I've achieved everything with every club that I've played for.

I consider myself really lucky to be able to visit so many parts of the world, but after all of that, I love to come home. I appreciate my own space and the world I create for myself, my family and friends.

In my child's-eye view, whenever I was exposed to pain, it meant that my mother had let me down.

My parents were of the generation who thought they were the children of a free Czechoslovakia, the only democracy in central Europe.

I had a little insight into life that most kids probably didn't have. My mother was a schoolteacher, and my father was a social worker. Through his eyes I saw the underside of society.