If a team lives up to its role as favorite, it will have earned the World Cup. By the way, Adidas grew by about 30 percent in Brazil even without sponsoring the national team.

The torch is a symbol of the Olympic Games, of peace and togetherness. It's a good idea. And this idea is being misused. I believe in the Olympic ideal and in the torch that symbolizes this ideal. We should be condemning not those who have this ideal, but those who try to destroy it.

Fans today don't only care about achievement, but about good looks, good public appearance and good lifestyle.

If you want to bring the people of this world together, you have to be willing to engage with countries that do not share our [western] democratic values.

It never feels good if you don't reach all of your goals, neither in sport, nor in business nor in your personal life. But the key thing is to never give up, we have taken our learnings from 2014 and developed an exciting and promising strategy for the period up until 2020.

My commitment to the Olympics is not a political commitment. It's not a commitment to any particular social system or cultural idea. It is a commitment to sport.

One of the purposes of the Olympic Games is to bring the nations of the world closer together, so that they can conduct an open dialogue. We [germans] should be careful about constantly imposing our values on others.