Petr Cech
If you take the autobiographies of great sports people, they are almost always the same. They start with zero; they are always ambitious, know what they want to do in life, and have the confidence to do it.Collection: Sports
Once you're on the pitch, you play for your team, and you want to win. During the year, you can play against friends - you can play against big friends and close friends - but once you are on the pitch, this friendship goes away, and you just focus on winning the game.Collection: Friendship
You always have years when you go through transition and the side needs to be rebuilt. Or you have changes in terms of managers.
For a big club, you can accept that the team does not win the league because it is in transition, but you cannot afford to slip out of the Champions League spot.
The big teams are about the Champions League.
Iker Casillas is one of those keepers who always seems to be at his best in the really difficult games when he has hardly got anything to do but reacts when needed in those emergency situations.
As a goalkeeper, Van der Sar can do everything. He is very good at coming off his line, and he is also effective as a libero - what they call in England a 'sweeper keeper.'
Buffon is fearless and has no obvious weaknesses. He has been outstanding for Juventus and was one of Italy's most important players at the 2006 World Cup finals in Germany, where they were victorious, but what is amazing is that he has been playing like that for years. He never seems to make a mistake.
It's always difficult to say if anyone is in the best form of their career.
Sometimes, if a striker is not scoring as many goals, they can still be in good form.
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.
I play football, not to only enjoy it - and I love the challenge of playing and competing with the best players - but I want to have the chance to win games.
Every time you can score more goals you should try to do so.
Sometimes I think it is best if, after a big game, you play another big game.
You can't control games for 90 minutes; there will be moments where the opponents will show their quality.
Managers come and go, and first-team coaches and players can leave suddenly.
It's normal in a top club that people change.
Everybody makes mistakes, and I am a human being.
When you make a mistake, you have to admit it.
Football is played by 11 players, and unfortunately, every time, it happens that some do well, and some do worse.
In a way, the manager plays as big part, but you, as a player, are on the pitch. He cannot make you run if you don't want to; he cannot make you make the right decision in the heat of the moment.
I think, in football, everything goes fast, and as fast as you can go up, you can go down. So basically, every day you work to be ready.
Do I want to play every game? Yes, I want to play every game. But I also understand it's impossible.
It's the life of the manager: when you make a decision, and the team doesn't win, the pressure comes. But that's part of the life of a manager and footballers as well.
Sometimes you need to make sure that, no matter how you do it, you win the games.
Every team needs people who guide you through the difficult moments.
It was my dream to have an opportunity to become a professional player.
Show me a team of the stature of Chelsea, Manchester United, Real Madrid, or Barcelona who is not obsessed with winning the Champions League. If they are not, I'd be surprised why they play in it.
Even if you have won it before, you just want to keep winning the Champions League. Every season, the ambition is to win the competition.
People always use the word 'obsession' in a negative way, which I'm always amazed by. We are not obsessed in the way that, if we don't win it, we'll just go and shoot ourselves. That's not the case. We are obsessed with the Champions League because this is a great competition to win. In a positive way, we try to search for the victory.
When you are going for every trophy, it is always good to have as many points as early as possible in the Champions League, and then you can concentrate on the league and the Carling Cup.
Every summer is important. If you have a bad summer, it can have consequences for the whole season. If you don't get people to rest and to have a very good pre-season, you can start the season chasing.
Every summer at a club is important because you have some changes in the squad.
Money has never won anything. You can spend as much as you want, but you must build a team first.
I speak five languages, which actually makes it easier when you join a new team. You can settle much quicker because you can help team-mates much faster and better. People need to be careful around me, though - I can understand everything.
Young Petr Cech was sports mad, football mad.
I understood I had to be good at school so I could play football in my free time. Usually, by the time I came home from school, I already had all my things ready for the next day, so I could put my bag on the side and go straight out to play football with my friends!
I want to be playing, I want to have a chance to compete for my position in the team, and I want to be useful for the team and do the usual stuff on the pitch week in, week out.
I believe that the Premier League is the best league in the world, and having played in the Premier League for such a long time, it is to my advantage, and I know what to expect.
It is a great challenge to be playing against the best players in the world, and I always wanted to play in the Premier League and be a part of this league.
I like people who tell you what they think straight away instead of going around in circles.
It's always better if you have one manager for a long period because then you can build the team.
Football is a wonderful game which can be cruel at times.
Football is a collective sport, but goalkeeping is an individual sport.
If a team concedes a goal, then the first question is always of the goalkeeper.
I gave my first interview when I arrived at Chelsea in 2004, and I had said that it had been my dream to play for one of the best clubs in the world and in the best league in the world - this came true, and I am very pleased my dream will last.
I think it's very useful when you want to be the team who create. You need to create this superiority at the back when you build up using the goalkeepers.
You win the way you have to.
My father has a book where, ever since I started playing games... he wrote down the games that I played in. And then, when I did my website, we thought that was a really good idea, that people can keep track of my games.
I played tennis a lot when I had the skull injury. For the first two months of my preparation, it was all I could do. It is a great sport for me because it helps my hand-eye coordination, and you need quick feet, which is a good exercise for a keeper.