'I wish I never left' 🔵 | Willian talks about his love for London and his football journey 👣

So, thank you for coming. We're just around the corner from the club, Chelsea, where you spent seven really happy years. We're not too far from the club now, Fulham, where you're having an unbelievable renaissance. I wanted to start by talking about the city, because you love London, don't you, and you feel really at home here. Tell us about how that began. So, first of all, it's my pleasure to be here, to talk with you. Do you mean that? So, London is my home. I love the city. I love some places, you know. The most, seven years at Chelsea, I was very happy there. I won a lot of trophies, so it was seven special years for me. So, my family loves London. I have a British passport as well. So, I feel like I'm a Londoner, you know. Well, you are. Yeah, I'm now at Fulham. I'm really happy, playing good, playing good football. I'm so happy to be back in London. So, you said you've got some favourite parts. What bits of the city do you really enjoy? Yeah, Chelsea and Knightsbridge. One of the best parts of London that I love. Is it restaurants, parks, cafes? I guess you're well beyond being a proper Londoner. You're well beyond museums and the London Eye and stuff like that. Yeah, I love a lot of shopping and cafes and stuff like this. You can sit and have a coffee with your family. That's the most important thing for me, to spend a good time with my family and sometimes with friends as well. Is London as well a city that some places are so football mad, which is great, but it must be quite intense to be a footballer there. Does London give you a little bit of anonymity? It's so big in a weird way, it gives you privacy back. Yeah, I feel that. In London, you can go around, you can walk around. This is a camera following you. Yeah, people recognise you, but they respect your time with your family sometimes. Sometimes they ask for a picture or stuff like this, but it's different. For example, in Brazil, it's more people, it's more crazy. They come, they ask for photos all the time. I was saying, if you lose, you can't leave the house. Yeah, of course. It's different, London is different. So you've got, am I right, twin girls? Yeah, I have twin girls, yeah. Because you came here ten years ago, they're about ten, aren't they? So were they born in London? Actually, they were born in Brazil. They arrived here when they were one and a half years old. Yeah, but they are more English than Brazilian. I suppose, is that part of what makes it feel like a home as well? Good things, bad things, on the pitch, off the pitch. Your life, big bits of your life have happened here. Yeah, you know, sometimes we had bad days and this is normal, you know. Sometimes you don't have a great day inside the pitch or wherever. Sometimes in training as well, but you have the city, you can enjoy, you can sometimes forget a little bit about football when you have days off, you know, because you have so much to do in London. You have a lot of things to do. You can go wherever you want and with friends, with your family as well and enjoy the city. So I'm doing that a lot. And your girls love it as well? They love it. They were missing London so much. When you went back to Brazil? Yeah, they were missing London. They were asking me, Daddy, I want to go back. I want to go back to London. Yeah, they were missing a lot. So have you had any luck? Because I remember interviewing you after the Chelsea game at Stamford Bridge and they're Chelsea fans, obviously, because they love their dad and they saw their dad growing up playing in blue. Have you been able to convert them yet? No. Yeah, they are Chelsea girls. They love Chelsea. Do they? They love Chelsea. So who's their favourite player now? Hang on a sec, was it ever you? I'm guessing when you played for Chelsea, you were their favourite Chelsea player. Yeah, but Hazard also, David Luiz, Tony Hoosiger. A couple of players, but they love Chelsea. When Chelsea is playing, they stop to watch, you know. So they're not too happy this season, even though it's going great for you and Fulham. They're probably a bit disappointed about something at Stamford Bridge. Yeah, when we play against Chelsea, the day before I ask them, which team are you going to support tomorrow? They say, Daddy, I'm sorry, but we're going to support Chelsea, you know. I say, no, you have to support Fulham because Daddy plays for Fulham now. They say, Daddy, we want you to play well, we want you to score, but we're going to support Chelsea, sorry. So you weren't in trouble for scoring then? Yeah, but it's funny. You said right at the start of the interview, you've got your British passport now. What was that like? Did you have to do the citizenship test and stuff like that? Yeah. How was that? It was hard. I had a book. Every day I was reading this book and doing the test by my phone. Like practice? Yeah, practice. Every day, every day. The first two, I didn't… What did you have to get? You've been quite hypersensitive. So there was like 24 questions. You can miss just six, so it was hard. But the 31, yeah, I got it. Well done, well done. Did that mean a lot to you? It means a lot. For me, it's a key that money cannot buy. In life, sometimes money cannot buy some things. To have this passport for me, it means a lot. Part of me wants to ask you what some of the questions were. The other part thinks I'm going to get them wrong. Go on, do you remember any of the questions? I remember that when I was practising, sometimes when I was at Chelsea, when I was doing my recovery massage, I was practising and I showed some questions to one of the physios. One of the English guys? Yeah, one of the English guys. I showed them and I said, do you know this? He said, no. I do wonder how many people born in England would struggle, or Britain. It was hard, but at the end, I