Before leaving, I was seen as a good player, perhaps as a very good player, but as one of the many players that Bayern had. But if you play as a Real footballer, you get even more attention. Maybe that part from the fans I do not like so much.
Even though now I'm pretty popular in my country and tennis is the No. 1 sport, and I'm very flattered that the people recognise me and come up and give me compliments, I'm more a person who likes to have privacy and peace.
In the history of sport in general, people stick around. Look at Shaun White and Lindsey Vonn just continue on, Olympic cycle after Olympic cycle; that is why they are famous.
I don't think I'll ever feel as famous or as popular as I felt when I was a 17-year-old soccer player in Modle. Only about 20,000 people live there and 12,000 of them come to every game. Running onto the pitch each week was just the most fantastic feeling. Nothing can beat that.
Take Ernie Els. He plays in every country. You see his name everywhere. He's received in different parts of the world. It's a good experience.
Cricket, like all sport, offers glory to few and a lifetime of it to even fewer. For the investment it demands, it offers short careers that end when people in other professions are starting to flourish.
It's a big compliment that so many people want to see me. For them, it's all about football. That's what they remember about me.
You dream as a player of having fans chanting your name.
To know that you will be in the International Sports Hall of Fame and that people for hundreds of years will know who you are and what you did, it means everything.
It's always a dream to be on the cover, it's one of the things an athlete always aspires to do, to be on the cover of a videogame, but I never thought I would get to do it this quick.
Wherever I go, I now easily get the attention of the sports fraternity.
These days, you can watch many different sports; you are saturated with it 24 hours a day. And young boys all want to be footballers because you don't even need to be that good, and you can still earn £100,000 a week.
In football, the hero and legend status is given out far too easily for me.
When I did win the Tour, I felt I was feted more in the U.K. for being an Olympic gold medallist... Then I come back to Europe to race, and they're not interested in the Olympic gold; it's about being the winner of the Tour de France - here he is.
