Elano says he's rediscovered his spirit at Manchester City.

"You can say that it's cold here but it can't be compared with what it was like in the Ukraine," Elano told the Daily Mail, having spent nearly three years in football's frozen wasteland with wealthy Shakhtar Donetsk, where the money just about made up for the misery.

"I was used to playing in 35C in Brazil but it was minus 25. People asked me why I played better for the Brazilian national team and I told them that there I played in the sun and here it was freezing.

"Although you do your best, there are periods when you have to ask to come out of matches because you can't cope with the cold. It's too hard. It makes you cry.

"If you stop for 30 seconds, your knees freeze up. There was no point the manager saying anything to me because I was more use to the team coming off.

"Since I've been in Manchester I've started to talk about being here for 10 years or so. When I was in Ukraine I was thinking about Brazil all the time.

"My life was training, home, match, home, training, home. My family was there for six months and could never go out because the snow was up to the car door."