This whole 'tired footballers' and three-games-a-week thing is an absolute myth.
I fired the nurse the next day because she didn't check out the NFL schedule in advance - just kidding, ... I plan to be in Denver. I haven't missed a lot of games over the years. But there's a bunch I wish I had.
In December, every league has a break, but in England, it is not like this.
It's football all day on Sunday. I wish we had football every day; that would make me way happier. Why can't we have that? You've got all these teams! Why can't we just play a Monday game, a Tuesday game, a Wednesday game?
Who am I, of course, to judge them, but the Premier League must urgently think about a rest period in a European Championship or World Cup year.
'Monday Night Football' has the good and the bad points. The bad point is you have to wait around all day, and it disrupts your schedule for the next week. Now you have one less day to prepare for the following week.
You have to take the good with the bad and if you have to play over Christmas you have to. We have a good life and playing football over Christmas is not the worst thing in the world.
I needed something Real Madrid could not give, which was playing every Sunday, whether I was doing well or not.
There is no winter break, and I think that is the most evil thing of this culture. It is not good for English football. It is not good for the clubs or the national team, and I think you should change it.
This is what footballers are used to. You're used to playing matches throughout the Christmas period so for us it doesn't feel weird. We're working on Christmas Day and we've always done it.
In England, there is a tradition of playing on Saturday. But in Spain, I won the UEFA Cup with Valencia playing on Thursday and Sunday, which was just the same.
It's difficult to have the Africa Cup of Nations during the season because you focus on the league, and then you go to Africa, then straightaway you come back and have to refocus in the league.
Playing on a Thursday and then a Sunday is not a problem.
The most time players get off is during the international breaks.
I used to go a lot to F1 when Real Madrid didn't play at the weekends. It was a lot of fun and I always wanted Real Madrid to play on a Saturday so I could watch F1 on Sunday!
To play three games in seven days is not simple, above all for our wings-backs.
At Burnley, I'd enjoy myself with my missus and friends, but because at Tottenham we're playing Saturday-Tuesday, even Wednesday-Sunday, and with the intensity we play at, playing in the Champions League, we can't afford to have a night out.
Most people don't understand football is a 12-month job. In the off-season - you can attest this with the people from Joe's - anytime we did a shoot or anything, it had to be after 2:00. Because from 6:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., it's football training - get your body worked on, things like that. Then you go into the organized team activities in the spring, you work with your teammates and that's where your bonding comes from. You mold your cohesiveness.
