When you talk about professional footballers, rightly or wrongly, people often already have an idea in their head about what they're like; they'll paint a picture before they've met them.
— Chris Coleman
If you want to become a professional football player at any level, when you're growing up, you have to make sacrifices, and it's very difficult. It's not easy, but you have to train hard, you have to live right, and you have to rest.
Concentration and focus - they are very important, just as important as in anything, I suppose, if you're going to succeed. I've seen a lot of good players on the training ground, but when it comes to the game, they can't keep the same levels up on a Saturday.
People talk about great motivators, but I think motivation has to come from within the individual first, because if you haven't got that inner strength yourself, and belief and you want to do well, it doesn't matter what anybody else says. You have to have that; it has to be inbuilt.
Because football is an emotional game, it's full of feeling, and that's why we try to train with a smile on our face. At the same time, we work very hard, but it's a fine line, and you've got to try and get that balance right if you can.
My dad was Dublin born and bred - a Dublin boy - but he always pushed me to play for what was Wales Under-15s in my day.
When I was playing, I always preferred to be meeting a side like the Faroe Isles or San Marino early doors. Do things right in those games, and you knew you would get six points on the board, at least be up and running and challenging in the group.
I shared a dressing room with Alan Shearer. I used to watch the opposition looking at him, and they'd be thinking they need to score more than one because Shearer is going to score, and he scores every game. That psychological advantage is fantastic.
There's not many Premier League clubs as big as Sunderland, with their fanbase and stadium and facilities.
I have played international football myself.
Any success I have had has not happened overnight; the journey has never felt like me sitting in the back of a limousine sipping champagne. It has always been more like riding up a hill on a pushbike, and the chain has come off.
I've never taken a bung, and I've never been approached to take one.
If you are a club manager and things are going well, it's a great feeling because you've got the whole city behind you. If you're manager of your country and it's going well - and you've got a whole nation proud of you - I can't describe how that feels.
Working abroad made me better.
I have a lot of time and respect for Roy Hodgson; he's a very good manager.
I'm never content, and I don't know if that's a curse or a good thing.
I never played in a European Championship. I wasn't good enough.
I've been in football a long time and one thing you don't do is when things are going well, you don't get carried away. And when they don't, you stay positive.
Of course training is very important, but resting is just as important. You have to get your recuperation, and I think all players make that mistake where they train hard but they don't rest enough, and even our school boy players, we tell them to get a lot of rest.
Even when I was growing up as a young boy, when I was playing schoolboy football, there were other guys who were as good as I was, maybe some even better technically. But I was prepared to stick to what was going to make me become a professional football player when I left school, and that was a lot of sacrifice and because my attitude was right.
Since I was five or six years old, I just wanted to be a professional football player. I wanted to play against the best players. I wanted to play in big stadiums in front of big crowds, and I was desperate to play for my country one day, and thankfully, I was lucky enough that happened.
I think, a lot of guys who want to be professional football players, they see the Premiership players, and they see the finished article, but there's a lot of hard work that's gone into their careers for them to get there. There's a lot of sacrifice, and I think people tend to forget that.
When you are in an international camp, you are together for 10 days. You eat three times a day together. You spend a lot of time in each other's company. That 10 days is very important ,and I think even times for training, times when you eat, meetings, this that and the other, a lot has got to change in that camp.
I think everybody is under the impression that everyone wants to work in the Premier League. I want to work at the top level like everyone else, but it doesn't mean that's the Premier League.
I won't tolerate players not giving everything they've got.
I've got the opportunity to manage a big football club, a seriously big football club, and I wasn't going to turn that down.
I don't like talking past the next game. It's never served me right in the past.
With success comes complacency if you let it happen. It is human nature; there is that urge to think about how well you have done.
It's naive of anyone to think there is no corruption in football because it's everywhere.
You can only ask someone of their best. That's it. If you lose, and you've given your best, that's how it goes.
There are a lot of good managers out of work because there are only so many jobs out there, and if you get it wrong two jobs running, it's hard to get a third one. That's generally the rule.
That's not always a nice feeling when you've given everything, and it's not enough - it's an empty feeling.
I get the Swansea-Cardiff thing: I was a Swansea player; I loved playing against Cardiff. But when I played for Wales and played with Jason Perry or Nathan Blake, I never saw them as blue and white and me as black and white.
I don't actually think about going down in history.
Every time I manage Wales and you win, the feeling is better than I've ever had as a club manager.
I think average players are able to play well now and again, or they'll play very, very well. Good players or great players, nine times out of ten, they have good games.
As long as my guys are out there and doing what I'm asking, and they're giving their best, I don't think anybody can ask for much more than that.
For me, the training has to be a mixture of hard work - it has to have a good structure, a good base - but also, I don't want all my players to be like machines.
You have to do a lot of planning, certainly in football. We watch the opposition three or four times before we play them.
Sometimes in football, the best team does not necessarily win; it's the team that plays best on the day that prevails.
When you're playing for Real Madrid, even when you're playing well, you're under scrutiny.
The biggest word in football, and it's a dirty word - no one likes to use it - is accountability.
If you ask any manager after a defeat, you want to be as far away from it as you can.
He was a huge football man - he loved football. He was a good parent, a great father, and brilliant with me.
Tournament football is unlike anything else. The campaign can be great, but a finals is a different challenge.
You can't manufacture team spirit; it doesn't come from having a good night out and a laugh.
It's not just about talent. It's about having players with good mentality.
At international level, I've only ever wanted Wales.
When a special moment happens, I really enjoy it, but I'm over it quite quickly. I remember it, yes, but I want to chase the next one.
I never played in a World Cup. I wasn't good enough.
