One of the great things about cricket, and certainly something that I found helpful, was that as soon as you step over the boundary rope you can switch off everything that is happening off the field and focus solely on what is happening out on the pitch.
My players have to be competitors before footballers. They don't pull out of tackles in training. It's full-tilt and if we pick up injuries, we pick up injuries. They have to give everything on the pitch and leave it all out there.
Everything with me is normal except when I pitch (in Fenway Park). When I pitch here it's a little different. There is a little more anxiety to go along with the nostalgia because this is the park I grew up with as a kid. This is the park I dreamed of playing Major League Baseball in and no other ballpark has that feeling for me. There are a lot more family and friends here than in my normal starts and I want to pitch well here.
If you have John Terry, Frank Lampard on the pitch, they've seen everything in football. And it gives you a good feeling because they know what to do.
Especially in the secondary, a lot of your tackles are usually going to be in the open field, one-on-one tackles, so you can't be out there thinking about making a pretty tackle or having the ground ooh and ahh.
When I get onto the pitch, I block out everything around it, and I really focus on the pitch.
Everything is happening spontaneously, and the witnessing of it is also happening spontaneously. Everything is already happening in natural balance.
Everything passes. There is great beauty in this, both in the passing of pain and in the passing of pleasure. When things present themselves to you as permanent, don't believe it.
The one who plays this game the best is Iniesta: he knows exactly when to go forward and when to drop back. He picks the right moment to do everything: when to dribble, when to speed things up and when to slow things down. And I think that's the only thing that can't be taught or bought. You can learn how to shoot and how to control the ball, but being aware of everything that's happening out on the pitch - that's something you're either born with or you're not.
I am old enough to know that time passing is just a trick, a convenience. Everything is always there, still unfolding, still happening. The past, the present, and the future, in the noggin eternally, like brushes, combs and ribbons in a handbag.
I would not want you to suppose that my rejection of Allen Forte's theory of pitch-class sets implies a rejection of the notion that there can be such a thing as a pitch-class set. It is only when one defines everything in terms of pitch-class sets that the concept becomes meaningless.
It's better to throw a theoretically poorer pitch whole-heartedly, than to throw the so-called right pitch with feeling of doubt-doubt that's it's right, or doubt that you can make it behave well at that moment. You've got to feel sure you're doing the right thing-sure that you want to throw the pitch you're going to throw.
I love to have the ball. That's why I play soccer, and we have a great coach who has this kind of view, he sees everything, and I just want to help as much as I can, on the pitch and off the pitch.
My decision was that after nearly three years at Celtic - with everything we'd achieved and the success we'd had on the pitch, the improvements off the pitch - then it was time to move on to my next challenge.
What I am feeling in myself, and what is happening to my physical body, to some extent, and what is happening to me mentally, is not a depression, is not a death. It is a transformation. It is a transcendence.
E-Commerce is happening the way all the hype said it would. Internet deployment is happening. Broadband is happening. Everything we ever said about the Internet is happening. And it is very, very early. We can't even glimpse it's potential in changing the way people work and live.