When you're growing up, you have your heroes, and you hear about people going off to other countries to play football, but when you're so young, you're not thinking about that. You just play. No referee, no rules.

When good things are coming, there are always some people who haven't been doing good who will try and stop it. But if you believe in what you are doing and are strong enough, then you achieve it. People know who I am and what I have done.

You have good footballers coming out of Africa, West Africa, but they are not on the level that Eto'o played.

You can have an ankle or shoulder injury, and in six or eight months, you're healed. But if the heart stops for a few moments, that's it.

My early colleagues and myself helped create the life styles of Americans and, by osmosis, of the rest of the world. I found it difficult to reconcile success with humility. I tried it first, but it meant avoiding the very essence of my career - total exhilaration and the ecstasy of creativity.

I told somebody once, 'You don't want the Herschel that plays football... babysitting your child. When I am competing, I am a totally different person.'

Everybody knows that Alexander Hamilton was a founding father of the United States, a young father to be sure: only thirty at the time of the Constitutional Convention and just turned thirty-eight when he left behind his brilliant career as Secretary of the Treasury.

When I was six years old, my parents told me that we were moving back home to Armenia. I didn't really understand what was happening. My father had stopped playing football, and he was at home all the time.