I was born in Dortmund and grew up here, so you become automatically a black and yellow. I played here for many years in the youth ranks, but at first I did not have the chance to become a professional football player at BVB and to realize my dream.

When you are 28, 29 years old... you are aware that this is going to be your last big contract of your career. You have to make up your mind: What is it that I want? Do I want to find something new, a new culture, a new league, a new language, new teammates, a new city? And what is it that I need to be happy? What is it that I need to perform?

My goal is to play at the World Cup.

I'm honored to join a very distinguished group of footballers to appear on the cover of 'FIFA.' Most of all, I am humbled that the fans have chosen me, and I will strive to make them proud with my performance on the pitch.

I don't believe that the problems in the VA are necessarily about money. When I look back over the problems of the VA over the past decade, this is fundamentally a system that hasn't kept up with modernization in the way that the rest of health care in the private sector has.

There was a lot of criticism in Boston that we weren't going to spend money on the Red Sox after we did the Liverpool transaction. Then there was the fear we wouldn't spend in Liverpool. Hopefully the fans of both clubs will eventually see what we see clearly - that there is nothing to fear from the existence of the other club.

There's no reason not to be in television now. You get to live at home and you're not on the road all the time, they pay you decent money, and the writing's good. You're not compromising for it, you know.

It was very clear to me in 1965, in Mississippi, that, as a lawyer, I could get people into schools, desegregate the schools, but if they were kicked off the plantations - and if they didn't have food, didn't have jobs, didn't have health care, didn't have the means to exercise those civil rights, we were not going to have success.