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I had great football players. To be quite truthful, my great football players, the ones who wanted the ball at the end of the games, they weren't focused on money. They want to do something great. They want to go to Pro Bowls. They want to win Super Bowls. Those are the people that succeed in sports - or in business.

When I was young, it wasn't about the money, it wasn't about the fame and fortune, it was about playing football.

Where I come from, all of us wanted to be footballers. We played all the time; that's all we did at school or wherever until it went dark and you couldn't see the ball.

Football spectators appreciate a bit of loyalty, and we're seeing that less and less. There are echelons of football, as in society, where some players are clearly mercenaries. I regret in a way that somehow the local identification, the local bonding between the community and its football team has been commercialised to such an extent.

I'm a football guy at heart; maybe I should have played football for a living instead, because I play a lot of football videogames; I'm really into them.

The money is in a different league these days, of course, but I have special memories of the 60s and 70s which players today don't have. There wasn't the same celebrity attitude and media exposure. We had a bit more freedom.

I had sacrificed my entire life to play football.

Once, players came to football expecting to be wealthy when they retired. Now, they expect to be wealthy before they've played their first game!

My parents weren't very sporty, and football wasn't part of my everyday life. I was never a massive football fan either, but, like everyone else, I used to watch matches on TV.

Football was a wonderful experience for me. It was a means of, oh, I don't know, sustaining for much of my youth. In times of trouble, I've always had football. I always knew I was a football player. And that was a comfort on many occasions.