Per Mertesacker Quotes

Fulham wanted me when I was 16. They were in the Premier League at the time with Mark Hughes, and I was close to going.

Many people don't know, but American Girl Scouts get to travel the world, and that's a very good thing, as the more we can expose our young people to other cultures, the better off we'll be in this increasingly globalized environment.

Immigrants have always come into the country with low levels of education. Whether it's the Irish or Italian or Polish, here is the land of opportunity. It's where people come in at the bottom and build themselves up. To try to bring in people who have already made it is un-American.

Little America

In fact, for blacks who have education and who have not succumbed to a new lifestyle—the grievances, and the coarseness represented by rap music—it’s gotten tremendously better. What’s disheartening, though, is that when you study ethnic groups around the world, the ones that are lagging behind are those where their leaders always tell the same story: that it’s other people holding you back, and that therefore you need to stand against those other people and resist their culture. But that culture may be the key to success.

As a girl growing up in Cyprus, Saudi Arabia and then India, the idea of cracking the industry in America seemed crazy. So thankfully, the way I was raised was to be an open person.

For two years, I'd lived in Silicon Valley, surrounded by other highly educated transplants with seemingly perfect lives. It's jarring to live in a world where every person feels his life will only get better when you came from a world where many rightfully believe that things have become worse.

I actually grew up in Europe half my life. Then Canada, then the States.

Every kid dreams of playing in the Premier League.

To work with the kids and help them come through from the Academy to the first team would be brilliant.

I think that it is advantageous to join Bayern Munich at a young age.

When I first arrived at Napoli, I was the ball boy, which meant that I got to watch as the legends trained. Then, once I joined the youth team as a young teenager, I was a midfielder just like Tardelli.

If we are encouraging kids to go into academies, then presumably we are selling them the dream that they can play first-team football.

Here at Basel is where I made my first professional steps. I came up and grew up through the FC Basel school.

Me being at Coventry, instead of a big Premier League club, probably helped me develop. You don't get put in the academy system, playing Under-18s and Under-23s.

I think it's important to live as much of your life as possible in the real world. If you live a life that's limited to the Westside of Los Angeles, you're only going to see people like you.

The quality of our academy system is very high, as good as anything in the world. Around the country, lots of people in youth development are keen to get together and find a solution to that 17-to-21 age bracket and how we get those players playing.

Coaching for tackles? That's something you do with seven-year-olds, when you show them how to stand and when to make a block. It is one of the basics of the game. No Premier League manager needs to coach it.

I got my first taste of real professional football on loan at Northampton. I was 18 at the time, and I played only nine games, but it was a massive opportunity for me.

I began my journey as a 16-year-old boy at the Arsenal's academy, trying to one day become a first team player, going out for evening runs in East Barnet with Jack Wilshere.

When you're worrying about crime rates, go help teach kids to read at a young age so that their chances for climbing out of poverty and achieving success in school and life go up.

The Champions League was something very distant for us. I grew up in a very small town with 50,000 inhabitants, and it was a way of being able to watch my idols or people I admired play football on television.

In Holland you go into amateur teams, come up through the ranks and are generally spotted for senior or professional football. At 16, I had made it into a men's amateur team, and was picked up professionally from there.

I signed as an 11-year-old for Everton. I broke into the Under-18s at the age of 14, then the reserves at 15, then I was in the first-team squad at 16.

Having come from a working-class family in the rural South, the fashion industry opened my eyes to culture, arts, and the world.