New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning said on Monday that watching his older brother Peyton Manning win a Super Bowl and claim the Most Valuable Player (MVP) award lit a fire under him.

Eli wasted little time matching his big brother, steering the Giants to a surprise Super Bowl win the next season over the New England Patriots and taking home the 2008 game's MVP honors.

Now Eli has a chance to surpass his brother's number of titles in Sunday's Super Bowl rematch against the Patriots in the NFL title game in Indianapolis.

"Just seeing Peyton after that game, just seeing him down in the locker room, seeing that smile on his face, then being with him those next couple of months after he had won a Super Bowl, it definitely made you jealous," Manning said on Monday.

"You always want to win a championship, but when you see someone win it, just the relief, the smile that is painted on his face for months makes you want to win it even more.

"It truly gives you a burning desire to get one."

The brothers are very close and Eli, 31, credits Peyton, 35, with being supportive and helping him learn the fine art of quarterbacking.

But Eli had no trouble recalling the way Peyton would lord it over him as a big brother during their childhood.

"His most popular move was he'd pin me down and take his knuckles and knock on my chest and make me name the 12 schools in the SEC," Eli said about the Southeastern Conference in which Peyton ended up attending Tennessee, while Eli followed father Archie Manning's footsteps at Mississippi.

"I didn't know them all at the time when I was six or seven, but I quickly learned them. It was a great learning technique.

"Once I figured those out he moved on to all the 28 teams in the NFL at that point. So I had to get my studying on for that. The one I never got was 10 brands of cigarettes."

Reuters