No matter what activity or practice we are pursuing, there isn't anything that isn't made easier through constant familiarity and training (I think you can apply this to soccer as well)
Growing up as a kid my father was British and a soccer player. His idol was a guy that passed the ball a lot, Stanley Matthews. Our family thought if you could be unselfish your teammates would always like you.
In general I like a guy who is athletic, somebody who can teach me something. Whether it's teaching me a new way to cut on a wave or teach me a three-point conversion or teach me how to dribble a soccer ball. There's something really cool about that.
Today was about execution, period. Every single player, all of us in the dressing room right now, we’re embarrassed because that’s not the way we want to play soccer.
I'm a big soccer fanatic, and although I support a team called Tottenham Hotspur in London - I love that team, I wear their symbol around my neck on a chain - I've always had a soft spot for this little club.
People follow me on social media, and they can tell I have varied interests. I think in the U.K. people perhaps know me for some other stuff because of my involvement with soccer and support of Tottenham.
We have not made cricket and football [soccer] professional because of any astonishing avarice or new vulgarity. We have made them professional because we would have them perfect. We have dedicated men to them as to some god of inhuman excellence. We care more for football than for the fun of playing football.
Speed is what makes the Premiership exciting. The millions who would have watched Manchester United and Chelsea would have seen a non-stop game in which the pace was electric even though the first half was a non-event. You could see a better technical game in Spain but for sheer frenetic movement there is nothing that comes close... Pace is more critical in the Premiership than in any other major league and if you don't have pace, you have to compensate with power or ability in the air and since Shevchenko has no power and is not particularly good in the air, he is in trouble.
My brother says that I was writing songs about fate while he was off playing soccer. Now I tell him he's 33 and being a professional while I'm playing soccer with my friends. Ha!
You not only do you appreciate the sacrifices people have made and the hours they've kept and the soccer games they missed and the birthday parties, but I also had a lot of young people who came in here [to White House], and this probably, you know, echoes with you, in your own experience, you were young when you got here.
At 15, 16, you think you're going to be captain of England. But I realised it wasn't going to happen for me on a windy November night in Darlington, coming to my peak at the age of 23 but still playing for Mansfield Town.