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

The nice thing is that when people come up to me, it’s the football they remember, not all the other rubbish.

If Everton were playing down the bottom of my garden, I’d draw the curtains.

My priority is cricket. Everything that I get apart from it is a result of the effort on the field. Everything else follows. I am pretty aware of my priorities, and I don’t really focus on things that are not as important to me as cricket.

I’ve taken countless shots in my life, so you know the ones when you’re in rhythm, with a perfect release, and it’s on track, that it’s going in.

In football, I don’t have a lot of friends. The people who I really trust, there are not many… Most of the time, I’m alone.

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.

The joy of doing well as a batsman for your country is much more than that little joy of going for a party and enjoying music. It is a completely different high, and I get high by performances. That’s what I enjoy now.

The best football is always about expression of emotion. Always.

Players today moan about the number of games, but when you’re young, you can’t play enough.

All the top players in the world play 45-50-60 games. You need that many games, even the strikers need that many games.

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.

You know, I’m trying to chase rings, and that’s all I’m about. So that’s where the conversation stops for me.

I hope the fans have enjoyed listening as much as I’ve enjoyed doing the games. I don’t ever go to the park where I don’t have a good day. I don’t like losing. But I don’t think I ever go to the park where I have a bad day. I don’t think once.

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

In England, when an athlete gets to the top, we do our best to destroy him.

At 17, I went to Stanford University to study engineering. My time was occupied with the required reading and the extracurricular duties of managing the baseball and football teams and earning my way.

I rate Fabien Barthez and played with two great keepers in Alex Stepney and Harry Gregg.

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.

I don’t know who I would have been if I never watched MotoGP.

Everybody asks if putting is like shooting free throws. It has a very similar kind of mindset. And it’s just you, the ball, and the target.

Over the years, all my coaches and my teammates have contributed a lot to shape my career. I can never forget their contribution and help.

You cannot mix sports with politics.

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

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’m in the game of spinning plates. I’m spinning a boxing plate. I’m spinning a Tae Kwon Do plate. I’m spinning a Jujitsu plate. I’m spinning a freestyle wrestling plate. I’m spinning a karate plate. If I was to put all them down and have one boxing plate spinning, it would be like a load off my shoulders.

When I look back at what I had to go through in black baseball, I can only marvel at the many black players who stuck it out for years in the Jim Crow leagues because they had nowhere else to go.

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.

I make impact plays. I make game-changing plays.

‚Rocky‘ and ‚Rocky III‘ were the best.

Nothing is ever done beautifully which is done in rivalship: or nobly, which is done in pride.

Team sports aren’t my thing. I find it easier to pick something up if I can do it at my own speed. And you don’t need a partner to go running, you don’t need a particular place, like in tennis, just a pair of trainers.

We want to play the AFC Cup every year.

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.

I can remember earning £5,000 a game playing for Hibs at the end of the Seventies. They let me commute from London, train on the Friday and play on Saturday. That lasted until my friends at the Inland Revenue decided to take two-thirds. That wasn’t very entertaining for me.

When I signed up for BFC, then-coach Ashley Westwood wanted me to play on the left as an attacking midfielder. I was not sure initially but I believed in his vision. For the first six-seven games, I didn’t really know what I was doing. I was like a headless chicken. But he kept backing me.

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

I can hold my own when it comes to burping. I’ve got a good feeling that I could win a championship.

When the NBA adopted their uniform that they had to wear, I thought that was very interesting. And you see the way NBA players dress: It’s very cool.

I am pretty chill before games. Have a go-to routine that keeps me busy until we are ready to take the court so I’m not just sitting around anxious for the game.

On the field, aggression can sometimes be a positive emotion. It boosts performance and can lift your game. But over the years, I have learnt that restrained aggression is a better animal. That way, you will conserve your energy and won’t spend yourself quickly.

I was acting when I was playing baseball.

Playing basketball all my life, I’ve collected a lot of different basketball shoes. It’s pretty much all I wear.

I expected to be a pretty good NBA point guard and hopefully win a championship. But MVP and all this stuff? Not really.

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.

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.

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

You can sometimes play some really good football and not score.

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

I was saluted by Alex Ferguson when I was subbed and that made me very happy.

My wife thinks she’s better than me at puzzles. I haven’t given in on that one yet.

Reading isn’t good for a ballplayer. Not good for his eyes. If my eyes went bad even a little bit I couldn’t hit home runs. So I gave up reading.

Baseball was, is and always will be to me the best game in the world.

I have short goals – to get better every day, to help my teammates every day – but my only ultimate goal is to win an NBA championship. It’s all that matters. I dream about it. I dream about it all the time, how it would look, how it would feel. It would be so amazing.

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

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.

We should play free football, defend lively with a passion, and have the best understanding in offence.

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

I’m proud to be an actor. See, as an actor, you live longer. Football players, the brain and all that stuff, ooh-eee, that’s not good.

I have always thought I was the best ever player.

I don’t really focus on these things – on what tags are given to me or what people think of me off the field – stuff like that. My main focus is always to do well on the field for the Indian cricket team. When people say good things about me off the field, I am more than happy to accept them.