From the official site:
"I probably went to Japan out of personal pride because after working so hard to get fit I couldn't say no," Seba confesses in the new issue of Manchester United magazine.
"But I knew I wasn't ready from a fitness point of view and that I'd been carrying that achilles injury for two or three months. I went there because I was really keen to play and I thought the injury would clear up. But with hindsight I wasn't physically fit enough to be taking part in such an important tournament as the World Cup.
"I did benefit from a long holiday which gave my achilles tendon a chance to fully recover. That enabled me to put in a really good pre-season which is helping me now and hopefully will mean that I enjoy a better year than my first season."
And he thinks it's working. He memorably described his 2001/02 term as a "catastrophe", but with thirteen games and three goals under his belt this time around, things are getting better for Seba.
"When you compare this season with last it's going well," he said.
"But I don't want to start with ten good games and then have 40 bad ones. I want to progress steadily so that I can end the season on a high rather than the other way round as it was last year."
"Sometimes the criticism went beyond football and been more personal," he tells the magazine. "All this stuff about me talking to the people of Lazio at the end of the season, fighting after the match against Bayer Leverkusen ... that kind of thing. It's all rubbish. Fans might believe what they read in the papers but they don't know the truth."