Aaron Ramsey sits on a sofa wearing a training top and shorts. As he stretches his legs out it is impossible to ignore either the sizeable scar running down from his right kneecap or the collage of tattoos covering his left calf.

The products of two very different types of craftsmanship, they tell you quite a bit about the Great Britain, Wales and Arsenal midfielder. "I'd rather it not be there," says Ramsey referring to the scar, a result of emergency surgery to reduce collateral damage from the double fracture of his tibia and fibula after a tackle by Stoke City's Ryan Shawcross in February 2010. "I'm just thankful for what the surgeons did for me. It's just incredible what they can do, but it stalled my career. Lying on the medical table is the worst position for a footballer. I was out for 10 months and, after that, it still took a bit of getting over."

In another era, Ramsey might not have sufficiently recovered from the injury to be wandering around Rockliffe Hall, the luxury hotel near Darlington that served as Great Britain's base ahead of their 2-0 Olympic warmup defeat by Brazil on Friday, in specially branded London 2012 leisurewear. At 21 years old, he is acutely aware of the fragility of his chosen career.

Indeed, a psychologist might suggest this explains why Biblical quotations and Welsh castles constitute just two components of the quite startling montage dominating the entire lower half of his left leg. Neat theories about a need for faith, protection and security gain credence when it becomes apparent that some of the quotations are from Psalm 23 – "The Lord is my Shepherd" – but Ramsey, at least partly, deflects them.

"My girlfriend's a Christian and I thought it would be a nice touch to have a passage from the Bible in Welsh," he said. "She has her beliefs. I'm not religious, but I respect that – and I had a bit done, from Psalm 23, which I believe in as well, in a way. It's just a bit of artwork. It's a castle from where I'm from near Cardiff, the Bible passage and a few things like that."

He suffered for the tattooist's labours. "It absolutely killed," acknowledges Ramsey. "My longest sitting was seven hours and then I had a few other three-hour sittings. I was biting my fingers."

The spa at Rockliffe Hall – recently voted the second most luxurious hotel in the UK by tripadvisor users – is more about manicures than body art, but Ramsey plays down suggestions that Stuart Pearce's players were relieved to check in after spending a night in the more spartan Olympic village.

"Visiting the village was certainly an experience," he says. "You could sense it's an amazing place to be. I can understand why all the athletes are happy in that environment."

He is honest enough to admit that, growing up, he was not exactly glued to Olympic sport on television every four years. "It wasn't really that big for me," says this modest, understated, handsome and likeable young man. "I watched a few things like the 100 metres, the 200, stuff like that. The first Olympics I was aware of was probably Sydney in 2000, but I can't really remember too much about it. In school I did a bit of athletics, though. I ran the 800 metres and I did pentathlon as well. I was OK." In fact, he won Welsh schools medals in both events.

Involvement is altering his ambivalent boyhood attitude. "When we were in the village the other day we met a couple of swimmers and they seemed like cool guys," he says. "I'm sure that's the whole nature of the Olympics, everyone gets to know each other and cheers each other on. I'm sure we'll be watching the other events."

As a patriotic Welshman he had to decide if he wanted to be part of Pearce's Team GB preparing for Thursday's opening group game against Senegal at Old Trafford. "It was down to us Welsh players whether we wanted to be involved or not and we chose to play," he says. "We're all proud to be Welsh and we're representing our own country as well as Great Britain."

Ramsey laughs at the idea that Pearce's Welsh contingent, headed by Ryan Giggs and Craig Bellamy, might eat and socialise separately from their English counterparts. "No, no," he says. "It's been pretty mixed – and we've all got on pretty well so far."

Bar the injury blip, much the same could be said of Ramsey's career. A wonderful blur of technique, vision and extraordinary stamina, the former Cardiff City prodigy has been described by Arsène Wenger as "an offensive-minded Roy Keane".

"There's still more to come from me. I'm working hard and wanting to learn more every day to become the best player I can possibly be," says a creator who is praying Manchester United, Manchester City and Juventus fail in their attempts to prise Robin van Persie away from Arsenal.

"We're hopeful Robin will stay at Arsenal. He's a big player for us. If we get off to a better start than we did last season, we know we're capable of finishing pretty strongly, like we did last year. We've brought in a couple of players who are well-known and hopefully we can put ourselves in a position to compete early on."

More immediately, the softly spoken Ramsey must confront the culture shock of being coached by Pearce rather than Wenger. He claims the difference has been minimal. "Stuart Pearce is really positive and I've been really impressed with training," he says. "We're a good team, who like to get the ball down, pass it and create lots of chances. There's a lot of movement. We've done pretty well considering we've only been together for a couple of weeks. Some of the other countries have some great players, but we want to test ourselves against the very best."