Quotes & Sayings About Football Soccer

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

Complaining about boring football is a little like complaining about the sad ending of King Lear: it misses the point somehow. — Nick Hornby

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

Football's all about 90 minutes — Glenn Hoddle

It was nothing personal: if it had been, I would have left him on so he could have suffered like everyone else. — Graham Taylor

Saturday comes again, welcome or not, it comes again like it always does, welcome or not, wanted or not, another judgment day - The chance to be saved, the chance to be damned. — Brian Clough

Substitution is a true test of strength. The real performance of a player is seen not only during playing time but also and more especially when the player is substituted. — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

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

A message to the best football supporters in the world. We need a 12th man here. Where are you? Where are you? Let's be having you. Come on! — Delia Smith

Behind every footballing tough guy there lurks a mincing aesthete with a love of art for art's sake, football for football's sake. A win without art is somehow less than a victory; less, almost, than a beautiful defeat. In football, the romantic and the pragmatist are ever at war in the same breast. Beauty, it must be understood here, is not Barcelona's aim but their method. And last night they were ready to use this method at every opportunity - quick-fire passing of wit and purpose in the danger areas, seeking always to produce an unlooked-for player in a position of threat. — Simon Barnes

I'm the same as maybe six or seven people in every ten - I can't take f***ing criticism. — Martin Jol

Sometimes now, when I watch continental games on television, I'm a bit bored. I ask, 'where is the intensity?' — Arsene Wenger

,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

While I'm more of a soccer and tennis fan myself, I still enjoying catching some football games when I get the chance. — Marcus Samuelsson

The rules of soccer are very simple, basically it is this: if it moves, kick it. If it doesn't move, kick it until it does. — Phil Abraham

When two peoples share a common passion: they are capable of empathising with each other's misery. — Matthew Syed

As a lad growing up in the Fifties and Sixties, I played both Gaelic football and soccer and loved them both. — Martin McGuinness

Somewhere in there the grace of a ballet dancer joins with the strength of an SAS squaddie, the dignity of an ancient kind, the nerve of a bomb disposal officer ... — Eamon Dunphy

England can end the millenium as it started - as the greatest football nation in the world. — Kevin Keegan

Some people think football [soccer] is a matter of life and death. I don't like that attitude. I can assure them it is much more serious than that. — Bill Shankly

The beauty of Cup football is that Jack always has a chance of beating Goliath. — Terry Butcher

I'm a championship handball player. I'm a championship softball and baseball player. I used to be an extremely talented center in high school in football. I also dabbled in lacrosse and soccer. I'm really good at billiards, darts, shuffleboard. — Action Bronson

A terrific game, even on the losing side I could enjoy it. — Nigel Worthington

We're in the top six, we've got five points and I've told the lads we need another 80 to win the League. — Joe Kinnear

Stress is when you're 29 years old, playing for Rochdale, with an expiring contract and a mortgage to pay. — John Gregory

Some people believe football (soccer) is a matter of life and death. I'm very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that. — Bill Shankly

Thirteen years after Basic Instinct, Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone) is now in London, and is going out with a footballer played by Stan Collymore, of all people. On the rebound from John Motson, perhaps. It is difficult to convey just how uproariously awful this movie is, all of the time. — Peter Bradshaw

People say you're too good - you're never too good to go down, believe me. I've seen it at Leeds. We had a better team at Leeds than we have now and they went down eventually. — Jonathan Woodgate

I am in a lot of pain. They say it is more pain than when you have a baby but I don't know as I have not had one. It is not possible. — Luiz Felipe Scolari

I can see the carrot at the end of the tunnel. — Stuart Pearce

Imagine a pantomime directed by Quentin Tarantino, where villains are booed, heroes are blood-stained, the body-count is high, the entertainment pulsating, the language filthy and the audience screamed behind you' as tackles hurtled in like boulders crashing down a mountain-side. Such was the epic drama that gripped the Emirates yesterday. A derby crammed with sound, fury and significance ended with everyone grasping for breath, with Arsenal regaining the high ground of the Premier League ... This was the Premier League at its raw, mistake-filled, mesmerising best. Utterly compelling. — Henry Winter

Let's be honest. We're not Manchester United or Arsenal, are we? — Paolo Di Canio

Like many a Yank before me, I have tried to explain to European friends that Americans actually know soccer quite well, that many of us played it in school and college, but that, well, we just don't find it quite as exciting as, say, what we call football. — Serge Schmemann

I remember the day when they sold Brian Deane and Jan Aage Fjortoft. It was like when President Kennedy got shot. — Neil Warnock

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

If I were going to war I would want to be alongside an Englishman not a Frenchman. The Frenchman would think too much. — Arsene Wenger

