I always loved watching the Champions League, growing up.

When I was growing up, I was focused on football and school.

No matter how good you are, your mentality has got to be right. A lot of young players, that's where they go wrong, and that's what I've always seen when I was growing up - players who are almost there but couldn't quite get there because the mentality wasn't right.

I feel I have been very lucky. When you are growing up, you have dreams of being a footballer, perhaps even playing for the club you support, and I am living that dream.

My mother's father taught English literature. When I was about ten or eleven, I could recite Macaulay's 'Lays of Ancient Rome.' While other kids were playing pedestrian war games, I'd be Horatius keeping the bridge.

My peers, lately, have found companionship through means of intoxication - it makes them sociable. I, however, cannot force myself to use drugs to cheat on my loneliness - it is all that I have - and when the drugs and alcohol dissipate, will be all that my peers have as well.

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

I'm constantly inspired by my friends and the people I surround myself with and the cities that I'm traveling to.