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Basketball players want contact to get a foul called. Slaps on the wrist and bumps on the shoulder are big time to them, and they don't like that. In football, you get that all the time. The whole mental makeup is different.

Nobody is that thick-skinned that it doesn't hurt you. Still, you always know what happens in football. I have got used to criticism, I suppose, having been high profile with England and Man U.

Sometimes people think that if you're always helping people up and never hit someone with a hard foul, you're automatically a good sport. I don't believe that.

Football is, after all, a wonderful way to get rid of your aggressions without going to jail for it.

There will always be a few people who just want to knock you down or are jealous or just want to be horrible for the sake of it. I don't know what drives someone to be nasty.

You fouled a guy who needs to be fouled. If he's going to the basket, you don't give a knick-knack foul and then argue with the ref. You foul him so he knows, so the next guy coming behind him knows, so his team knows you can't go in the lane.

Football is made up of all kinds of conflict. In a dressing room, between players, between us and the manager, between us and loads of people who don't seem to matter. It's constant and harsh sometimes.

I played a lot of sports when I was a kid so I get in that ballgame mindset of being really, really respectful, but at same time saying to yourself, 'Don't back down a single inch, hang with these guys if you can.' If they throw it high and tight you have to stand in there, you can't take yourself out of that moment.

I asked a ref if he could give me a technical foul for thinking bad things about him. He said, of course not. I said, well, I think you stink. And he gave me a technical. You can't trust em.

As a person, I have never been discourteous or nasty to anybody. I may have stood my ground a bit too directly, a bit too firmly, and I believe I have, over a number of years, learned to be a little less direct.