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I was the kid who always liked to take the ball down to the school even in my free time, kick it against the wall, juggle it in the front yard and so it was kind of a perpetual state of playing soccer for me.

Like many kids, I was thrown into recreational soccer in my town, and from there, I grew to love it. Everywhere I went, I carried a soccer ball with me.

My dad always played sports. He played football. I always wanted to play football because my dad played football, but my mom never wanted me to play football because she said she couldn't take me getting hit.

For a kid who's lost his mom and all the rage and grief that no one was able to talk out of me, football was a very therapeutic sport. Very.

Playing sport was somewhat frivolous, but I liked it. I rebelled a little bit, and wouldn't go to music lessons and things like that, but I would go and play ball. My parents learned to love it because they saw how much I got out of it.

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.

My father thought sport was something fun - he didn't know it was a way to make money. Then I won a Mercedes at the world championships and I gave it to him. From the moment it arrived my father said: 'Good, you can support not just yourself but me too'.

From when I was 7 until I was 22, I played football. That was always my struggle as a kid. I always wanted to be an artist, but my parents were divorced, and my dad really wanted me to play sports, and that's how I got to see him. He would come pick me up or take me to practice, and he was always at my games.

I grew up playing soccer and always loved playing it.

But I was very much into sports when I was a child.