Years ago, the NFL influenced what happened in college. It's the other way around now.
If you are in the Premier League or at Barcelona, Real Madrid, or Bayern Munich, you are at an end station.
You want to play in the Premier League, full stop. You don't want to play in the Championship. I've played there and I don't want to play there again for West Ham.
There is no free speech in football. Information is parsed by monosyllabic head coaches, who dictate who gets to speak to whom and when.
There's no club out there that is really a step up when you play for Bayern Munich. At most, you can join a club that acts at the same level.
The kudos and hierarchy of playing in the Premier League for a footballer is huge.
International football is one clog further up the football ladder
Where do you go from Real Madrid that's better? There's one or two clubs up there but none better.
In Germany, too many clubs are too scared of Bayern, both on and off the pitch.
The Football Association have always acted more as a referee than a governor. And the FA, aware the Premier League provide players for the England team, have always had too gentle a hand on the tiller. The result is that the Premier League are the tigers in the English football jungle everybody's scared of.
I want to aspire to titles. Liverpool will always be a big club, but we are not at the level of Manchester United, Manchester City, Chelsea, or Arsenal.
The closest you are going to get to playing international football is the Champions League.
My main regret about my years in football was keeping my mouth shut like a little mouse, not daring to speak out because I was told you left the managers to get on with the job and that the chairman must never interfere with the manager's decisions or the performance of his team.
