“The secret of the team’s success is easy – unity and hard work.”

I didn’t want to go there [America] at 34 years old and for people to say he’s only going for the money. It’s not what I’m going out there to do

I’ve always come back from adversity, and I’ve always had the mentality of proving people wrong.

You will go through tough times, it’s about getting through them.

With United, we’d all grown up together, we all wanted to win the biggest trophy in football. We did it togther.

[Meeting Mandela] was the highlight of my career; to meet such a great man and a strong man and such a passionate man about sport and life will always stay with me.

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.

To have a successful team, you have to have great players of course – but you have to have good personalities and good people as well.

I love little kids looking up to me, young players looking up to me, respecting me.

Everyone’s been so quick to say that I’m really thick or I haven’t got a brain. People will think whatever they want to think.

My secret is practice.

It’s is always nice to be respected as a footballer. I am going to go out and enjoy the game and if I can set one or two goals up then so be it – I would love to.

Some people think that I haven’t got the brains to be that clever.

Every situation has changed me as a person.

I wasn’t as fit as I would of liked to have been, going to the World Cup, but I’m not sure what difference that made.

It’s my responsibility to walk around the hotel with a big smile on my face and not worry about what’s happened in the last game.

I’m happy in Madrid, my kids are happy and my wife is happy, so everything’s good. If anyone knows about contracts they take a while to sort out.

Sovereignty is easily preserved by the very arts by which it was originally created. When, however, energy has given place to indifference, and temperance and justice to passion and arrogance, then as the morals change so changes fortune.

Identifying pain in others was easy for me. I was drawn to it in some strange perverse way.

The right way to go easy is to forget the right way.

That which is easy is bad for your inner life.

For men who had easily endured hardship, danger and difficult uncertainty, leisure and riches, though in some ways desirable, proved burdensome and a source of grief.

Things worth having don’t come easy,” Woods said. “You have to fight for it until you’re tired of fighting, and then you take a breather and fight some more.” He squeezed my shoulder. “Don’t give up. You’ll regret it.

Easy is right. Begin right and you are easy. Continue easy and you are right. The right way to go easy is to forget the right way, and forget that the going is easy.

People are always asking what’s the secret of my success, and the answer is easy – at least for me. You have to have a strong inner drive.