got it. You love the city now, you're a Londoner, it's your home. But I wanted to go back. You first came to London 10 years ago. Actually, let's go back even further. When you first leave Brazil for Ukraine, you're a teenager. What is that like? Because at that point, you can't possibly imagine what's going to unfold. Actually, it wasn't the place that I really wanted to go, to Ukraine. Growing up, when I had a dream to become a professional football player, my dream always was to play in Spain, England, Italy, these kind of places. When I had the offer from Shakhtar, the first 2 or 3, I said no. With my family, my dad said no. We don't want to go there. And they still insist, just listen to us. We want to talk, we want to show you guys that we have a great plan. We play Champions League every year. Then we decided to go to Ukraine to have a look. Just to have a look, to talk and to feel. And then I arrived there. I stayed there 3 days, looking at places, looking at the training ground, the new stadium, walking around. At that time, it was very hot. It was a little tricky. They caught you in the summer. And then I decided to accept the offer from them. It was a good decision, wasn't it? Yeah, I think it was a good decision. We had a good team, we had good players, playing every year Champions League. Yeah, it was a good decision for me. When you came to England, was it always going to be London? And was it always going to be Chelsea? In fact, I know it wasn't, because you were halfway through signing for Tottenham, weren't you? When I was at Shakhtar in 2011, more or less, we got an offer from Chelsea. Shakhtar said no three times, I think. After that, I started to see every Chelsea game. It was always my dream, I want to go to Chelsea, I want to go to Chelsea. It's the only team that I want to go. I want to live in London, I want to go to Chelsea. Chelsea at the moment had Drogba, JT, Lampard. All those shirts are hanging up down there. All star players, good players. I said I want to play with them, I want to play with them. Then Chelsea stopped talking to Shakhtar. Then I went to Wansee in January 2013. I signed with them for four years. When you sign for four years, you don't expect to leave after six months. I signed for four years, I was happy. I was playing with Eto'o, Lassana Diarra. They had a good project as well. After six months, the owner of the club decided to sell the players. Then Kia started to negotiate with some clubs in New York. Liverpool, Tottenham, Chelsea again. Chelsea wasn't sure at that moment. We agreed with Tottenham. At the end, Chelsea came and I decided to go to Chelsea. How close were you with Tottenham? You were at the training ground, weren't you? At that day, when I went there, everything was ready to sign. But I wasn't sure. Of course, playing for Tottenham is a big club. England, Premier League. But I was thinking about Chelsea. Chelsea, Chelsea. And then the phone rang. Chelsea came and I said, I have to go there. There was no, no, I'm here already. This looks like a good project. The moment you heard, I presume it's Kia who said to you, Chelsea, come back. And there's no doubt. Yeah, no doubt. I just said, I want to go to Chelsea. Didn't it work incredibly well? What, seven years? Amazing, amazing. I think it was the best choice of my career. No doubt about that. Because seven incredible years there and won a lot of trophies. I love the people there. I have great friends. And the fans always, from the first day I arrived there, they always have a great relation. So it was very good. It was a strange time though, wasn't it? I don't know, for most people, it's all they can really remember Chelsea being like. It was up and it was down, it was up and it was down. It was very intense. Yeah, Chelsea's a club that they always will find a way to win something. Even sometimes if things don't go the right way, they find a way to win something. It doesn't matter who's the manager. I've been seeing that couple of ten years. Chelsea changed manager but they're still winning trophies. Why do you think that is? What is that? Why can they do that and no one else can? I think it's a massive club. I don't know how to explain it. No, no, I get it. But yeah, Chelsea is a club that, for example, now things don't go the way they want to go but sometimes they change like this. Suddenly they win in midweek. Yeah, and then they, for example, they go to the same final Champions League and then maybe arrive to the final again. So it's like this, Chelsea's like this. When I think of you in a Chelsea shirt, I suppose, I think I said to you off camera, I think of you bearing down on goal at the Etihad, that huge win under Conte when you won the league. For you, favourite memory, what would it be at Chelsea? Favourite memory? This one was one of them, for sure. I remember this game was, it's always hard to play against City, especially when we play there. So this game was a good one for us, for Chelsea. I came on from the bench, I helped the team to win the game and yeah, it was a good memory. Do you sort of wish you'd never left? Yeah, I wish I'd never left. Of course, it's easy to say now something but yeah, when I've stopped thinking, to think about all the situation, I say to myself, yeah, I wish I'd never left. But it's life, it's life. I'm happy now, I'm at Fulham, so I enjoy myself there and this is life. All careers do that, right, as well, don't they? None of them straightforward. Of course, of course. God knows everything and this is the part of life, you know. Why do you think it didn't work at Arsenal? Since you're playing them this weekend, I just think of the way that team plays under Mikel Arteta and think, you'd have been perfect, even now. Yeah, they are flying now. Why didn't it work for you? I don't know, I think it was in the middle of the, you know, it was changing a lot and I don't