And then ultimately what I tell the kids is: coaches can give you information, they can give you guidelines, and they can put you in a position. But the only person who can truly make you better is you.

My parents and my grandfather on my mom's side would travel the earth. They went to Australia and China, and they went to probably every soccer game I ever played.

After the '96 Olympics, we all started believing that this is bigger than we thought, and we were willing to do the work. We knew that it was up to us, the players, to make soccer successful.

You're going to make mistakes in life. It's what you do after the mistakes that counts.

And I remember how proud I was to put on my training jersey and go out on the field. Making it back to that environment was for me my greatest moment, because somebody had told me I couldn't do it and I never gave up on myself, the game and my teammates.

To be honest with you, I never looked at soccer as a sacrifice.

I was the kid who always liked to take the ball down to the school even in my free time, kick it against the wall, juggle it in the front yard and so it was kind of a perpetual state of playing soccer for me.