“That is how I have been brought up – to never give up, never take anything for granted.”
“It’s just about keeping the momentum going, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s Champions League or Premier League or whatever trophy you’re going for, you’ve got to focus on the opponent that lies ahead.”
“I was about six, and Liverpool had a community summer camp. They sent a few invites to my school and my age group, to my class specifically, and they were like, ‘Who wants to go?’ So every lad in the class put their hands up, as you’d imagine, so the only fair way was to pick names out of a hat, and luckily, my name was picked out.”
“In a knockout tournament, it is not really about your own performance – it is about the team.”
“There’s something special about the Champions Leagu,e and it’s always been a dream to play in that competition.”
“Technology is playing an increasingly important role in the life of a footballer, and I guess that is true across most sports now.”
“There will be goals to achieve along the way, but until I captain Liverpool, I will not be satisfied.”
“If you ever get in a position to influence and inspire the youth of the country, you should do it.”
“I always supported Liverpool. My whole family did!”
“You’ve got to beat the best if you want to be the best.”
“I started playing football with my mates and my brothers, in the playground or the park or the front garden. It was just about enjoying it, having a good time playing. I wanted to play all the time.”
“I am happy to get the chance to play whenever I get the chance, and it is down to the manager’s trust and the trust he has shown in me.”
“It’s an honour every time I get the chance to go out on to the pitch, whether it be starting or as a sub, so I’m just happy to get on the pitch whenever I can.”
“I think I’m always willing to learn and listen to the coaches and the manager and listen to the advice of the players in the team as well, so whenever I get the advice, I try to take it on board and just try to help myself get better.”
“With Ronaldo being one of the greats, probably one of the best players ever, it’s going to be an honour to hopefully play against him.”
“I want to challenge myself and test myself against the best players in the world, and there are not many people better than the likes of Ronaldo.”
“No matter what the competition is, we’re not going to take it easy. We’re going to fight for it and try and win as much silverware as we can.”
“Obviously, it’s important for any team that wants to be really successful to try to have the best players that they possibly can in all positions, and I think Alisson is definitely one of the best in the world in his position.”
“To play for Liverpool is the dream, the aim, and I can’t see it changing to be fair.”
“As long as possible, I want to have that relationship with Liverpool, to be a Liverpool player. To say I have done that for the whole of my career is something I have dreamed of being able to say.”
“The best chance we have of being successful is to not slip up and keep working hard to get three points on the board.”
“If you take your foot off the gas, there’s always someone who wants your spot.”
“It’s something you dream of. It’s very special to play in the Merseyside derby and, especially, win.”
“Liverpool are special.”
“As long as everyone does their part – the attackers score the goals, and the defenders keep the clean sheets – then you can’t go too wrong.”
“Every defeat hurts.”
“I was probably 13 or 14 when I realised I had a chance to make it. That’s when I realised that a bit of education had to be sacrificed in order to become a footballer.”
“To be a Premier League player is something that not everyone can say; even some of the best players in the world can’t say that!”
“I try not to pay too much respect to the players I am playing against.”
“You have to go out there and focus on yourself and not who you are up against.”
“That is probably the best thing to do: look back on the harder games you’ve had, the tougher games, learn what I didn’t do well and what I could have done better.”
“To beat City twice is no easy feat.”
“I feel I have been very lucky. When you are growing up, you have dreams of being a footballer, perhaps even playing for the club you support, and I am living that dream.”
“Not many people can say their family has seen them play at a World Cup.”
“I used to show my emotions too much. I had to get rid of that because the opposition would notice and start to target me. If I did something wrong, I would take it out on myself, but it is important in football to concentrate for 90 minutes.”
“Emotion is a good thing, but top level football can be tough, and you have to be in control.”
“I just try and play where the manager puts me as well as possible.”
“It’s not important to me where I’m playing, just as long as the manager is happy and trusting me to go out on the pitch.”
“That’s all that really matters to me – playing for the club.”
“I think the moment you get comfortable is the moment that people start gaining on you and start taking that position from you.”
“Most opponents aren’t Ronaldo! You have to show him respect but not too much, because that’s when you get taken advantage of.”
“You have a job to do, and whoever I am up against I will try to come out on top like I always try.”
“You make mistakes that you want to learn from, that you don’t want to happen again, and that’s what I try to do.”
“Football and chess can seem like sporting polar opposites, but there are so many similarities with the modern game.”
“I had a lot of idols like Fernando Torres, Steven Gerrard, Jamie Carragher, and Xabi Alonso – all of them. I really looked up to them.”
“The dream is to captain Liverpool.”
“I’m just a lad playing for Liverpool, trying to achieve his dream, so to see a lad with my name on his shirt – when I grew up having the names of other players on my shirt – it meant a lot.”
“Until I am playing every game all season for a couple of seasons, I am always going to be striving for better.”
“I used to love watching Match of the Day and the goals. I used to love seeing people scoring.”
“The way myself and my brothers have been brought up is that you don’t give to receive, you give to give, and that is the way life is.”
“It’s always good to get compliments from your idol.”
“It is a thing of dreams to make your European debut for your boyhood club. Especially to make it with a goal was very special for me.”
“There are always opportunities at Liverpool.”
“The odds are stacked against you becoming a footballer, so my family made sure I always had a backup plan.”
“You are brought up to realise that there will always be tough times in football and that nothing is ever straight forward.”
“As a kid, I used to go and wait at the gates of Melwood or look through the cracks in the wall just see if I could see any of the people I was looking up to, who we all wanted to aspire to become, when we were in the Champions League, the likes of Gerrard, Carragher and Alonso.”
“The family and friends and the people I surround myself allow me to keep my feet firmly on the floor and not get too big-headed.”
“No matter how good you are, your mentality has got to be right. A lot of young players, that’s where they go wrong, and that’s what I’ve always seen when I was growing up – players who are almost there but couldn’t quite get there because the mentality wasn’t right.”
“My mum and dad always knew that my dream was to be a footballer, but they also warned me that it doesn’t always work out.”
“The most important thing for me is education, and my family were really supportive in making sure I did the best I could.”
“My mum and dad pushed me to work hard in my earlier years in education.”
“When I was growing up, I was focused on football and school.”
“It’s the high-pressure situations that bring out the real you.”
“Probably the best thing for me to hear from my family is telling me that they are proud. To be able to see them smile is a great thing.”
“In training, you can push yourself to the limit and test yourself against the best players in the world. That is when the pressure is really on, and they are the moments when you either improve, or you don’t.”
“That’s the most proud I have been: Seeing my family at the World Cup and them being able to watch me play and making them proud of me.”
“My first poster was Michael Owen. I used to just love how he scored goals.”
“I always loved watching the Champions League, growing up.”
“You just want to be in every day with the other players; you want to play a game every day if you can.”
“My heart was always set on Liverpool. I always loved the club.”
“There is a big emphasis at Liverpool to have an academy that brings through young players.”
“I didn’t really have a position when I was younger; I just used to play where the manager told me to play.”
“Once I reached about 14 or 15, I started to steady myself and get into a midfield role and carried that on until I was 17. Then I dropped into right-back, and I have played there ever since.”
“The role I play is defending, so you’ve got to be doing that first and foremost. The better you can get it will help the team and help you progress, and I work on that every day.”
“It’s always great to see someone’s life change for the better, and to be involved in something like that is really uplifting for me.”
“It’s wrong if you go into a game and think you’re starting week in and week out.”
“Keeping people on their toes is the best way to get the best out of people.”
“I have always wanted to play against those types of players such as Ronaldo and Neymar.”
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