Football is about scoring, and if you want to do that, you have to go forward.

Most schools, the football players are kind of the kings in school.

Players like Messi and Xavi are always hungry. Whatever the game or the competition - even if it is table-tennis - they want to win. We used to play two-touch football games after training and they would always be desperate to win. It taught you about life as well as football.

I grew up on Avenue C, and Tompkins Square Park was my park. That was where I played ball every day. I lived in that park.

I'm a very traditional person. The tattoos are about my grandmother dying and they tell the story about my mother and father, my brothers and my sister, my kids. It's pretty much a family tree on my arm with my life in football too.

The slow-motion replay doesn't show how fast the ball was really travelling.

Oh, I fooled around with baseball, but I never really took it serious.

I love football and the intensity of football in Liverpool, this is what is very good for me.

I think that when you are part of a football team, it is a group. That means the players and the staff, including the manager and all that administration.

Actually, as that first association continued, we got a little more legitimate. In those days, they asked Boy Scout troops to act as ushers during the football games. So we signed up and I went to many games in full Boy Scout uniform as an usher.

I just wanted to get back to playing attacking football after my time in Italy. It was a little difficult at first but the atmosphere and the fans were just fantastic.

I go for the ball as if it's the last.

You can't have Thanksgiving and not just be like, 'All right, where's the football.' It's been branded very, very well. You can't have one without the other at this point.

I've always been a great lover of baseball.

If football covers all your emotions, that's too shallow for me.

This is what makes football beautiful. Sometimes it gives you these kind of 180 degree turns.

I went to Madrid to play football but I couldn't because I was never left in peace.

The No 10 shirt? Yes, I understand what it means in Brazil. The icon number. Yes, it's important. It is the number given to a creative player, and I am happy to have that responsibility, but it is not your shirt number that defines you: it is what you do with a football.

If I get a target, I want the ball in my hands.

Anyone that plays knows football is up and down. As much as you want to, you can't control everything. You take what positives you can.