Quotes & Sayings About Football Players

What are you doing here? Tell me why you are here. If you are not here to win a national championship, you're in the wrong place. You boys are special. I don't want my players to be like other students. I want special people. You can learn a lot on the football field that isn't taught in the home, the church, or the classroom. There are going to be days when you think you've got no more to give and then you're going to give plenty more. You are going to have pride and class. You are going to be very special. You are going to win the national championship for Alabama. — Bear Bryant

In football, every play, play after play, there's that physicality. Football players only play once a week, so they must really need to rest. That does kind of tell you how physical the sport is. But in hockey, you have the boards. I just couldn't say which is more physical. — Sidney Crosby

You have to put all the criticism of this club down to jealousy. United have produced more players who have played for their country, more world-class players and more players who have won European Footballer of the Year than any other team in this country, so we must be doing something right. — Alex Ferguson

There's so much built-up camaraderie and sacrifice, and football is such a tough man's game. I think that's why it's so popular. That's why so many blue-collar communities and people can really feel attracted to this because it is a blue-collar struggle that football players go through. — Troy Polamalu

There's an old saying amongst players in football talking about your general manger and coaches, they speak with a forked tongue. — Joe Namath

Some people tell me that we professional players are soccer slaves. Well, if this is slavery, give me a life sentence. — Bobby Charlton

CM has always stood for one thing: Chicago Made. Chick Magnet? That's preposterous. Girls don't like me. I was born and raised in Chicago. The city made me. Punk is just because I've always been a smart-mouthed, wise-ass punk. I still am. I was the guy, if a bunch of football players were messing with one of my friends, I'd walk over there and spit in their face. — CM Punk

Have we become a cupcake league? We already have better helmets and gear. Wonder how the old school players feel about this. Not in the back of minds when talking about 18 game season so let's play football please ... Even guys using shoulders to hit are getting flagged for helmet-to-helmet. Defense is getting sloppy because guys are avoiding fines and will get worse if suspending comes into play. — Phillip Daniels

William McKinley Oswald was my high school football coach. He was a great coach and had a profound influence on my life. But I think he could have learned his method of motivating players from an army drill sergeant. — Joseph B. Wirthlin

There's so many kids out there and it's such a cut-throat world. I've seen a lot of my mates, you know, who are better players than me at a certain age, and they're not in football now. — Frank Lampard

But before Derby go, would they mind telling the rest of the Premier League - the league which it has debased with its pathetically-inadequate presence for the past 12 months - where the money has gone? You know, the £30m or so in prize money that every team, even the one at the bottom of the table from August to May, automatically receives by being in the Premier League ... So what happened to that money? Or put another way, why was such a meaningless fraction of it spent on recruiting new players? It's one thing not to compete; it's quite another not to even attempt to do so. — Pete Gill

Football is a game for trained apes. That, in fact, is what most of the players are
retarded gorillas wearing helmets and uniforms. The only thing more debased is the surrounding mob of drunken monkeys howling the gorillas on. — Edward Abbey

There is an old saying about the strength of the wolf is the pack, and I think there is a lot of truth to that. On a football team, it's not the strength of the individual players, but it is the strength of the unit and how they all function together. — Bill Belichick

My favorite sport is football. I'm a die hard Steelers fan. Favorite players were Hines Ward and Greg Lloyd. — Anthony Jeselnik

Much of modern liberalism consists of people trying to get revenge on the football players they felt inferior to in school. — Steve Sailer

Finally, if you will permit me, I'd like to make a comment which in my mind, is indicative, perhaps, of the greater significance of football and sports emphasis in general in this country, and that is, I thank God I was warring on the gridirons of the Midwest and not on the battlefields of Europe. I can speak confidently and positively that the players of this country would much more, much rather, struggle and fight to win the Heisman award than the Croix de guerre. — Nile Kinnick

The best thing I can say is professional football is a business. When they are recruiting football players, they are not recruiting model citizens. Everybody has to be aware of this. What's being selected for the NFL is the ability to play and perform on Sunday afternoons. Everything else is secondary. — Jackson Katz

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

Scholes was playing tiki-taka football when nobody in England knew what it was. He was another of those players, like Denis Law or Bobby Moore, who at 15 probably looked as if he wouldn't make it. Too small, you would think - can't run, dumpy little ginger nut - but then the ball would come to him and he would dazzle you. He was the best footballer in that Manchester United midfield, better than Ryan Giggs and Roy Keane. — Harry Redknapp

