“The city gave us a goodbye party, and it lasted a week.”

That’s what you live for as a sportsman. You have to put up a fight.

Anyone can have a good day, but you have to be able to perform on a bad day.

Perhaps there are a few more sprints. But there is a different style of football here, partially due to the weather.

I’m an absolutely normal guy.

In London, you’ll be walking around and, ‘Oh, there’s the ground.’ Every area of the city has a Premier League club. They all survive; they all exist with enough money, and that’s good.

I’m pretty positive, optimistic, so I always expect the best.

I was a very average player and became a trainer in Germany with a special club.

In England, football is a big thing to talk about, but Liverpool, it’s a special place. You feel it when you make your first step.

In England, you have stadiums in the middle of the city.

Derbies are always difficult to play because you have to handle the pressure. There’s no advantage or disadvantage for either side.

If you watch me during the game, I celebrate when we press the ball and it goes out.

The English game is not faster than the German game.

For me, it’s enough that I have the first and last word.

I don’t think I’m an unlucky person.

It needs time. Nobody wants to hear it, but that’s the truth: if you want to have success in the future, you have to be ready to work now.

I always thought about working in England because of the kind of football, the intensity of football. Liverpool was first choice.

I like the city. I like the concrete. I like big business. I like being a CEO of my own company and having a lot of responsibilities.

Yet you should not marvel if I do not enter that city so quickly.

Do I feel like I’m 65? No. I feel like I’m 15. That’s my problem.

I go through about 140 cities a year.

Kuwait City is not gorgeous, actually, but it’s got a kind of Epcot Center thing going for it. It’s not pretty. But it’s striking, I’ll give it that. It’s not as over-the-top as Abu Dhabi or Dubai. But nearly.

Not since Ancient Greece have cities been thought of as the ideal living environment for humans. And that was so long ago it predates the invention of trousers.

A man of strong opinions is one thing. But a man whose strong opinions depend entirely on how he is feeling in that instant is a disastrous thing in a city of 10 million people just trying to muddle through.

In the beginning, we huddled in cities for our own protection.