Quotes & Sayings About Football Pitch

Every single player on the pitch is now in the Birmingham box, apart from two of them. — Paul Merson

I love playing football, being out on the pitch with a ball, and I will be a little sad when that ends. — Dennis Bergkamp

You have to be on the pitch to play football. — Gerry Francis

It is a strange paradox that while the grief of football fans(and it is real grief) is private - we each have an individual relationship with our clubs, and I think that we are secretly convinced that none of the other fans understands quite why we have been harder hit than anyone else - we are forced to mourn in public, surrounded by people whose hurt is expressed in forms different from our own. — Nick Hornby

The basis of my own addiction, I know, is my simple human need for Darcy to get off with Elizabeth. Tom says football guru Nick Hornby says in his book that men's obsession with football is not vicarious. The testosterone-crazed fans do not wish themselves on the pitch, claims Hornby, instead seeing their team as their chosen representatives, rather like parliament. That is precisely my feeling about Darcy and Elizabeth. They are my chosen representatives in the field of shagging, or, rather, courtship. I do not, however, wish to see any actual goals. I would hate to see Darcy and Elizabeth in bed, smoking a cigarette afterwards. That would be unnatural and wrong and I would quickly lose interest. — Helen Fielding

I've got no interest in football. My brother's a footballer, too, and I was dragged to the freezing pitch every week as a child. I don't see much glamour in it. — Abbey Clancy

Bayern's midfielder, Owen Hargreaves, who scampered around the pitch like an office boy on amphetamines for the last 25 minutes or so. — Rod Liddle

Some people in the town did not seem to care about the festival and were watching football on TV. The players were dotted about in neon green. They looked unreal, the way they might be seen by the forgotten man in the moon and the rabbit if they were watching the floodlit pitch forlornly from above. — Olivia Sudjic

The difference with football is you're out on the pitch, you feel as though you can do something about it, or score a goal. But when that horse goes down to post as an owner you have no involvement whatsoever. It's a lonely old place in the stand. It's just down to man and beast. — Michael Owen

I developed a mechanism so that whatever mistakes I made, I would bounce straight back. Whatever was happening off the pitch, I could put it to one side and maintain my form. Call it mental resilience or a strong mind, but that is what we mean when we talk about experience in a football team. — Gary Neville

Footballers today are forced to conform to a bodily aesthetic that in its rigidity and uniformity makes fashion models look as varied as snowflakes. This wasn't always so. Up until the 1980s most teams in all divisions had a couple of fat ones, a couple of little ones, at least one bandy one, one completely covered in hair, two weaklings and a chap with no neck. This was an era when you didn't need names on the backs of shirts in order to tell who's who, you could clearly identify them with your eyes half shut from the other side of the pitch. — Danny Baker

AFC Leopards were as thrilling a side as ever took the pitch and they dominated East African football in the eighties. That Kenyan players were an excitable bunch was attested to in one memorable Leopards match, with the opposing goalkeeper being handcuffed and dragged away to jail by police. — David Bennun

When I was in Dutch and Italian football, a lot of people looked at Manchester United, and when they were asked who was the best player, a lot of them said Paul Scholes. Much of what he did looked simple, but actually it was quite hard. Invariably he controlled the ball instantly and passed it straight on, keeping the game moving. He made inch-perfect passes across the pitch; he saw the gaps and could play the ball through them. So it didn't surprise me that so many top-class international footballers recognized his quality. — Edwin Van Der Sar

I used to believe, although I don't now, that growing and growing up are analogous, that both are inevitable and uncontrollable processes. Now it seems to me that growing up is governed by the will, that one can choose to become an adult, but only at given moments. These moments come along fairly infrequently -during crises in relationships, for example, or when one has been given the chance to start afresh somewhere- and one can ignore them or seize them. — Nick Hornby

Chris Waddle is off the pitch at the moment - exactly the position he is at his most menacing. — Gerald Sinstadt

I remember talking to Alex Ferguson about Tony [Blair] and Gordon [Brown], and he said: "Why doesn't Tony just get rid of him?" But if you sack someone in football, they can't turn up to training the next day. In politics they're still on the pitch. Gordon would still have been a big player. — Alastair Campbell

Though the legs of a football coach are never so active on the field of play during playing time, his mind is the best or worse player on the pitch! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

You ask me: 'Was he a fair player?' I say: 'No, I'm sorry, for me he was not a fair player.' I just think I respect him highly as a quality player. I did not like some things he did on the football pitch and I have the right to say that. It's not because you are older, suddenly, that you are a saint. — Arsene Wenger

We want different things. Men want to have sex with a woman. Then they want to have sex with another woman. And then another. Then they want to eat cornflakes and sleep for a while, and then they want to have sex with another woman, and another, until they die. Women,' and I thought I'd better pick my words carefully when describing a gender I didn't belong to, 'want a relationship. They may not get it, or they may sleep with a lot of men before they do get it, but ultimately that's what they want. That's the goal. Men do not have goals. Natural ones. So they invent them, and put them at either end of a football pitch. And then they invent football. Or they pick fights, or try and get rich, or start wars, or come up with any number of daft bloody things to make up for the fact that they have no real goals.'
'Bollocks,' said Ronnie.
'That, of course, is the other main difference. — Hugh Laurie

