Read a very interesting article by him in Sunday's Observer, a good insight, particularly his views on managers.
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Like most footballers I have an addictive personality. The other week I enjoyed jetwashing the grime off the driveway so much that I tried to do the whole house. With vacuuming it's the same problem. I won't vacuum for a month and then I do one little bit of carpet and I'm hooked. I can sit down and stay sat down for a week.
Addiction is one of the pitfalls of being a footballer. It stems from being so focused on the game - in order to be good at what we do we have to be obsessed with it. Also, we have a lot of free time. The best thing that's happened to footballers is DVD box sets. Watch those in the afternoons and they'll keep your mind occupied. Although once I get started on one I'll be up until 4am just to finish the set.
It's not all vacuuming and DVDs, though. I was addicted to gambling when I was younger, everything from horses to online poker. I got in the habit of going to betting shops with my mates and their dads. Eventually I gave it up and I haven't gambled for three years.
There are a lot of distractions for a young footballer. You can tie yourself up going to film premieres and celebrity events. It gets to the point where people always expect you to be doing something amazing, as if you're constantly jumping out of aeroplanes and climbing mountains. Actually you're just down the pub and playing a bit of football.
At the minute I'm obsessed with DIY. I've been taking up tiles and knocking down walls, mending the potholes in my driveway - although I've got a strict DIY 24-hour ban before a match because it knackers you out. My team-mates can't get their heads round why I wouldn't just pay someone to do it. But I like DIY. My mind tends to wander, and it helps keep me on the straight and narrow.
Inside my head it's a muddled little world. People say that I'm cocky and arrogant because I'm a big character and I like to talk - I think I might be addicted to talking. But I'm just being myself. It's one of those lose-lose situations: stay out of the limelight, ignore the fans and you get called arrogant, talk to everyone and you get labelled a cheeky so ...#8209;and-so. You can't win.
People say I'm the new David Beckham. I don't mind that at all, it's nice being compared to a legend. I grew up watching him and admiring him, and I still do. He's better looking than me, though. Much. You can actually lose yourself thinking about what a good-looking guy he is. And he's even better close up. My missus says I'm more rugged, whatever that means.
My team-mates are forever winding me up about talking too much. They say I'm always on the telly or in the papers. I've never had any media training, maybe it shows. Once when I was in the youth team at Arsenal we spent a day doing fake interviews, but I messed about and didn't pay attention. Why be calculating about it? You should just say what you feel. That's not always easy. Sometimes I go into interview mode, like when I've just come off the pitch and I'm knackered. I hear myself saying all the usual cliches. My mates say I sound boring, but what am I supposed to do? Wax lyrical on how skilful my passing is?
I like to tell the lads that I'm running for prime minister. I'm always watching Parliament TV. It's good banter, all those old fellas giving it, heckling Gordon Brown. My personal favourite is David Cameron - he really hammers them. That's the advantage of being the opposition, you can get on their backs. I love the drama of it.
The media are not much different. It's all a pantomime, you can't let yourself become concerned by it. I've been done over by the press before, but you just ignore it. Journalists are only human. Maybe they're having a bad day when they write that stuff about you. You'd hear the same sort of opinions in a pub after a match - the only difference is that journalists write it down in a newspaper. They can write what they want. It's only football, here today, gone tomorrow. It'll all be over in 10 years. Then I can chill out, do some DIY. You've got to keep a healthy perspective on these things. I've got my obsessions to keep me busy anyway. There are the plug sockets - at the training ground, in hotels at away games - I have to turn them off everywhere I go. I can't stand how the cleaners leave them on. I have to remind myself: walk away from the plug socket.
Money and football change your life, although you might not realise it at the time. You've just got to hope you become a better person for it. Some people change, get a few quid and suddenly think they're better than everyone else.
The craziest thing about football and celebrity is the whole PR machine that's grown up around it. PR agencies are constantly churning out images of footballers looking glamorous on red carpets - people begin to believe that's actually how you live your life. It's a complete illusion.
