English Football Quotes & Sayings

There are lots of concerns facing English football but for me the major one is the way in which football clubs are run by owners, whether they are growing organically and sustainably and how that is being policed by the football authorities. — Gary Neville

A handful of individual football stars - not necessarily the most talented, but those boasting good looks, beautiful wives and an animated private life - assumed a role in European public life and popular newspapers hitherto reserved for movie starlets or minor royalty. When David Beckham (an English player of moderate technical gifts but an unsurpassed talent for self-promotion) moved from Manchester United to Real Madrid in 2003, it made headline television news in every member-state of the European Union. Beckham's embarrassing performance at the European Football Championships in Portugal the following year - the England captain missed two penalties, hastening his country's ignominious early departure - did little to dampen the enthusiasm of his fans. — Tony Judt

When I'm in town on Sundays, I sometimes go down to the Central Bar in the East Village to watch English football. But my natural inclination now is to get in the car with my wife and kids and get out of town. — Joe Scarborough

And I think because of the passion of every English player and every English supporter, and every English journalist for the game, most of the game is played with passion, love for football and instinct, but in football you also have to think. — Jose Mourinho

In my first season I was learning about English football in a new team. I scored 13 which isn't bad, but I think I can do better. — Luis Garcia

The level of football in England is the top. English football is the leader in the world. — Pele

,000 people in Hampden Park. Of course they're all Scottish. Because no one else goes there. The English have an unwritten rule: they only go to places they might get back from. — Billy Connolly

However good an English team is, they will always have an additional advantage. It is that European players know that their English opponents will come at them in the belief they will win, and they can always be guaranteed never to stop fighting. They have a natural aggression that they are born with. If it ever goes, English football will lose its most valuable dimension. — Johan Cruijff

I'm a big fan of London in the summertime. English people are dependent on weather to change our attitudes, and, provided it's a decent summer, everyone's spirits are uplifted and the whole place is in bloom. It's a magical transformation. London in the summer, going to see bands play outside, watching football. — Ed Westwick

Winning the Championship is like taking a 26-year ball and chain from around our legs. Now we can go forward, and hopefully dominate English football for the next 10 years, like Liverpool did. — Bryan Robson

I love this game, I love this sport, I love this league. Why don't I get my own team? (English Premiership football club) — Roman Abramovich

Is this good for English football? In the short run, Chelsea's rise has broken up what was turning into an irritating Arsenal-Manchester United duopoly. But football leagues (look at Scotland, look at Spain) can get along OK with duopolies. A monopoly, however, is a disaster. Everyone else in the Premiership has to operate on some kind of business footing, and the terror stalking Highbury and Old Trafford is that Chelsea will be immune from financial discipline forever. — Matthew Engel

I'm adapting quite well to English football with the same will I've always had. — Sergio Aguero

English football is in a bad way because the foreign players here are so good, so dominant. — Kevin Keegan

Tottenham, and I hope the English fans will forgive me, are a club in mid-table and I need more. — Samuel Eto'o

What United have got that Chelsea haven't is Paul Scholes. I think he is different to anything else in English football. — Kevin Keegan

I played English football - soccer - instead of American football, because we couldn't afford the equipment. — Wally Schirra

German football is like English football. The Germans and the English do not play like a Brazilian side. They have to improve, bring up their young players, who have character. — Franz Beckenbauer

Manchester United have risen to the pinnacle of the English game at a time when the rewards are so high - thanks to the ticket to the Champions League - that they have resources that only a handful of other sides, through merit or the exploitation of the people of Russia, can approach. — Phil Cornwell

If we had a starting XI that no one could argue about it wouldn't say a lot for English football. We'd probably be on a downward spiral. It's good that people have different ideas about who should play. — Rio Ferdinand

The people don't take baths and they don't speak English. No golf courses, no room service. Who needs it? — Jim McMahon

The English public doesn't really like Shakespeare; it prefers football. — Hesketh Pearson

