I've picked up quite a few yellow cards in the last few years - a few reds, too. That was the case as a youth player as it is now. But I don't see it as a problem. That's how I play. If you take that away, then I wouldn't be where I am now. So I don't think the yellow cards or the red cards are too big of an issue.

Here at Basel is where I made my first professional steps. I came up and grew up through the FC Basel school.

To have six years of professional football under my belt already is really something.

Actually, it's normal when you come to a new club and country: you need to get used to the language, the philosophy of the team, the squad, the coach.

I always watched professional football and my father played at an amateur level, but I didn't think I wanted to become a pro.

When I was a boy, I was called a nerd all the time - because I didn't like sports, I loved to read, I liked math and science, I thought school was really cool - and it hurt a lot. Because it's never OK when a person makes fun of you for something you didn't choose. You know, we don't choose to be nerds.

When an athlete has relegated the persistent rumors of cheating to the back room of the mind, he hasn't really forgotten them. And when he glances back to where rumors hunker in the darkness, he hopes with a savage heart that somehow, some day, those cheaters will be brought to justice.

I leave work by 6:30 P.M. so I can spend some time with the children. Inevitably, we'll end up watching basketball or football. I live in a house of boys, and they're all sports mad, so I don't stand a chance.