In fact, I heard Bird first, and had got well into listening to him. You know, it's the kind of accidental thing that awareness of a player is: what's available, what somebody happens to play for you.
As football gets more globalised, it's probably more important than ever to have one or two players in your team who have grown up in the same streets or been to the same schools as the hard-core fans.
Something interesting has happened over the last 10 years in the Premier League. Players who once would have been discarded as expensive and too old have become important parts of title-winning squads.
A deliberate choice on my part was for the player to continue to find new possibilities in the early Attic rooms far into the game. I think this builds atmosphere, though it means there's no neat division of the prologue from the middle game.
We are about creating a new wave of talent. We are the Manchester United of kitchens now. Am I playing full-time in the kitchen? I am a player-coach.
We do the majority of what most athletes do. For example, as a badminton player, you have to be able to run a long distance and sprint. We do weights three times a week.
'Metal Gear Solid' is, for the most part, an infiltration game. You go somewhere, you execute your mission, then you go back. Those are your actions as the player.
With a movie, it's probably easier to sustain intensity and seriousness over the 90-minute duration. But in an open-world game it becomes exhausting, demotivating and even uninteresting for the player.
Basketball's eras are defined by teams - Celtics, Lakers, Bulls - and baseball's epochs are defined by players - Ruth, Robinson, Mantle - but with football, it's the sideline strategists, the nutty professors and top coated Lears.
The biggest rival I had in my career was me. I couldn't control Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Tom Watson or Lee Trevino. The only person I could control was me.
I've never set up any golf course that would favor anybody. I try to make it exactly the opposite, which is what we did at Valhalla when we modernized it to accommodate the lengths players are hitting it today.
We have a secret project at Third Man where we want to have the first vinyl record played in outer space. We want to launch a balloon that carries a vinyl record player.
In jazz, you listen to what the bass player is doing and what the drummer is doing, what the pianist and the guitarist is doing, and then you play something that compliments that, so you are thinking simultaneously and thinking ahead.
I remember how inspiring it was to meet players like Bobby Charlton or Bryan Robson when I was a kid. I still remember Clive Allen showing up when I received a trophy for my Sunday league team.
I think the most important goal I scored in Spain was the first one because people were wary about me coming over to Spain as a player - they thought I was just there to sell shirts.
Over the years, when I've seen players retire, when you ask them about it, they always say you'll know when you're ready, and I think I know when I'm ready. I think I'm ready.
In Holland and Spain and France, where so many of us come from, people aren't interested in the sex lives of their players. We don't hear these stories - even in Italy where the media is right on top of football.
So here, at Arsenal, we are often surprised when we are shown some of the newspapers, and at the bottom of an article there is a line saying if you know of anyone who had an affair with a player, call this number. It is very strange to us.
We wanted to create an environment where if a game player enjoyed the 'writing style' of a particular game designer, he or she could look for the next game by that same author and not be disappointed.
I was being groomed to be a tennis player for sure. My grandparents and parents realised I had a natural athletic ability and if I was forced to do it, I could probably do well. But all I wanted was to play pretend.
Even though I may not intend it when I set out to write the book, these places just emerge as major players in what I'm doing, almost as if they are insisting on it.
