A Quote by Nicolas Anelka
When I left Arsenal I never said I didn't like England. I was very young and my problems were all in my head.
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I never said Arsenal fans were not good. I just said I saw real passion when I signed here, and I said Arsenal was a little bit different. That is the only thing I said.
When I was a young kid, I never expected to play for Arsenal or England.
So I had a choice between going to a jail or going to a bughouse like a nice young middle-class student. So I chose to go to a very polite mental hospital. When I left eight months later, they said, 'You were never psychotic. You were just an average neurotic.'
Perhaps because I never left England and went to America - I think the public sort of appreciated that. I visited and I did some shows over there, but I never had any ambitions to settle over there. I could never have left England.
I was just taught very early that if I didn't solve problems, I was headed for a very dark path. Problems were everywhere. Now, even if there are no problems, I look for problems. I'm like, 'You know what? I don't like the way this spoon works. I want to design a new spoon.'
That's one thing: When I left Notre Dame, when I left every school, what I'm the proudest of is we never compromised the rules, never were on probation, never had any major problems of any kind.
I thought you were supposed to be the champion of your people,' I said. I live because I need to do that. For anyone who is left.' Don't you see? No one will be left. Protect them now or there will be no one to protect!' This is a battle that goes on and on. It never ends. You're too young to understand. No! You're too much of a coward to fight.' I was sick of lies and secrets and of battles so old we had to erase who we were to fight back. And still we lost. Still we were tied to posts.
Many of the novelists I admire never left their hometown. Look at Flannery O'Connor. So many of the great Russians never left Russia. Shakespeare never left England. The list goes on.
Arsenal have class. I remember when I was at Spurs, the Arsenal players would arrive for matches in their navy blazers with the gold gun emblem sewn into their pockets and grey slacks. We couldn’t match their ground with that beautiful main entrance, marble halls and spiral staircase. Even in 1961 when we won the Double, we were never as big a club as Arsenal.
I like the style of football in England and the style of Arsenal, and I'm very happy to play in the Premier League.
My father left when I was really young, but he's still living. There are things I wish I'd said that I didn't and I don't think I'll ever get the opportunity to say. He's battled addiction problems his entire life. I wish things were different. I wish there were a way my son could know him, know the good parts of him.
I've found that when I was young, all the pretty girls at school got all the dates and went to all the big parties and everything because they were pretty. They never bothered to develop anything. And as they aged, their prettiness faded and they were left as middle-aged women who were very, very unhappy and disappointed. But I can't feel sorry for them because that was their own doing.
Having spent all that time getting away from South Africa, running away from the army, I wanted very much to believe that America and England were actually as free as they were meant to be, not slipping rapidly into becoming police states like the one I'd just left.
The Police, they were the guys that were like the gateway to the mainstream. In England, there was a very strong reggae movement that was going on. Anything that was happening in reggae happened out of England. They were brilliant. They could spot a sound that was cool, the 'it' sound.
For Arsenal it's very important to have a player like Matteo Guendouzi. He's a good player and I think he can make a success with Arsenal. I hope so. He's a great player, he's very talented and he's very confident.
I have fond memories of growing up in beautiful England. It is very much a part of the fabric of me, even though I left when I was quite young. It's just a very different culture over there, filled with a profound depth of history.
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