If you want to become a professional football player at any level, when you're growing up, you have to make sacrifices, and it's very difficult. It's not easy, but you have to train hard, you have to live right, and you have to rest.

Even when I was growing up as a young boy, when I was playing schoolboy football, there were other guys who were as good as I was, maybe some even better technically. But I was prepared to stick to what was going to make me become a professional football player when I left school, and that was a lot of sacrifice and because my attitude was right.

I've watched parents sometimes on the touchlines at youth games, and they are screaming and shouting, which is not the way to go.

When you talk about professional footballers, rightly or wrongly, people often already have an idea in their head about what they're like; they'll paint a picture before they've met them.

Fans think that we're, like, football 24/7. We're all about life after football, too.

My coach has taught me since 5 years old, and he stresses not just the quality of training but the mental part. Technique and the mental game have to mesh, balance.

Sports are one of the main cultural activities on the face of the earth.

I am a member of a team, and I rely on the team, I defer to it and sacrifice for it, because the team, not the individual, is the ultimate champion.