The game [football] has moved on a lot but still, ask most players and they will tell you that pre-season isn't their favourite time of the year. — Colin Kazim-Richards

I feel like football players are overworked and underpaid compared to any other sports. — Terrell Owens

It's easier to date a football player for sure. Football players have one game a week, and they practice every day, but they're all at home. In basketball, they're on the road all the time. — Khloe Kardashian

This kind of directing, I think, is very similar to being a football coach. You prepare your players and place them in the right places, but once the game is on, there's nothing much you can do - you can smoke a cigarette or get nervous, but you can't do much. — Abbas Kiarostami

This may sound arrogant, but I believe that if we'd done teamship better, we'd still be there. Where we fell down was the inability to hold together. We should have learnt from the great football teams. The players may not like each other. They have egos, they have their own ambitions, they have different personalities, but they are still bloody good teams. — Alastair Campbell

De La Salle hung on for the 28-21 victory. Afterward, Ladouceur stood before his exhausted team. It was by far the biggest victory in school history at the time, but the coach noticed that several of his players wore masks of disappointment.

"It's OK to feel disappointed if you didn't play your absolute best," he told them. "That's what we're all about. — Neil Hayes

I had lots of posters on my bedroom wall of players like Zico, many Brazilian and Italian players, not many players in particular but I loved football so much and I especially loved skilful players. — Emmanuel Petit

The NFL has done a great job in giving players information on how to go to a second career after football and how to invest their money while they're playing to ensure when their career is over, that they have something else in place to fall back on. One of the big things the NFL does is promote education in different fields. — Kamerion Wimbley

I love football. I love the aesthetics of football. I love the athleticism of football. I love the movement of the players, the antics of the coaches. I love the dynamism of the fans. I love their passion for their badge and the colour of their team and their country. I love the noise and the buzz and the electricity in the stadium. I love the songs. I love the way the ball moves and then it flows and the way a teams fortune rises and falls through a game and through a season. But what I love about football is that it brings people together across religious divides, geographic divides, political divides. I love the fact that for ninety minutes in a rectangular piece of grass, people can forget hopefully, whatever might be going on in their life, and rejoice in this communal celebration of humanity. The biggest diverse, invasive or pervasive culture that human kinds knows is football and I love the fact that at the altar of football human kind can come worship and celebrate. — Andy Harper

The NFL determines your worth as a player, but only God knows your true worth. Players work long and hard through pain and suffering, injuries, and pushing themselves further than they imagined going - then poof ! A dream is gone. That kind of treatment can really mess with one's self worth. Getting cut can be deemed a failure, the loss of a lifetime goal.
Thankfully, as Christians our worth is not determined by mistakes we've made, either accidentally or by stupid stuff we've purposely done. Neither is it determined by what anyone else thinks. Our worth is determined by what Jesus Christ has already done. — Jake Byrne

High school football in Detroit was not easy at all. There were talented players everywhere. — Antonio Gates

As a child, I had a deck of Marvel top trumps. You can get top trumps with racing cars, or fighter planes, or football players ... I had all of the Marvel superheroes and super-villains you could get, and I used to play them with my friends. They were all listed according to their height and weight and agility and their super-powers. — Tom Hiddleston

There are things players go through on an everyday basis in the business of football. You don't see it all with the glitz and glamour of game day. — Terrell Owens

I play football, and most football players are camera shy. We just want to be left alone; we just want to stick to what we do. — Reggie Bush

Basketball players want contact to get a foul called. Slaps on the wrist and bumps on the shoulder are big time to them, and they don't like that. In football, you get that all the time. The whole mental makeup is different. — Warren Moon

When I was really young, the women's national team wasn't on a grand media stage, so my role models were male basketball and male American football players. — Abby Wambach

The best football players in the world still earn very little money compared to people who really earn money. — Arsene Wenger

People like to focus on a narrow stereotype, like if we didn't have football then we wouldn't have made it, ... The reality is, there are a lot of football players like me who came out of the middle class. — Jonathan Vilma