Supporting the English cricket team is like supporting a second division football team. I support Norwich City football team and when they lose I really don't mind because I expect them to; but when we win I'm so happy - much happier than any Arsenal supporter could ever be. — Stephen Fry

I like English football, always have. It's just that people go on about the World Cup in 1986 and then I'm seen as the real bad boy. — Diego Maradona

Sometimes English football takes pride in having the lowest yellow-card count in Europe, but of course it will have if you can take someone's leg off and still not be booked. — Luis Suarez

It's fantastic for Arsenal, and for English football as well. You've got an English club with a lot of young English talent committing themselves to a club. — Dennis Bergkamp

Cade thought about this. "Let me get this straight - you secretly pretend to like poetry to impress the smart girl in your English class, while she's secretly pretending to like football to impress you." He paused. "That's gotta be the cutest fucking thing I've ever heard."
"I guess her subconscious finds my subconscious pretty irresistible," Zach said, all teenage confidence right then.
"You were lucky to pull that line off once, Garrity. I wouldn't push it. — Julie James

You know I don't think there will ever be a time when the English player is not respected, and feared, across the world of football. The English footballer is very brave and strong and committed and there is always enough high-class players in his team to cause concern in any opponent. It is a national characteristic. — Johan Cruijff

Will we ever see his like again? It is doubtful. But at least for a brief moment in time we were lucky to have him as one of our own: an English lionheart who was the terror of the continent, who earned the love and respect of everyone who had the privilege to see him in action and above all was a thoroughly decent hero of whom we can be proud. Rest in peace 'Big Dunc'. Your feats will echo in eternity. — James Leighton

Never, and by this I mean never, criticise the English weather. Especially if you're an alien. For an English woman, it's as though you are scolding her first born child. For an Englishman, it's as if you are criticising the size of his penis. Or even worse: his football team. — Angela Kiss

It was the proudest moment of my career to lead my team out at the home of English football. I never, ever dreamt that would happen! — Casey Stoney

The crowds at West Ham haven't been rewarded by results, but they keep turning up because of the good football they see. Other clubs will suffer from the old bugbear that results count more than anything. This has been the ruination of English soccer. — Ron Greenwood

Nearly everything possible has been done to spoil this game: the heavy financial interests; ... the absurd publicity given to every feature of it by the Press; ... but the fact remains that it is not yet spoilt, and it has gone out and conquered the world.
J.B. Priestley in English Journey (referring to football), published in 1934. — J.B. Priestley

If he'd been English or Swedish, he'd have walked the England job. — Brian Clough

It's like people immediately imagine me sitting in some gothic, sweeping castle in Edinburgh, a piece of fine bone china full of English tea next to my neat writing station. They think that my car, my purse, my everything was financed by my lucrative but somehow not too time consuming writing career. I've even had one guy ask me if my hand cramps at signings. While I wanted to give a snarky, "Yes, just like Tom Brady's does," I can't pull off snarky. My sarcasm immediately goes into b**ch territory — Mandy Nachampassack-Maloney

They're crying. It was Drogba, it was the angels, it was the heavens, it was the stars, it was the gods, it was everything for Chelsea. This is not anything to do with football. This is more than football, this is spirit. Never giving in, fighting to the end, that English spirit running right the way through this Champions League for Chelsea. — Gary Neville

I have come to know well that fates are fickle in the business of English football. And I feel that I have pushed mine well past the limit. — Randy Lerner

In England, it's a rare thing to see a player smoking but, all in all, I prefer that to an alcoholic. The relationship with alcohol is a real problem in English football and, in the short term, it's much more harmful to a sportsman. It weakens the body, which becomes more susceptible to injury. — Alex Ferguson

There's a strange uniformity in the vocabulary European soccer fans use to hate black people. The same primate insults get hurled. Although they've gotten better over time, the English and Italians developed the tradition of making ape noises when black players touched the ball. The Poles toss bananas on the field. This consistency owes nothing to television, which rarely shows these finer points of fan behavior. Nor are these insults considered polite to discuss in public. This trope has simply become a continent-wide folk tradition, transmitted via the stadium, from fan to fan, from father to son. — Franklin Foer

