For me, it is very important to control a situation in defence. You can always score goals, but you have to add stability in the defence.

I am confident. My style of play is to control a game. You have to be smart in your brain and fast.

The English have a special sense of humour. This I immediately experienced in the dressing room. As I walked with two plates while eating, suddenly a team-mate asked me, 'Basti, what time is it?' hoping I would automatically turn my hand to look at my watch. That's quite entertaining.

The Premier League is a very strong league. Chelsea, Manchester City, Arsenal, and Liverpool all have a high quality. But those who know me also know that I always want to win titles. And I think that Manchester United are a club which can win titles.

There's a famous slogan here in the Bavarian dialect, and we use it inside Bayern Munich. We say, 'Mia san mia.' Literally, it is, 'We are we,' but it means, 'We are who we are.' That's not being very arrogant, but we are very confident about our ability to win the game. It is about a winning mentality.

I'm a competitor.

God doesn't make mistakes.

You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.

It's football. There's emotions.

Football is a simple game. Twenty-two men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans always win.

I hate football.

If you made me the national commissioner of football, I'd tell you one thing that I would mandate. The second Saturday in September, we're going to have conference day. Everybody from the SEC plays a Big 12 team. Everybody from the Big Ten is going to play the ACC. Everybody from the Big East is going to play the Pac-10.

Football coaches don't have real problems.

I don't think there's been anything in the game of football in my lifetime that has changed college football more than redshirting.

I've followed Notre Dame football since 1946, when I listened on the radio and Johnny Lujack tackled Doc Blanchard in the open field to preserve a 0-0 tie.

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I played a lot of football when I was younger. I'm a good receiver, actually.

I hate losing.

Football was really my least favorite sport and the last sport that I ended up picking up as a kid. My dad started me off with baseball, which most kids did at that time. I really enjoyed basketball. That was my favorite sport.

For some reason the football coach of a major college program is seen as one of the leaders of the campus. And some way we have to let our young people know that that leader can look like anyone.

You may not win the Super Bowl. Your kids may not go on to be doctors and lawyers and everything may not go perfectly. That doesn't mean it was a bad plan or the wrong thing. It's just like a football season. Everything's not going to go perfect.

To me, football is so much about mental toughness, it's digging deep, it's doing whatever you need to do to help a team win and that comes in a lot of shapes and forms.

Football is a contact sport and there's a lot that goes into it. But I have committed myself for a long time to doing it, and because I love doing it so much I want to make that commitment.

I don't put any thought into the footballs after I choose them. When you're out there playing in front of 70,000 people, like a home crowd, you don't think about it. You're just reacting to the game.