I just loved kicking a ball but I was determined to be a footballer and I wanted a professional contract, I would go to any professional club to get one. From 15, all I wanted was to be a footballer.
All I have ever wanted to do is be a professional footballer.
When you leave a big club and go on loan to a small club in Holland it is not easy. But I am a footballer and I have to be professional about my job.
But I was just a normal person really. You see, I didn't get it in my head that I was just a professional footballer for Arsenal Football Club.
Ever since I was six or seven, I wanted to be a professional footballer.
Dagenham offered me a two-year opportunity really. It wasn't a pro deal, just a chance to impress. I was sent out on loan straight away. I got a professional contract on the back of that and it wasn't until I started scoring in League Two that I actually realized, 'I'm professional footballer.'
Ever since I was a boy, I have wanted to be a professional footballer and to captain my country one day.
When you become a professional footballer, there's no written contract that says you have to strive to play first-team football.
When I signed that USL contract, my perspective changed on me being a professional footballer. That was my goal ever since I was young. I never thought I could achieve it, but that's when it clicked in my head that I can really go far in the sport.
I had to go to see the careers woman at school, and when she asked me what I wanted to do after school, I told her flat: 'I want to be a professional footballer.' I can remember her being silent for a few seconds, just looking at me.
You can play all the games you want as a professional footballer, but when you go into coaching it's just totally different.
I don't know where horse riding could have taken me, and it's something I can always go back to when I've retired from football, but the crossroads came in my life when Chelsea wanted to sign me and make me a professional footballer in 2013 when I was 20.
I've been booed in Holland and in Uruguay - as a professional footballer, you need to have thick skin and just get used to it.
I'm a professional footballer, and I get paid for doing my job.
I wasn't really interested in girls. Only football. I was just enjoying football all the time. There was a five-a-side next to the flat, and I used to play there all the time. It was all about football. I wanted to be a professional. That was my goal. I didn't want to be anything other than a footballer.
I think I get a raw deal from referees. But as a professional footballer I have to accept it, and that's what I do.
At 15-years-old, I always wanted to do professional wrestling, and at 15, I started training as a professional wrestler. It was always the plan to become an entertainer, a sports entertainer.