A footballer could go out every night of the week and never get photographed if he wanted to. But because so many of them choose to go to certain clubs where the paparazzi camp out, they end up in the papers. It's never going to happen if you go for a quiet pint at your local, is it?
Some people plan it all. Their PRs tell the papers which club they're going to, or which shops their missus can be seen walking out of. It's part of a whole lifestyle. People like Jodie Marsh and Danielle Lloyd are driven by it - they crave being photographed. I know there are people who could arrange things for my missus if she wanted to raise her profile. If I wanted to be known as the DIY King I'd just set it up for me and my girlfriend to get papped going into B&Q.
With all of that going on you need strong leadership from your manager to keep you focused. My gaffer at Blackburn [Mark Hughes] gives me that. He won't try to be your friend, having a laugh and a joke. He doesn't want to sit down for coffee. He and Mr Capello are my favourite kind of manager: disciplined. You give a player an inch and they'll take a mile, that's just the way young rich footballers are. We need managers to rein us in. It's a bit like when you're at school - if you have a strict teacher, you respect them; if you have a teacher that's always larking about, you lark about yourself. We need to be kept on a leash, otherwise we lose our focus.
Anything different and the team stops winning. I've seen it happen. You look at the clubs that are struggling in the Premier League and it's always for those same reasons. Players have to be controlled, if they're not it's a disaster. Look at Newcastle.
Under the guidance of Mr Capello I can see things going only one way. With him we could win the World Cup. If it was solely down to individual talent we would already be the best team in the world, we just need to learn to play together and we will do well. I'd put money on it, if I gambled.
People say footballers aren't bothered about pulling on the shirt any more, but that's rubbish. I love everything England. I didn't have a football club as a kid, I only ever supported England. Didn't matter if it was rugby, badminton, tennis or golf, if there was someone English doing sport on the telly I'd support them. You just do, don't you? I'd never sit through Lancashire v Worcestershire in the cricket, but if it was England I'd be there for hours. Every time we go out to play for our country, you feel that pride.
There will always be doubters; that comes from the trend of putting footballers on pedestals, to knock them down. That's the one thing I can't stand in this world, people who worry themselves with other people's success. Why can't they just be happy with what they've got? For me, it's a sign of the times, the Big Brother era. We're all obsessed with celebrity status. No one is happy just to be themselves. I'm not saying it's easy, but if you're true to yourself now, it will always work in your favour in the long run.
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Comments
Claimed exhaustion.
some good lines... "My mates say I sound boring, but what am I supposed to do? Wax lyrical on how skilful my passing is?"
"I have to remind myself: walk away from the plug socket."
Mental... tho the whole not playing for the U-21s is a blot.
The papers went after him, of course, but he has had the last laugh by playing better than ever and making it very hard for Capello not to pick him in the starting XI.
Look at the two stars of the U-21 tournament (Lita and the Preston striker who went to Pompey) - that tournament did not seem to do them much good, did it? The bottom line is that the only way into the England side is by playing well in the Premiership, preferably for a club also playing in Europe.
I admire Bentley greatly, he is also one of the very few players to get released by a big club and still go on to have a very good career. I bet Wenger must wish he had kept him, you can't say that Rosicky or Eboue or even Walcott is better than Bentley, surely?
Footballers job is two two hour training sessions a day FFS plus games & a bit of community work...too many games pah!
Fact is that for young English players the U-21's is becoming redundant because if they are at top clubs then they will be playing in Europe anyway or at least in the first team where they will be playing against top continental players every week.
England U21: Carson, Hoyte, Taylor, Onuoha, Baines, Milner, Reo-Coker, Noble, Young, Nugent, Lita. Subs: Hart, Alnwick, Ferdinand, Cahill, Richardson, Routledge, Rosenior, Derbyshire, Vaughan, Whittingham.
By the sounds of it, it wasn't so much too many games that meant he didn't play for the u21's, more the fact he had too many potholes on his drive to fill in!