When I left Barcelona, staying in Spain was an important factor in my decision to join Madrid. I did not have to change country or learn a new language, adopt a different sort of lifestyle, and so on.
Spain have got a big influence from Real Madrid and Barcelona, and when you watch Spain play, it's almost like watching Barcelona or Real Madrid at times.
I always say that I need competition, and I need competition every week, and in Spain, I was at an amazing club, but I had four matches a year: Barcelona v Real Madrid, Real Madrid v Barcelona, and after that, we'd win 4-0, 5-0, 4-1, 6-1.
The dream of everyone is playing in Spain, Madrid, or Barcelona.
I'll never play in Barcelona, because in Spain I am a Real Madrid supporter.
I never played in Spain. To play for Real Madrid or Barcelona would be great.
From the moment I left Sao Paulo and Brazil, I was fixed on staying here, playing for the first team and succeeding at Real Madrid. That was always my dream. But it was an advantage to be able to join Castilla first.
I almost missed the chance to join Barcelona because I was on holiday in Mali visiting my parents' family for the first time. We spent all summer there and every day Barcelona were calling my mother's phone and getting no reply because she had left it in Barcelona.
I was able to learn a new language - a new musical language is learning a new language, because it's so extremely different from Western classical music. African music is completely different.
Real Madrid wanted me to join their academy. It was a big decision to move when I was 15. It's a key age for a youngster, and you're close to your friends and family. But I moved to Madrid, and my family stayed at home. It made me mature earlier than normal. That was a very big decision, and it changed me in a positive way.
It is never easy for a professional cricketer, who has represented his country for 17 years, to forget the past and adopt a new lifestyle.
If you go to Real Madrid or Barcelona, the fans, the media and the decision-makers don't give you the time to grow into that.
It's certainly been very important to have my own family with me. They came with me to Italy, left what they had in Brazil and also adapted to a new country, new culture and new language was difficult but having their support in the good and bad times was fantastic.
In Spain you fight, of course, against Real Madrid and Barcelona, and they almost never lose because they have the biggest squads, and they are two of the biggest clubs in the world. So it's really difficult.
I live between Barcelona and Berlin. Staying in Spain over the winter and Berlin for spring and summer is an ideal combination.
The historian of science may be tempted to claim that when paradigms change, the world itself changes with them. Led by a new paradigm, scientists adopt new instruments and look in new places. even more important, during revolutions, scientists see new and different things when looking with familiar instruments in places they have looked before. It is rather as if the professional community had been suddenly transported to another planet where familiar objects are seen in a different light and are joined by unfamiliar ones as well.
Each language has its own take on the world. That's why a translation can never be absolutely exact, and therefore, when you enter another language and speak with its speakers, you become a slightly different person; you learn a different sort of world.