When I was a child I had a dream to become a football player. I always played as I played when I was a child. I tried to improve. I never dreamt of becoming a professional football player, I dreamed just to play with the best players in the best team. I never dreamed to be paid to play. I would have paid to play an FA Cup Final in front of 80,000 people in Wembley. I just tried to play the wonderful game that football is. So, I hope young players will still have this dream. — Eric Cantona

Football players should always remember there's a whole lot more to life. — Steve Largent

It's very hard even for a student with good academic study habits to perform well under circumstances where they are working the equivalent of a full-time job. It's incredibly stressful, especially for football players. — Gilbert M. Gaul

Football players, like prostitutes, are in the business of ruining their bodies for the pleasure of strangers. — Ian Shoales

I actually don't feel the years passing, although the younger players make sure to remind me of my age. If there's a clip of Bobby Charlton playing or a game's in black and white they'll ask: Were you playing in that Giggsy? — Ryan Giggs

For me, there's nothing that beats playing. When I'm not playing, I'll watch games on the television, watch stuff on You Tube, everything. I just live for football, love watching great players. — Jermain Defoe

I think one of the most immoral things is college football and basketball, where everybody is making money except the players. — Frank Deford

Football can teach us that although a team's individual players may be weak, it can still be successful if it uses common sense. Or that we should not attack anyone physically when we suffer a depressing defeat. — Orhan Pamuk

On a long sea voyage the rowers of Carib merchant canoes kept a small brazier of coals going amidships. Every 30 minutes or so, a small wad of tobacco leaves was placed on the brazier and, as the smoke began to rise, the rowers would put a forked nose pipe made from the breastbone of a seabird into the fumes and draw them in. After holding the smoke for awhile, a rower would exhale powerfully with a shout like high school players breaking a football huddle and then go back to the awesome task of single-handedly rowing a fully loaded commercial canoe over the open seas. — Bill Drake

Yes, high school...the land of drama queens and egocentric football players. — Hermione Daguin

We don't have any splits here. The players country is Liverpool Football Club and their language is football. — Gerard Houllier

Charles Barkley, Clyde Drexler and I used to argue for hours about who the best athletes are. I thought football players were better overall. — Warren Moon

The scary thing is that players have a one-upsmanship about money; they sign a contract and they like it until someone signs a bigger one and now they don't like it. I don't like that. I don't begrudge anyone money, but it disrupts the football team. — Joe Greene

I learned to play football in the streets. Every day of school, everyone came and played football. The street is a good school, and you learn many things there - resiliency, how to play against older players, and how to put up with or dodge kicks. — Sergio Aguero

Absurdly, I haven't yet got around to saying that football is a wonderful sport, but of course it is. Goals have a rarity value that points and runs and sets do not, and so there will always be that thrill, the thrill of seeing someone do something that can only be done three or four times in a whole game if you are lucky, not at all if you are not. And I love the pace of it, its lack of formula; and I love the way that small men can destroy big men ... in a way that they can't in other contact sports, and the way that t he best team does not necessarily win. And there's the athleticism ... , and the way that strength and intelligence have to combine. It allows players to look beautiful and balletic in a way that some sports do not: a perfectly-timed diving header, or a perfectly-struck volley, allow the body to achieve a poise and grace that some sportsmen can never exhibit. — Nick Hornby

Three years ago, researchers at Purdue University began monitoring every hit sustained by two high school teams. The goal was to study the effect of concussions. But when researchers administered cognitive tests to players who had never been concussed, hoping to set up a control group, they discovered that these teens showed diminished brain function as well. As the season wore on, their cognitive abilities plummeted. In some cases, brain activity in the frontal lobes - the region responsible for reasoning - nearly disappeared by season's end. "You have the classic stereotype of the dumb jock and I think the real issue is that's not how they start out," explained Thomas Talavage, one of the professors of the study. "We actually create that individual. — Steve Almond

Let the women play in more feminine clothes like they do in volleyball. They could, for example, have tighter shorts. Female players are pretty, if you excuse me for saying so, and they already have some different rules to men - such as playing with a lighter ball. That decision was taken to create a more female aesthetic, so why not do it in fashion? — Sepp Blatter

So their cheerleaders are ugly, their football players are wimps, and they're our archrivals because why? — Jennifer Lynn Barnes

My fellow players are sometimes occupying the spaces I want to play in. That forces me to adjust my runs, based on the position of my fellow players. Unfortunately, they're often playing in my zones. I think that's a shame — Robin Van Persie

