Gianluca Vialli

“I never thought that being a footballer I was invincible, I knew I was human.”

“I never want to make the people dearest to me suffer: my parents, my brothers and my sister, my wife Cathryn, our children Olivia and Sofia.”

“I'm here with all my faults and my many fears, but also with the desire to do something important.”

“Something I think that I'm good at is that I don't complain.”

“I gave up at the right time, scoring a goal against Derby. I didn't hear anybody shouting, 'Please stop, you are getting too old.' That's a success. And I don't want to come back for the sake of it.”

“I'm mentally drained even when I'm just sitting on the bench and not playing.”

“It's not simply a case of managing players as they used to be any more, because players now are like small companies. You have to deal with their agents and it's become extremely tough being a manager these days.”

“I still get upset if the pasta is not cooked how I like it, but I've learned to put things into context.”

“If I was a wealthy foreigner I wouldn't want to invest in Italy because there are so many uncertainties, all the scandals related to corruption and match-fixing.”

“In Italy, managers don't know how long they're going to be in charge for and there's always rumors about someone taking over.”

“As a player I had the opportunity twice a week to play football in front of thousands of people and I could make them happy by just scoring a goal.”

“We Italians need to feel like we're under pressure, we need to see an enemy.”

“If I'm thinking about work, it's easier to block the irrational thoughts out of my mind.”

“I'm not 25 anymore. It takes much longer to recover now from a game than before.”

“You need to be humble, play with pride but also aggression.”

“I've tried to keep myself fit, but to be successful you need to think and train as a player.”

“Pressure is a combination of expectations, scrutiny and consequences. If the consequences are grave, then you feel more pressure and if you feel more pressure you learn how to cope with that.”

“I have been thinking quite a lot about retiring... it is getting very difficult to be both a player and a manager.”

“Management is about improving your relationship with the players and the journalists, about learning to read a game better so that you can make changes.”

“Finishing second and getting in the Champions' League quarter-finals or semi-finals is fine, but at the end of the day you need to take some silverware.”