Rafael Nadal

Anyone could become a star, but everyone must be a human being.

I just wanted to see how the shorts felt again.

I still take advice from my mum on what clothes look good on me. I used to listen to her a lot more, but I’ve started to choose my own things from time to time.

I think I am a complete player. I can play well on all the surfaces. For me, the clay might be easiest, but I am not a specialist on clay.

As a tennis player you can win and you can lose, and you have to be ready for both. I practised self-control as a kid. But as you get older they both – winning and losing – get easier.

If you want to belong to the best, you need good technique and, perhaps even more importantly, a good eye. If you see the ball sooner, you have more time to think about how and where to return it.

The bad thing about the tennis calendar is how it is made and obligates you to play tournaments all year. If you want to achieve the most you can and go as high up in the rankings as you can, you have to play from the start to the finish because there are important tournaments from the beginning to the end.

My parents’ divorce made an important change in my life. It affected me.

Outside the manager, John [Terry] and I have probably the closest relationship with Roman. We speak to him sometimes just minutes after a game to discuss how it went and at other times when he wants to gauge our views on specific subjects … Abramovich is also very like Mourinho in his thirst to discover the reasons behind a certain event or result.

It’s important to have people around you with enough confidence to say if you are not acting in a good way. Normally, when you are at the top, people say everything is fantastic. Probably in that moment it is what you want to hear, but it’s best to be reminded how to act properly.

I don’t really care what the man on the street thinks. I never did anything to please him in the first place, and I’m not going to start now.

I was passionate about soccer. I still am. Odd, though – playing soccer always made me much more anxious than playing tennis. On soccer days, I’d be out of bed by 6 in the morning, all nervous. But I was always calm when it was time for a tennis match. I still don’t know why.

I just try to win the match by fighting for every point, and running down every ball.

Since I was a kid, I’ve wanted to do sports for a living. In the beginning, I played a lot of soccer, but in the end I chose tennis. I love sports in general … But tennis is my passion.

With Almagro, boy, that’ll be a tough match. He’s playing at a very high level right now and he hits the ball hard.

When one player is better than you, at this moment, the only thing you can do is work, try to find solutions and try to wait a little bit for your time. I’m going to wait and I’m going to try a sixth time. And if the sixth doesn’t happen, a seventh. It’s going to be like this. That’s the spirit of sport.

For me, pressure is bird flu. I’m feeling a lot of pressure with the problem in Scotland. It’s not fun and I’m more scared of it than football.

If you don’t lose, you cannot enjoy the victories. So I have to accept both things.

I need to improve, I want to improve, and to be able to stay in London and play on grass before Wimbledon is a very good opportunity for me.

I’m always searching for new music, and I change what I listen to on a regular basis.

It’s not that difficult to play well and win titles in a team like Barcelona, but it’s in the national side where you see a player’s true class. That was the case with figures like Pele, Diego Maradona and Zinedine Zidane. With Spain, Iniesta has shown that he is among the best players of all time and that’s why I rate him higher than Messi or Ronaldo. Even though the latter two have incredible scoring records for their clubs, they still haven’t won anything with Argentina or Portugal respectively.