Chelsea's players, coaches and agents are now football's wealthiest millionaires. Surely the billions taken from the Russian people by an oligarch in questionable privatisations couldn't be better spent?
You are pushed to behave differently here, you don't really have a choice. If you cheat you have no chance of being admired. Even your own supporters will dislike you. So what do you do? Well, the way is not to be stupid, but not to cheat either. If there is a foul, you have to fall. I call it 'helping the referee to make a decision'. That's not cheating.
Football is simple but the hardest thing to do is play simple football.
I was lucky to come from a difficult area. It teaches you not just about football but also life. There were lots of kids from different races and poor families. People had to struggle to get through the day.
Somewhere in there the grace of a ballet dancer joins with the strength of an SAS squaddie, the dignity of an ancient kind, the nerve of a bomb disposal officer.
There are soccer athletes that are known the world over except in the U. S. Thierry Henry, for example.
On current form, both teams will probably lose.
In 2001 Steve Staunton became the record cap holder for which country? Brazil.
The three things that kept me sane as a child were bikes, books, and soccer
I have two speeds. Fast and faster. I don't just run. I take it.
I grew up on North American sports teams as well as English soccer clubs.
That was in the past - we're in the future now.
For those fed up with the lack of mystery at the top of the Premiership, could I refer you to the commanding heights of the Conference. The wide points gap between first and second says we are about to witness the return to the football league of Accrington Stanley. So legendary have they become that everyone across the generations knows them, yet even those of the certain age required (you'd be pushing 60) can scarcely believe they were ever there. What proof do we have that this most Garcia Marquez of football teams was, is and yet may truly be?
I know I'm a good professional, I know that no one's harder on me than myself and that's never going to change, under any circumstances.
It's a 90 minute game for sure. In fact I used to train for a 190 minute game so that when the whistle blew at the end of the match I could have played another 90 minutes.
I feel I have grown up. I am a man. It's important in my football too. When everything is good, I don't think you grow up fantastically, I think maybe you need a few problems to grow up. It is good if people in England have started to admire me. I think I have changed a little since the World Cup. I am stronger with my mentality and with my game as well.
I end up writing something every day, since I develop six or seven things at the same time - soccer columns, this and that.
I'm not silly enough to think I'm going to change the whole culture. . . but I do have a belief that soccer can go to a different level.
I think we could do with being a little more adventurous in certain areas and push on that little bit more, while a bit of luck also wouldn't go amiss.
I wanted to be a soccer player; I wanted to do it at the highest level.
