If someone told me I could play two Asian Cup finals, I wouldn’t have believed it.

Liverpool is a club with a big, big, big history, and all the clubs in the world have a big history if the present is not too successful. If you have never had success, then nobody knows how it is, but in Liverpool, everybody knows how it was.

Ordinarily, players fine-tune their match-fitness during the pre-season.

Sometimes in the past when I played something might make me lose focus, or I would go home after a game where I thought I could have played better and I would let it hang over my head for a long time when it shouldn’t.

I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles.

I’ve thought sometimes about what I like about football, and it’s playing together.

Football is unconditional love.

What the ISL has done is create the hype and buzz around football that it very badly needs.

To be able to finish opportunities that I do get in the paint, that makes a difference.

Players who are not from the U.K. have to get used to the winds. I have to adapt my style as a result as well. Often, you are forced to keep things simple.

I have warned many times about the guaranteed dangers of betting with your heart instead of your head – big darkness, soon come – but every once in a while you get a fair chance to have it both ways, and the annual NCAA basketball Tournament is one of them.

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

It all went wrong with football, the thing I loved most of all, and from there, my life slowly fell apart.

No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.

After the 12th class exam results, I got a call from Mohun Bagan. They saw me at Durand Cup when I was playing for City Club of Delhi. I thought they might want me for SAIL Academy. Never ever I thought Mohun Bagan is calling me for Mohun Bagan!

You know, I’m just 6’9 and 260. And just so happen to be very good at playing the game of basketball.“

I didn’t play soccer; I played that other football in grade school through college.

An agent won’t help you get drafted higher, won’t make you win more games, and won’t make you faster or stronger.

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

Some people, through luck and skill, end up with a lot of assets. If you’re good at kicking a ball, writing software, investing in stocks, it pays extremely well.

I can’t play soccer, and I’m not a great swimmer. I won’t drown, but you won’t see me doing laps in a pool.

As a coach, one thing that used to frustrate me was one player would make a bad decision, and that’s all you would read about in the papers all over the country. We have so many athletes do so many wonderful things for other people, and you never read about it.

I signed for Mohun Bagan and then I got the news that Bhaichung also joined the club. The first day he met me he told me that I have heard about you and you are doing well. I told everyone in my family and friends that Bhaichung told me that.

Baseball is like a poker game. Nobody wants to quit when he’s losing; nobody wants you to quit when you’re ahead.

The best thing about the Kentucky Derby is that it is only two minutes long. It is the quickest event in sports, except for Sumo-wrestling & Mike Tyson fights. Maybe Drag-racing is quicker, but I have never been attracted to it.

I like sports, and I enjoy playing basketball and lifting weights.

Football (soccer) is a matter of life and death, except more important.

As a professional athlete a lot is going to be said about you – but I just try to move forward and try to achieve my goals.

Unless someone wants to look funny, I’ll not recommend anyone to copy my bowling action. But on a serious note, with the confidence that I have got from the amount of runs I have been scoring, when I’m thrown the ball to bowl, I am pretty sure of what I have to do. I may not be the most attractive to watch while bowling, but I can be effective.

To win a national championship, you’ve got to be a little lucky.

What a great day for football, all we need is some green grass and a ball.

If you watch any good player, they’re using different parts of their body and working with instruments that respond to those movements. They’re moving in many dimensions at once.

If Tiger Woods had played football, he would have been a quarterback.

In Dortmund, they say the derby is more important than the championship. You can feel it around the game.

In T20, you don’t have time to get distracted – it’s so quick, you have to run around in the field, and while batting, you don’t actually think about anything else.

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.

As a kid, I used to see how Sachin Tendulkar used to win matches under pressure for India in Sharjah or other places. So I was always keen to repeat the same in similar situations. I don’t take pressure on myself when I am in the middle. I love pressure, and I always believe that pressure makes you more focused.

Personally yes I want our country to have one league. When it’s going to be one league, which we all are hearing, it has to be abiding by AFC rules.

Lots of young players have triumphed at United, so why can’t it happen to me? I’m not worried I’m young – it’s an incentive to do the best I can.

I used to pray that God would make me a great athlete, and He never did.

Hopefully I won’t be the last big splash at Under Armour.

I’m always hungry to score.

I had practiced with the team, and the first scheduled game was with the University of Missouri. They made it quite clear to the Army that they would not play a team with a black player on it. Instead of telling me the truth, the Army gave me leave to go home.

Volleyball, I could be pretty good. After a few practices I could be that striker, or whatever they call it.

Whoever the coach is, my job is to talk to him, understand him and be a better player under him and give my best.

David Beckham has never impressed me.

There are two bowlers who I think are very tough to play against – Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel.

To me, football is so much about mental toughness, it’s digging deep, it’s doing whatever you need to do to help a team win and that comes in a lot of shapes and forms.

In India, people are really glued to the Premier League and La Liga.

Today, Negroes play on every big league club and in every minor league. With millions of other Negroes in other walks of life, we are willing to stand up and be counted for what we believe in. In baseball or out, we are no longer willing to wait until Judgment Day for equality – we want it here on earth as well as in Heaven.

I treated it like every day was my last day with a basketball.

To be honest, there are no problems between me and Messi. People have their own opinions about who they think is the better player. It is what it is, but there is no rivalry beyond games and what happens on the pitch.

There’s many ups and downs in the fight game.

People have to understand one thing: at the age of 18, I arrived at a dream club like Manchester United. It was a dream come true. But, even at that moment, I was thinking about playing in England for some years and then going to play in Spain. Even at that time I was thinking that way, and I always gave 100% everything.

Everyone needs a coach. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a basketball player, a tennis player, a gymnast or a bridge player.

I’ve played with IVs before, during and after games. I’ve played with a broken hand, a sprained ankle, a torn shoulder, a fractured tooth, a severed lip, and a knee the size of a softball. I don’t miss 15 games because of a toe injury that everybody knows wasn’t that serious in the first place.

The English game is not faster than the German game. Perhaps there are a few more sprints. But there is a different style of football here, partially due to the weather.

I do think coaches need to get away from the game more, though. It’s good for them.

Together with a culture of work, there must be a culture of leisure as gratification. To put it another way: people who work must take the time to relax, to be with their families, to enjoy themselves, read, listen to music, play a sport.

Players now have a groin injury for months and months, and I often think they don’t really give a toss whether they’re playing or not because they’re getting paid anyway.

We were the first generation to have to deal with the modern stardom of football. Some handled it better than others.