Playing with wingers is more effective against European sides like Brazil than English sides like Wales. — Ron Greenwood

I feel I have a lot to learn from English football and I am completely open to good influences in my way of thinking football. But I also have things to give them. — Jose Mourinho

Where is it written in the Constitution that because a guy played football, he has the automatic right to sit in that booth? How hard is football? If I've spent thirty-five years as a sportswriter, you think I don't know you get six for a touchdown? You think I don't know that? You think I don't know you get three for a field goal? C'mon, c'mon. And I can actually speak English okay, so that would be a difference between me and a guy who spent his whole life playing football. Now, not all of them are like that, but it's that thinking that says, "We have divine right of booth." No, you don't. No you don't. — Tony Kornheiser

I played a little basketball, but basketball interfered with theater season. That's when we did our term plays and did nutshell versions of Shakespeare for English classes. And, believe me, I got a fair amount of looks from the guys on the team. 'You're in theater but you can play football?' — Dennis Haysbert

English football is so physical and fast that when you see a space, you have to go into it with all your speed. — Yaya Toure

The chairmen of the largest companies in the world can cancel an appointment or move a board meeting; a manager cannot change the date of a game. In the combined 42 years that Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger have managed in English football, I can only remember one occasion when Sir Alex did not attend a Manchester United game. — Howard Wilkinson

In England everything is liberalised. Within certain boundaries and rules everybody can do what he likes. Maybe London's society has a different tempo, a different dynamic. London is fast, productive, creative but it is not England. If you want to transfer that to football, you could say: in the four big English clubs and maybe in the one or two behind them there is a top level. Everything that comes after that rather mirrors English society. It's honest, fair and hard, sometimes also fast, but not always so perfect. — Jens Lehmann

I'm too tired to speak in English ... — David Ginola

English football has just had a transfer window imposed for the first time, so it will be interesting to see how managers cope with the squads they have until it re-opens. — David Ginola

You see how Spanish, Italians, Portuguese play football. I don't say they are perfect, I say English football has a few things to learn from them in the same way they have a lot of things to learn from English football. — Jose Mourinho

At school, myself and some pals, all football-daft, divided up the old English First Division and wrote off to half a dozen clubs each asking for a trial. — Drew Busby

Quite honestly I never had a desire to be an actor. I tell people, I did not choose acting; acting chose me. I never grew up wanting to be an actor. I wanted to play football. In about 9th grade an English teacher told me I had a talent to act. He said I should audition for a performing arts high school so I did on a whim. I got accepted. — Ving Rhames

Doping in English football is restricted to lager and baked beans with sausages. After which the players take to the field, belching and farting. English football culture is one of pure, intense competition, and that's why I have always preferred it to Italy. — Paolo Di Canio

We had probably our best ever Player of the Year Dance last week. You elected Dennis Wise as Player of the Year. Dennis accepted his award mimicking Vialli, whereupon Zola shouted 'Speak English', Dennis switched to his normal Cockney voice only for Zola to shout 'You're still not speaking English'. — Ken Bates

The Football Association have always acted more as a referee than a governor. And the FA, aware the Premier League provide players for the England team, have always had too gentle a hand on the tiller. The result is that the Premier League are the tigers in the English football jungle everybody's scared of. — Gordon Taylor

Making English grammar conform to Latin rules is like asking people to play baseball using the rules of football. — Bill Bryson

God bless whoever invented football. It was the English, I think. And what a fantastic idea it was — Paolo Rossi

Everybody thinks that you go to Africa and you build a school, or you teach English, or you build a hospital. But actually all you need to do is play football with kids for six months and then after they've trusted you, you tell them about the truth of Aids, and that their grandmother didn't die from witchcraft, she died from Aids. And that's the biggest difference you can make. — Tom Hiddleston

The businessman turns out to have a lot of zanshin. Translating this concept into English is like translating "fuckface" into Nipponese, but it might translate into "emotional intensity" in football lingo. — Neal Stephenson