Quotes from Jamie Carragher

It is a sad day for football when a player about to enter his prime moves for financial reasons and nothing else.

It's been a privilege for me, really, to play for one of the biggest clubs in the world, an iconic club, an institution.

It is embarrassing that a player would give up his career and the chance to compete for the biggest prizes in the game just for money.

We are not a nation who has ever produced No 10s prolifically. When I was growing up, attacks consisted of a big man-little man combination, with two midfielders sitting behind.

Everyone's different with different ways of doing things.

Every manager has his own ideas and different ways of doing things.

To captain Liverpool in any game is special, but to do it in a final, would be one of the proudest moments of my life.

If you'd asked me at the start of my career I would have said I was going to be a manager. I may still be in future, but there seemed to be an expectation it was a natural progression for me.

Rafa Benitez - man with huge experience who knew how the club operated - could not get the results Real wanted and couldn't walk away from the fights that erupted in the dressing room and the boardroom.

The top coaches want wide strikers who cut inside. They want playmaking midfielders who can play between the lines as well as perform their defensive duties.

There were players who could leave the result at Anfield, but me? No chance. I got involved in the running of two restaurants in Liverpool to take my mind off football but, before the opening night of each one, I'd played badly. It meant I couldn't enjoy the party. It felt like I had to punish myself.

Managers can make themselves look strong by selling or dropping players, but if the move doesn't work, the choice looks flawed.

I'm not massively into the screamers, because I think sometimes fellas just hit it and there's an element of luck over whether it flies into the top corner or over the bar.

If I'm reading a book by a footballer I don't want to read about games, how he scored or played well. People want to read what you thought, not what happened.

Liverpool is no different to any other city in the country for footballers. If you are famous and people know you have money, there will always be someone who wants to make a name for themselves.

In some ways, trying to win cups is more fraught than trying to win the league, as one really bad night and everything comes crashing down.

For a 20-year-old kid to be taking on Liverpool Football Club over a contract. To the pit of my stomach that just winds me up, it angers me.

The captain at international level has to be someone who is one of the first names on the team sheet, someone who has the respect of the other players and someone who has good leadership qualities.

Players like people saying good things about them and, of course, no one is ever wrong when they do that, but they always are when they say bad stuff.

Don't get me wrong, the fans are great for us. But the fans, and the players, all of us together have to realise we have to be patient.

At the end of a career you're desperate more than ever for medals, grabbing as much as you can as you go.

The only way the confidence comes back is by winning games. You grind out a few results and hopefully with each game you get more confident.

My wife never went to many Liverpool games but if she was out on a Saturday, she would always ask someone for the score. If we had won, she'd simply be relieved that I would be coming home in a good mood.

I was an Evertonian as a kid, but I've never hated Man United. I've always had respect for them.