I was a very good baseball and football player, but my father always told me I was much more interested in how I looked playing baseball or football than in actually playing. There's great truth in that.
For me Sir Alex was my father in football. He was crucial in my career and, outside football, was a great human being with me. Talent isn't everything. You can have it from the cradle, but it is necessary to learn the trade to be the best.
I was a very good baseball player and football player as a kid, but my father always told me - occasionally while striking me - that I was much more interested in how I looked playing baseball or football than in actually playing. And I think there's great truth in that.
I have great memories of watching SEC football with my father on Saturdays and playing football in the backyard with my two brothers right here in Gainesville.
Since Japan is little known in football in the world, we want to play good football and make a huge impact so that we can make the world realise the presence of the Japan football team.
They're great memories, not just as a footballer but as a person growing up - it sounds daft, but to come away from Liverpool to play the first-team football I needed. It's a fantastic place, a huge football club and they helped me a lot. I'm grateful for coming through there.
My father wanted me to play pro football, and he didn't like the fact that I'd left school. And he said, "It takes a man to play football. And any fool can go up on the stage and make an ass of himself.
I can remember my father gave me a huge history of football for my 12th birthday - I used to read that a lot. I can remember thinking it was cool that something I was interested in even had a history. Most things I loved didn't.
My dad was a football player - a soccer player - for Manchester United, and I loved playing football, but I also happened to be the guy in class who was pretty good at sight reading. My teacher gave me scripts, and I was very comfortable.
If you were ever to interview me after a football game or at a football game or around me during football season is totally different than when you catch me away from football.
Happiness does not come from football awards. It's terrible to correlate happiness with football. Happiness comes from a good job, being able to feed your wife and kids. I don't dream football, I dream the American dream - two cars in a garage, be a happy father.
My father was always in good spirits, he loved football. It makes me a bit sad because if he could enjoy seeing me now, what I have achieved, that would be a highlight in his life. But I'm sure that he watches over me from above.
I loved playing football with my brothers. I would go to school as well, but I loved football, so I played it a lot when I was a kid.
For what my generation did and went through and so forth, and what these glamour boys earn for what little they play, it's a joke. Is it football? Are you guys football players? Is that what they call football? It's not iron-man football, where you stay on the field for 60 minutes. Everybody! We were iron men. Not a bunch of pussyfoots.
Football came in at an interesting time. My dad passed, and my brother was one year older than me. And so he was basically the man of the house - at like age 12. So I really just started doing whatever he did, and football was his thing, so I got into football.
When I was three or four, only football was in my head. I went 10 years, and nothing changed - only football, football, football. The strange thing is, nobody played football in my family before.