Did you used to play for Barcelona? Because that's not Barcelona football. — Cesc Fabregas

I must have been a failed football coach in a previous incarnation. — David Blunkett

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

Four wins in four matches. It could not be better ... the world is fantastic. — Jose Mourinho

Chris Eagles flew in on Shaun Wright-Phillips, so hard he almost broke the hyphen. — Henry Winter

Professionally, it would be a logical choice, but my personal view is that he is the most insincere man I know in football — Tony Cascarino

He shouldn't have resigned over that game. It was not a bad performance; in fact it was quite a good one for England. I would not have resigned under those circumstances. — Franz Beckenbauer

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

The final true artform in what we're talking about is the goal itself. And for us to try and stop that from happening, we're kind of the anti-art. — Kasey Keller

All good athletes make mistakes; the great ones learn to make that mistake only once. — Raul Lopez

Unfortunately much of it is frittered away on fast cars, designer clothes and an attitude to pleasure reminiscent of the 18-30 holiday packages. — Ken Bates

While American football is very structured and linear and static - where everyone lines up, and there's a burst, and it happens - soccer is like the cosmos. It's like constellations. It's bodies moving in space. It's a very spherical game. — Gabriel Luna

I grew up in Europe, and soccer was the first organized game I played. When we moved back to the U.S. in the middle of 4th grade, I switched to American football and stopped playing competitively until college, when I played intramurals. — Andrew Luck

As far as I'm concerned, this guy should never play football again. The answer you normally get after a tackle like that is 'he is not the type of guy who does that.' It's like a guy who kills one time in his life - it's enough. You have a dead person. This tackle is absolutely horrendous. — Arsene Wenger

In 1972, my idol Gordon Banks was seriously injured in a car accident and lost an eye. He was still England goalkeeper and the world's Number One. I was absolutely gutted for Banksie. His career was over prematurely. He did make a comeback in America for a time, but he said he felt like people were coming to watch a bit of a circus act: 'Roll up, roll up! The world's only one-eyed goalkeeper.' And so he retired from football for good. When he lost his eye, I wanted to give him one of mine, that's how much I thought of him. — Stephen Richards

The function of football, soccer, basketball and other passion-sports in modern industrial society is the transference of boredom, frustration, anger and rage into socially acceptable forms of combat. A temporary substitute for war; for nationalism; identification with something bigger than the self. — Edward Abbey

I've told him to cut off his ponytail. I think it makes him less aerodynamic. — Arsene Wenger

Greece won the 2004 European Championship with the oldest trick in the book: man-for-man marking. Why? Because nobody expected it - and by the time they knew what Otto Rehhagel's team were about, it was too late. Great football is like great comedy in that way. It is all in the timing. — Martin Samuel

I like tricks; I like to dazzle. Dribbling and leaving your opponent on his backside is what life is for. If I achieve what I want to, then I'll mark a distinct era in football. I'm the Che Guevara of modern soccer. — Sergio Aguero

I will have to make tactical decisions, technical decisions and emotional decisions. This time it was a tactical one. — Tony Adams

I have never seen anything like that before. He must have given his last three managers heart attacks. I like to see those sort of things - as long as they come from the other goalkeeper. — Terry Venables

As a footballer's wife, I take great exception to the way we are portrayed in Footballers' Wives. — Karren Brady

They could've thrown a kitchen sink into the box and one of the guys would've headed it. — Paul Lambert

What Carew does with a football, I can do with an orange. — John Carew

Only if there's an outbreak of the bubonic plague. — Giovanni Trapattoni

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

Ninety-five per cent of my language problems are the fault of that stupid little midget. — Gianfranco Zola

Football is all about sentiment; if it weren't then we'd all support Manchester United. — Mark O'Brien

I think we have our sports within our own culture that are huge with baseball, football, basketball, and hockey. Those are the sports in America that we grow up with and soccer isn't really there yet. — Claudio Reyna

Do you know who I am? Why, have you forgotten? — Rio Ferdinand

Every kid around the world who plays soccer wants to be Pele. I have a great responsibility to show them not just how to be like a soccer player, but how to be like a man. — Pele

I didn't win prom king. By that point, I'd quit sports except for soccer, so I was really just a theater guy. I totally lost to the captain of the football team. — Patrick Wilson

People say I'm hard, I'm Mr Angry. I'm this, I'm that. I just want to win matches. There's no point going out there and being Mr Nice Guy. We get 55,000 at Old Trafford and I don't think they want fellas going out there and thinking: Ah, if we lose, so what? — Roy Keane

