"You thought I was crazy - and I still am!"
"We were out of the championship race very early, and maybe subconsciously we have chosen this competition. I felt that in the Champions League we had a good start, that concentration was fully there and that we had the potential as well. If you are in there every year then some will go better for you than others."
"We will be able to play with less negative pressure. The biggest problem we have in football is 'if we do not, then what happens?'- I feel Middlesbrough played a bit like that in the UEFA Cup final, with a hand-brake in the first half because they knew it was a game they could not miss."
"Barcelona are the super-favourites, and we are the dangerous outsider. I feel that if we play our natural game we are a super-dangerous outsider. My job is just to get the team to play at their best, have a real go - and therefore I am convinced we would do that."
"Like many finals, so long as nobody scores the match will be quite locked because of the importance of the competition. Once one team scores, though, it will then certainly be an open and crazy game."
He also commented on the inevitable questions regarding the future of Thierry Henry, saying:
"No matter what the guy does in July, when you go to a European Cup final you do not worry about that - you worry to bring the trophy back. I am convinced Thierry will stay but he has not yet come out and say it, but on Wednesday night no one cares about that - you want to just go there and win it together."