Quotes from Freddie Ljungberg

I like it in Seattle.

I've always been interested in clothes and shopping, and I have a few friends who work in fashion.

I have a house with its own dock and I can take my boat out when I want.

I played team handball when I was a child. It is a very brutal sport.

Where I came from had a lot of friends. A big social circle.

I had hip surgery in America because I'd had problems during my last two years in Europe. They said out there that my hip was broken and I didn't know about it.

Unai is very calm, composed and extremely detailed in what he expects. From Monday through to Friday, every single training session is very carefully planned.

Sometimes you have to just plug away, plug away in your game of football and maybe when your opponent gets a bit more tired you get that little extra metre and that's when you score the goals.

It is up to the coaches to tell me how to play.

As a child I could lie in bed and do absolutely nothing for hours but once I decided to do something, big or small, I could not stop until it had been completed.

I made a conscious decision when I was about 30 that I wanted to do something different with my life. I felt a little bit lost and didn't trust people, so I decided to move to America.

Where I am from in Sweden was on the beach, so I love the sound of the water hitting the dock.

When I went to Arsenal, people in Sweden said my game was more suited for Spain or Italy.

I played as a 10 and, in Sweden, they let me take as many touches as I could. All of a sudden, I come to Arsenal and I have to play one and two touches - it was a little bit alien to me.

My roles for Arsenal and Sweden are very different.

The problem in Sweden is that, when the players are younger, they are not allowed to develop their own style and skills.

Wenger simply doesn't like those who show a weakness. With him you generally feel as if you were in the army. It's only in public that he may appear to be some sort of man of liberal views. In reality, his credo is natural selection.

If you want to play at Arsenal you need to be top, top, you need precision.

I like my privacy.

But I'm constantly surprised by the amount of interest in how I look. It's flattering, but a little weird - at the end of the day, I'm a footballer.

For me, happy footballers play the best football.

When I came from Europe, I was told that Americans don't care about soccer and this and that. But the way people cared was beyond my wildest expectations. You can't manufacture that.

I didn't know exactly what to expect when I first came to Seattle but I have to say that how the city and the fans have embraced me has gone beyond my wildest dreams and for that I am forever grateful.

Sometimes when you play on the wing it gets a bit isolated and you can't help as much. But if you play a bit more central I can get the ball a lot more and help a lot more.