Laddie, that man scored 200 goals in 270 matches - an incredible record - and he has won cup after cup as a manager. When he talks, pin back your ears. — Bill Shankly

Soccer isn't the same as Bach or Buddhism. But it is often more deeply felt than religion, and just as much a part of the community's fabric, a repository of traditions. — Franklin Foer

The FA would remove him tomorrow if they had a spine, but clearly, in former lives, were cruel to jellyfish which is why they have returned as them now. — Martin Samuel

If this can be termed the century of the common man, then soccer, of all sports, is surely his game ... In a world haunted by the hydrogen and napalm bomb, the football field is a place where sanity and hope are still left unmolested. — Stanley Rous

It has been so long since Liverpool won the title, I was a 12-year-old Everton fan the last time it happened. — Jamie Carragher

Kaka beat Fletcher to the ball, and headed it past Heinze as the Argentine sought to close him down. Heinze could still have dealt with the problem, but, inexplicably, Patrice Evra came flying in like a runaway TGV. Heinze was flattened, Fletcher was so shocked that he stopped to rubber-neck, and Kaka strolled on and rolled the ball past Van der Sar. Evra's nightmare of a half continued when he crazily got himself cautioned for dissent, so removing Ferguson's one remaining first-choice defender from the away leg. Madness. — Henry Winter

Teddy has lost that yard of pace he never had. — Tony Cascarino

Drogba is a fighter. He is the kind of player I would say 'With you I could go to every war.' — Jose Mourinho

It's a great start, but we have a tough group: we have big teams like Denmark, Armenia and Serbia, so starting here gives us a good opportunity to fight until the end. — Lorik Cana

I loathed the game, and since I could see no pleasure or usefulness in it, it was very difficult for me to show courage at it. Football, it seemed to me, is not really played for the pleasure of kicking a ball about, but is a species of fighting. — George Orwell

How on earth Traore gets into this team is beyond me. And he's a Champions League winner? Gimme a break. They've Riise sitting on the bench who's a different class to this fella. — Johnny Giles

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

If you love Senegal so much, why don't you play for them? — Roy Keane

I think that in any argument about right or wrong in football, a reference to Don Revie's Leeds United is the nuclear option. There is, quite simply, nowhere to go after that. There has never been a more horrible football team. The Leeds of the Seventies were found guilty, week in, week out, of crimes against humanity. — Giles Smith

If a player is not interfering with play or seeking to gain an advantage, then he should be. — Bill Shankly

Rugby is a different game. There is an interruption every two minutes also in American football. Our soccer is a moving game: play, play, play, move, move - you don't interrupt. — Franz Beckenbauer

ESPN, is having the ability to foretell future outcomes in sports. — Anthony Liccione

Nine months of misery. — Steve Coppell

I do not play football, I score goals. — Dada Maravilha

I am happy to be a role model for anybody - whether they are black, white, yellow, pink or purple. — Paul Ince

Football is based on desperation. All clubs are desperate in one form or another - desperate to succeed, desperate to survive, desperate to stay where they are, desperate that things get no worse, desperate to arrest the slide. — Simon Barnes

In a manner akin to the influence of Tiger Woods on the other side of the Atlantic, Thierry Henry has helped kick down a few of the remaining bigoted stereotypes. Through his undisputable class and dignity, Henry has made a deep-seated difference to race relations in this country. Racism will flounder whenever white children grow up with a black man as their hero. That so few comment on Henry's colour is a silent tribute to his impact. — Pete Gill

I don't believe skill was, or ever will be, the result of coaches. It is a result of a love affair between the child and the ball. — Roy Keane

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

In England, they say that Manchester is the city of rain. It's main attraction is considered to the timetable at the railway station, where trains leave for other, less rainy cities. — Nemanja Vidic

God gives gifts to everyone, some can write, some can dance. He gave me the skill to play football and I am making the most of it. — Ronaldinho

There's nobody fitter at his age, except maybe Raquel Welch. — Ron Atkinson

Liverpool can play for only five minutes and win the game, that is the way they are. They pump the ball into the box and with good set-piece delivery they keep you under pressure. — Alex Ferguson

Titus Bramble: The only explanation for his existence in the Premiership is that he is already here. — Pete Gill

He dribbles a lot and the opposition don't like it - you can see it all over their faces — Ron Atkinson

[F]or the most part football these days is the opium of the people, not to speak of their crack cocaine. Its icon is the impeccably Tory, slavishly conformist Beckham. The Reds are no longer the Bolsheviks. Nobody serious about political change can shirk the fact that the game has to be abolished. And any political outfit that tried it on would have about as much chance of power as the chief executive of BP has in taking over from Oprah Winfrey. — Terry Eagleton