It never changes. Football is a game of repetition, mental and physical. You may try to articulate it a little different, but it's the same thing: Get better players, make fewer mistakes, and drill the fundamentals into your players' heads. The rest of it is a joke. Teams aren't winning because of what they had for breakfast of what some coach said in the locker room. — Barry Switzer

It strikes me that these days, clubs don't even want players who can truly play any more; they just want athletes, quick guys who don't have a football brain, can just run and run; some of them, Jesus. I can never imagine acting like that. — Robbie Fowler

More and more these days what I find myself doing in my stories is making a representation of goodness and a representation of evil and then having those two run at each other full-speed, like a couple of PeeWee football players, to see what happens. Who stays standing? Whose helmet goes flying off? — George Saunders

Life is full of all sorts of setbacks and twists and turns and disappointments. The character of this team will be how well you will come back from this letdown, this defeat. You could still be a great team and you can still accomplish great things as football players but it's going to take a real resolve to do it." -Coach Ladouceur — Neil Hayes

I know the questions will be around the money, the amount Chelsea had to spend to bring him here but that's the reality of modern football. Big teams only want big players, big players are in big clubs, big clubs want to keep their big players. — Jose Mourinho

If you were in the Brondby dressing room right now, which of the Liverpool players would you be looking at? — Ray Stubbs

I do not feel that I have a mandate from the entire world of football - the fans, the players, the clubs, the people who live, breathe and love football. — Sepp Blatter

Literally thousands of lawsuits have been filed against the NFL by retired players, many of whom say that information on brain injury in football was withheld from them. — Henry Rollins

Defensive players kind of have that two-faced kind of way of being able to be very aggressive on the football field and going out there and getting there job done. At the same time, from my own incidents and my own personality, I'm much a person that's very likable and lovable. — Ndamukong Suh

Man knows, and in the course of years he comes to know it increasingly well, feeling it ever more acutely, that memory is weak and fleeting, and if he doesn't write down what he has learned and experienced, that which he carries within him will perish when he does. This is when it seems everyone wants to write a book. Singers and football players, politicians and millionaires. And if they themselves do not know how, or else lack the time, they commission someone else to do it for them ... engendering this reality is the impression of writing as a simple pursuit, though those who subscribe to that view might do well to ponder Thomas Mann's observation that, 'a writer is a man for whom writing is more difficult than it is for others — Ryszard Kapuscinski

Systems don't win, players do. — Marv Levy

Football isn't necessarily won by the best players. It's won by the team with the best attitude. — George Allen

I've enjoyed my time in the game, whether it be managing Luton in the top flight, taking Spurs to Wembley or, as director of football, pinpointing players such as Jermain Defoe, Paul Robinson and Robbie Keane with real sell-on value. — David Pleat

The speed will increase and the players will be better, but also the players around you will be a lot better. It all cancels itself out. — Robert Griffin III

As football gets more globalised, it's probably more important than ever to have one or two players in your team who have grown up in the same streets or been to the same schools as the hard-core fans. — Gary Neville

As you travel around medieval England you will come across a sport described by some contemporaries as 'abominable ... more common, undignified and worthless than any other game, rarely ending but with some loss, accident or disadvantage to the players themselves'. This is football. — Ian Mortimer

Concussion? How the hell can they tell? They're *football* players, for chrissakes! — Dennis Miller

You don't hear a film director saying 'Money mustn't go out of the industry' to actors. You don't hear a concert promoter saying 'We must make sure that money doesn't go out of our industry' to Elton John. Some people in football seem to think, 'Never mind the players, let's get on with the game.' — Gordon Taylor

People say I'll be drafted in the first round, maybe even higher. — Craig Heyward

The NFL draft is going to be this Thursday. That's a huge night for college players. That's the night they start being paid over the table. — Jay Leno

My saddest decision in football was leaving Paul Gascoigne out of the 1998 World Cup finals. But he wasn't fit enough and once that decision is made, as a manager and a group of players, you forget about who isn't there and focus on the job. — Glenn Hoddle

The other side of the coin is that fans can panic players into making poor decisions. The more unsettled a crowd gets, the worse the football on show will become - I've seen it a million times. Certain grounds have a reputation. Whenever I've played at Wolverhampton Wanderers or West Ham United , every manager has said "Keep this lot quiet for 20 minutes, and their fans will start getting on their back". — The Secret Footballer

