Quotes About Adversity

Any time you can get a win against a good football team with not a lot of guys healthy, it's a big week for us.

It's not easy to be a footballer.

People at school used to assume I was going to be a footballer, and it wasn't until I got to 16, when I was at Southampton, that I had a doubt for the first time in my life. Southampton said I wasn't big enough, but it was just because I hadn't grown. Simple as that.

I grew up in a place where there weren't many opportunities if you didn't become a footballer.

When you are a footballer, you will not always play 90 minutes. Sometimes you are not happy, but this is not important for me.

It's never nice to sit on the bench. Everybody knows it is not what you want as a professional footballer but it's about responding and coming back.

Not all things always go your way and you have to accept that. That's what you are going to get as a footballer.

For a footballer, not playing is like a fish not being in the water.

We are footballers, we can make mistakes and we can lose games.

I've been through a lot and played for a long time, so I can understand what others will go through. That's why I want to help them out. There are a lot of players who go to Belgium, for example, and have had terrible experiences. I know players, and they have come to me.

It can be a challenge, but my legacy, at least for the people who came before me, is you don't run from challenges because that's more comfortable and convenient.

I have to share my story. Not for me, but for the people who might go through the same thing and for juveniles who have gotten in trouble.

When you win everything is great but when you're losing nobody wants to know you - except for the people that really love you.

When I was fighting, there was no boxing in Saudi Arabia because it was forbidden.

I will fight 'GGG,' and I will beat 'GGG,' but I will not be forced into the ring by artificial deadlines.

Forced to confront a reptile or an international financial crisis, I'll take the reptile every time.

I've been forced to deal with my character assassination.

Being a foreigner bad guy doesn't have to be my destiny, and I can be much more than that.

I've been through WTO riots in Seattle, massive earthquakes, major floods... forest fires. I just try to be as even-keeled and calm as possible.

Every movie, I find myself adrift at the beginning of the movie, and then I find my way through the dark forest.

I'm not a good storm-outer... because I forget stuff.

This sport is not very forgiving.

Sometimes in people's lives, when bad stuff happens, their dreams just die, and they end up settling. I guess that's their decision, maybe, because they didn't believe in their dreams or forgot their dreams. My dreams never died.

No matter all of your credits and accomplishments - you can be forgotten in a trice. The idea that you have to go back and start again after considerable success can destroy you if you're not strong. I never lost track of who I am and what I can do, because I continually find things to do, but not everyone has that resource.