know, I don't have an answer to say why it didn't work. I was excited when I signed with them and I was, you know, training hard and the same way when I was at Chelsea but it just doesn't work and that's it. Yeah, I suppose one thing that I always think back to and did when I was getting ready for this interview, you left with, I think, a lot of credit and a lot of honour. Was it two years of your contract? You said, no, it's best for both of us to go? Yeah, I think any other player in my situation will sit on the contract and get the money because I had a great, you know, a good contract there and people were saying to me, you're crazy, you know, you want to let this money like this, you're crazy, you blah blah blah. Were these people close to you saying? Yeah, people close to me, yeah. Who was saying this? It's better not to say. But friends and family, you know, so they were saying that because I was 32. Yeah. So how are you going to do that? You're crazy, you've got this money like this, no, you know? Yeah, yeah. Why did you decide differently? Sometimes it's not about money, you know, it's about getting pleasure every day and I wasn't getting pleasure there and I decided to, you know, to leave the money and to leave the club. Last question before we get to Fulham. I presume when you left Arsenal and London, for Brazil, you thought that was your forever, you and your family going home and you would stay in Brazil. Actually, I was always saying that I don't want to go to Brazil, I don't want to come back to Brazil, I want to stay in Europe. But when I was in this situation with Arsenal, I started to speak with Corinthians in Brazil, I started to get excited, you know, because it was my team that I always supported when I was a kid. My family supported Corinthians and, yeah, I was getting excited and I said to myself, maybe it's a good opportunity to come back and to play there and, you know, to feel again, to come back to Brazil after 14, 15 years in Europe and maybe it's a good opportunity. And then I decided to go. Yeah. And you're clearly a big family man, you've spoken a lot about your family in this interview. Was that the reason why you had to come back to England? It didn't work for your family in Brazil? Yeah, yeah. Maybe even one that's safe? Because we always... I left Brazil in 2007 and then I always went to Brazil when I had holidays. Yeah. And it's different when you live there and when you have holidays there. So, you know, so I always have holidays, you spend 15 days, 20 days, see friends, families and leave again, go to, you know, come back to Europe. So now, after 15 years in Europe, I went to live there. It was different, you know, it was completely different and it was so difficult for me and for my family as well. So how did this move happen? Back to West London, but to Fulham this time. It was amazing. I thank God every day, I thank, you know, the way the Fulham people, they, you know, welcome me there and it was amazing. People that work in the club, the fans, everything. So it's a club that want to, you know, to achieve something important and, yeah, it's amazing to be back in, you know, in the Premier League and play for Fulham now. Are you enjoying your football as much as you ever have? Yeah, I'm enjoying it a lot because I know I have maybe four or five years more. Four or five years more? I wish. Do you want to say your age now? 34. So you're thinking you'd... Yeah. What, you think you'd Premier League for another four or five years? I don't know if Premier League, but I wish, yes. You know, so... I want to enjoy myself every single day because I have four years, five years playing football and I have to enjoy as much as I can. You know, because when you stop, you stop. So I have to enjoy it a lot and I'm doing that. I'm enjoying. I go to training ground with a smile on my face and enjoy myself inside the pitch with my teammates and it has been good. Do you know what, sometimes I interview footballers, speak to footballers and wonder how much they love or how much they enjoy being footballers. One thing's clear, speaking to you, you still love football, I guess, as much as you did when you were six or seven and you started kicking a ball for the first time. Yeah, I enjoy it. I love football. It's my life, you know. It's the only thing that I know how to do. So yeah, football is my life and I love it. I love it. Was it important to you after the last couple of years? Does it mean a lot to you the way you've come back and shown your level? You've shown what a good player you are again. Yeah, I'm happy because of that. Not because I have to prove to anyone, but I just have to prove to myself that I can, that, you know, it doesn't matter the age, but I can continue to play at a high level. Yeah, I'm really, really happy and I want to continue. I want to keep improving myself every day, every game. Yes, I'm going for it. The club are also going for it. What do you think is possible this season for Fulham given the position you've put yourselves in? We dream. We have a dream to put Fulham in the best position we can and we have to go step by step, game by game and we are going to see at the end of the season which position we're going to finish. But I think we have a good team to finish well this season, you know, still playing well and to do something good. And for you, when you do finally stop, when you're 38, 39, who knows, maybe even 40? Maybe, yeah. What's next for you? What's life after football look like? You're going to stay in London. You're a Londoner. You've got your passport. What are you going to do with it? Yeah, I already started to plan it and become an agent. I want to become an agent. I want to still be involved in football, you know. I think it will be Agent William. That's a nice way to end. Good luck to Agent William. Thank you so much. Thanks for your time. Thank you so much.