Rafael Nadal

I am not the most courageous guy in the world outside of the court. Being alone in the dark is something I don’t like.

If the plane moves, some turbulence, I am nervous flyer.

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.

Honesty, willingness to exert oneself, friendship – all these things shaped me too.

When one gets beaten by somebody better, one has to know how to lose with humility. Sure, I could have served better. Sure, I could have hit my forehand harder. But the truth was this was like an avalanche, and there was no way to stop it.

We should try to teach the young people values that are useful to them whether they become professional athletes or not.

If you are playing bad you are going to lose here, on clay, on ice, or on the beach.

Where do you go when you’re the best in the world? What’s next?

Every time you are not practicing someone else is.

So this is it. Match point for eternity.

I don’t have any idols, any heroes, nothing, no.

The glory is being happy. The glory is not winning here or winning there. The glory is enjoying practicing, enjoy every day, enjoying to work hard, trying to be a better player than before.

The young athletes are supposed to mature, to improve their personality.

I was in the tennis bubble. I wasn’t thinking about the big picture. I didn’t notice what they said on television, I wasn’t reading any papers. I had a coach and a manager, and they kept me in the bubble.

Girls had never been important. I’d had a girlfriend or two and had liked them a lot but it wasn’t love, because my first love was tennis.

I always work with a goal – and the goal is to improve as a player and a person. That, finally, is the most important thing of all.

I cannot win this year but I can play good on grass

In Majorca, I can be myself. I go to the supermarket and the cinema, and I am just Rafa. Everyone knows me, and it is no big deal. I can go all day – no photographs.

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 more a tennis problem than a mental problem. The transition is difficult. It depends how much time you have. Playing on grass can sometimes be a bit of a lottery.

The philosophy of FIFA is to expand world soccer space, to spread out the world football space.