We are trying to educate players to use their spare time to train for a life after football, which comes to everybody. You can lead a lot of horses to water, but you can't make them all drink. — Gordon Taylor

I am basically turning football players into sprinters for a while. When we first talked about it, I didn't know how my expertise could be used. — Ato Boldon

There's an energy to these autumn nights that touches something primal inside of me. Something from long ago. From my childhood in Western Iowa. I think of high school football games and the stadium lights blazing down on the players. I smell ripening apples, and the sour reek of beer from keg parties in the cornfields. I feel the wind in my face as I ride in the bed of an old pickup truck down a country road at night, dust swirling red in the taillights and the entire span of my life yawning out ahead of me.

It's the beautiful thing about youth.

There's a weightlessness that permeates everything because no damning choices have been made, no paths committed to, and the road forking out ahead is pure, unlimited potential. — Blake Crouch

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

Micheal Barrow and Darrin Smith, those guys were really intelligent. They're smart football players. They'd always be a step ahead of the offense and could predict what was coming. Dan Morgan has that. Jonathan Vilma has that. Ray Lewis has that. — Larry Coker

The running backs are the strengths of their football team. They have quality players who can do a number of things for their team. — Greg Schiano

Football players throw a 3 pound ball in the air, but cheerleaders throw a 100 pound girl in the air and catch her. — John P. Harley

Over analyse, paralyse, you mustn't over analyse ... Do you wake up at four in the morning and wonder who should be playing left-back? Four? I would love to sleep that long. If you want a really long career you have to find a way of switching off. I do it when I'm out walking my dog, Alex Ferguson got into horses, others get into wine. Some players like going shopping, which is not my scene. A lot of them turn to golf. I tried it, didn't like it. I have to walk. If I couldn't I'd be in a padded cell by now. — Roy Keane

We are making a little portion of their brains be sprinters; they are 100 percent football players, but for these purposes, they must learn the proper way to run. — Ato Boldon

I was so raw I didn't know about the Lambeau Leap-a Packer player celebrates catching a touchdown by leaping into the stands. It was started by Leroy Butler years before and has been copied by players all over the league. Don't be fooled, though. The only legitimate Lambeau Leap is celebrated by a Packer at Lambeau Field. — Donald Driver

Cristiano Ronaldo's was the most exciting debut I've ever seen. There have been a few players described as 'The New George Best' over the years, but this is the first time it's been a compliment to me. — George Best

You need players that stand for emotion in football. Football today is a game for television. — Berti Vogts

Making the effort to improve as a human being is what Coach Lombardi was all about. He was able to see the gap between where we were and what we could become-both as football players and as people. And he felt it was his God-given responsibility to close that gap. — Jerry Kramer

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

Most players don't mind drug testing once they realize they don't have to study for it. — Mack Brown

The old lessons (work, self-discipline, sacrifice, teamwork, fighting to achieve) aren't being taught by many people other than football coaches these days. The football coach has a captive audience and can teach these lessons because the communication lines between himself and his players are more wide open than between kids and parents. We better teach these lessons or else the country's future population will be made up of a majority of crooks, drug addicts, or people on relief. — Bear Bryant

I do not like football, which I think of as a game in which two tractors approach each other from opposite directions and collide. Besides, I have contempt for a game in which players have to wear so much equipment. Men play basketball in their underwear, which seems just right to me. — Anna Quindlen

Football helmets were first designed to protect against skull fractures, but users get more than skull fractures. We need to take a look at this to see if there is any way to improve safety. We need to set some standards, because the ones now are not protecting players to the highest level. — G. K. Butterfield

I used to tell the players that professional football is a part-time profession. I used to tell them it gets you ready for your life's work. — Chuck Noll

When I was growing up in Baltimore, the Colts were not just a team that played in the city. It was part of the city. Football players didn't make close to the money they make today and most took jobs in the off-season. Some were mechanics, others worked at furniture stores, and you could find them drinking at a neighborhood watering hole ... — Barry Levinson

Never accept limitations. — Jake Byrne

We don't want our players to be monks. We want them to be better football players because a monk doesn't play football at this level. — Bobby Robson