Foreign Player Quotes

When you bring in a player with a big reputation for a big fee, and he's coming from a different championship, and it starts badly, then you can be worried - we had an example of that with Andriy Shevchenko.

When I came to Spain, people thought I would fly home again after the holidays, stay up all night celebrating, and would have no discipline. That may be true of other players, but it's not my way.

When Brazil lose, someone has to be guilty, and it's always Rivaldo. It's different with Romario. He plays in Brazil, and they love him more. I'm treated like a foreign player.

I'd never thought of going to Japan, but the J-League came to me, and I could see that they wanted me to be part of the project. In the beginning, they said, 'We have two or three teams for you, although we cannot say which ones at the moment, but we want you as a player, as everything.'

My background playing soccer gave me a natural advantage over many of the American-born players.

I remember, when I arrived in England, a lot of people said that my style of play was not for England.

If Ryan Giggs was plying his trade and been the player he had been here in a foreign league, he would go straight from playing to an AC Milan or Inter Milan or any top European club out of the mix.

I was one of the first foreign players coming in to the Premier League.

I'd first come to Chelsea from Kosice and, for me, that was a dream. It's not easy making that move. I was maybe the first player to come from Slovakia to a club like Chelsea, who normally buy players from Holland, Spain, Italy, Portugal.

If you want to pay money for an English talent you pay way over the odds. You get players from abroad really cheap.

It is a big challenge for me to come to the Chinese Super League.

For a 20 year old the gap from Holland to England is massive. That's a fact. Not all players are able to settle in directly from day one. I remember even Van Persie needed two, three years but he became Van Persie.