“I just want people to see me as a hard-working footballer and someone who is passionate about the game.”

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.

I like nice clothes, whether they’re dodgy or not.

I love football and I love winning, and when things aren’t going right I get annoyed.

I’m a big fan of old boots.

Treat your life like a game.

One thing I don’t understand is that average American movie-goers cannot watch a movie for three hours, yet they’ll watch a stupid, boring, horrific football game for four hours. Now, that is boredom at its most colossal.

Whatever you are doing in the game of life, give it all you’ve got.

War: that mad game the world so loves to play.

The purpose of setting goals is to win the game. The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game.

Playing the game for money produces the proper professional attitude. It inculcates the lunch-pail state of mind that shows up for work despite rain or snow or dark of night and slugs it out day after day.

Lets admit it: we all play the game of hide and seek fairly well.

Power and energy games only exist in a relationship when the ego is at the wheel. When we heal our hearts, we can show up as mature beings in service to love.