Nobody has enough talent to live on talent alone. Even when you have talent, a life without work goes nowhere.

Football is an art, like dancing is an art - but only when it's well done does it become an art.

I believe the target of anything in life should be to do it so well that it becomes an art. When you read some books they are fantastic, the writer touches something in you that you know you would not have brought out of yourself. He makes you discover something interesting in your life. If you are living like an animal, what is the point of living? What makes daily life interesting is that we try to transform it to something that is close to art.

Sometimes you have to swallow the unswallowable.

I take pride in the fact that people go home having felt that for 90 minutes today, life is beautiful - and that's it, basically. That's why professional football exists.

You build a player like you build a house. You start with the foundations. The fundamentals.

I am supposed to take the bullets and absorb them. Like a bear, a polar bear.