Football is not played on paper, it is played on a pitch. This game is not mathematics and in football, two plus two very rarely equals four - it's usually three or five. — Leo Beenhakker

In the German football team players from different clubs need to get on with each other both on and off the pitch. In the grand coalition Christian Democrats and Social Democrats sit in the same boat and need to pull in the same direction. — Angela Merkel

I fell in love with football as I was later to fall in love with women: suddenly, inexplicably, uncritically, giving no thought to the pain or disruption it would bring with it. — Nick Hornby

In the dug-out, on the bench. The Anfield bench. Bill stared out at the players of Liverpool Football Club on the pitch. The Anfield pitch. In the sun, the players of Liverpool Football Club shining. In the sun, in their kits. Their red shirts, their white shorts. And their white socks. And in the dug-out, on the bench. The Anfield bench. Bill heard the whistle blow, Bill heard the crowd roar. The Anfield crowd. — David Peace

I would like to compare football and cinema. I think it's very similar. It's two games ... different games. You have to work very hard and find the confidence to enjoy it on the pitch or in the film. — Eric Cantona

The one great thing about football is that whatever happens it will manifest itself on the pitch. If it's right, you'll see it on the pitch, if it's wrong, it will be on the pitch. In business you can get fellas who are doing crooked deals and nobody knows anything about it. There is an ultimate honesty about football. Politics is part of the lying game, I wouldn't trust any of them. In football you can hide for a while, but ultimately the truth comes out. I always loved that. — Johnny Giles

I've learnt and I just want to be respected for what I've achieved on the pitch. I know I haven't achieved much off it but I do know I've given pleasure to people watching me play football over the years. — Paul Gascoigne

Players that aren't true leaders but try to be, always bash other players after a mistake. True leaders on the pitch already assume others will make mistakes. — Johan Cruijff

I didn't do anything [during the game]. I only had one shot on goal and I did not create any chances. I was horrible. Maybe I should have left the pitch earlier. — Robinho

I realised I'd been spoiled at Liverpool. We were used to winning. In Italy I grew up as a person. I didn't enjoy the football, mind. It was very defensive, but I became a better player because of the work I had to do around the box. Off the pitch, I learned about what to eat and what to drink to be successful, and I learned about life. — Ian Rush

Ah, the rheumy-eyed grandpa on the terraces inducting the lad into the mysteries of soccer: how to loathe people wearing different coloured shirts, how to feign injury, how to blow your snot onto the pitch - See, son, you press hard on one nostril to close it, and explode the green stuff out of the other. How to be vain and overpaid and have your best years behind you before you've even understood what life's about. Oh yes, I look forward to taking Lucas to the football. But — Julian Barnes

Being a footballer is not just about wearing the shirt and playing football on the pitch. You have to be clean, you have to do right things, you have to show courage, you have to show many many things you know. I always say that you play the same way on the pitch as you do in life. — Emmanuel Petit

I find it embarrassing when people compare me to Maradona. How can they? There is only one Maradona. People who say this just have no idea, they don't know what they are talking about. Diego was a complete one-off who will never have an equal on the football pitch. No-one, I repeat no-one, could have transformed teams like he did. Maradona was the world's greatest-ever player while I'm just an apprentice. — Sergio Aguero

Deaner ran down to the barrier separating the crowd from the pitch, and eventually persuaded the stewards that he had a part to play in the unfolding drama. (Anyone who has ever attempted to talk to a steward at a Premiership football ground will recognize that, whatever else during the afternoon required divine intervention, Deaner's success in getting on to the White Hart Lane turf really was a miracle.) — Nick Hornby

The score is high and very brutal but does not reflect what we saw on the pitch. The first shot on goal was a goal. The second was an own goal. The third was straight after half-time. They defend like mad and they catch us on the break. — Arsene Wenger

There's some people on the pitch ... they think it's all over ... it is now! — Kenneth Wolstenholme

Some people come to Old Trafford and can't spell football, let alone understand it. They have a few drinks and a prawn sandwich but don't realise what's happening on the pitch — Roy Keane

By the way, you won't put that thing in about me wanting to have sex on a football pitch, will you? — Louise Nurding

What I needed more than anything was a place where unfocused unhappiness could thrive, where I could be still and worry and mope; I had the blues, and when I watched my team I could unwrap them and let them breathe a little. — Nick Hornby

This, for the benefit of those with only a sketchy grasp of football tactics, was a
Dutch invention which necessitated flexibility from all the players on the pitch. Defenders were required to attack, attackers to play in mid-field; it was football's version of post-modernism, and the intellectuals loved it. — Nick Hornby

Being on stage isn't so tough compared to the football pitch. — Eric Cantona

I felt sorry for the match ball - it came off the pitch crying. — Johan Cruijff