Everything would have been so different if none of this had happened, so much easier.
I would have played free of mind, I could have done better, I could have been more decisive. Whether that was with Arsenal or the national team, I know I could have done better.
It started in February 2008. February 13, exactly one week before the second leg of our Champions League last-16 game against AC Milan, I lost my brother in a way I didn’t expect.
Fine one day and then the next, gone. Just 28. His funeral was in Senegal but I didn’t go, I came back to Arsenal to play in the second leg.