Soccer Game Quotes & Sayings

Hockey is its own game. It's completely different than all the other games, although it's getting way too close to soccer. — Brett Hull

It's a 90 minute game for sure. In fact I used to train for a 190 minute game so that when the whistle blew at the end of the match I could have played another 90 minutes. — Bill Shankly

Between two throw-ins in a soccer game, right behind my back, three thousand people had been put to death. — Tadeusz Borowski

A player who dives and wins a penalty in Portugal, or Spain or Italy is considered clever, experienced, cunning, someone who understands the game. In England a player who wins a penalty like that is a cheat. — Jose Mourinho

Yorkie has officially retired about 5 times ... The man's a clown ... People are going on about the game and agents and directors of football and managers losing their jobs, but we should be worried about people like him ... Clowns. That's the last time I'm going to say clown ... If he's the vice-president of FIFA, God help us all. — Roy Keane

She had read articles over the years about a man's supposed biological craving for young women: it was all about primeval procreation, in theory, the need to plant seed in fertile soil. Maybe ... She thought of a line from Nabokov: "Because you took advantage of my disadvantage." Lolita. In this case, however, Kristin felt that she was at the disadvantage - not the young thing. The truth was, she feared, all men were Humbert Humbert. Maybe they weren't pedophiles lusting after twelve-year-olds, but didn't Lolita look old for her age? Older, anyway? Sure, there were MILFs in porn, but Kristin had a feeling that considerably more men wanted their porn stars to be students at Duke University than moms from the bleachers at a middle-school soccer game. — Chris Bohjalian

Overseas, kids grow up in a soccer culture. The German player sees the game eons above the American player the same age. — Tony DiCicco

Soccer forces life to move on. There's always a new match. A new season. There's always a dream that everything can get better. It's a game of wonders. — Fredrik Backman

When I was in college, I learned to really take care of my body and figured out what works best for me and what doesn't work for me when it comes to my nutrition. That helped so much on the field because soccer is such a fitness-oriented game. — Abby Wambach

I used to go to my kids' soccer games and I was the only parent who wasn't screaming, because I'd have to do a show that night. It was hard. Moms and dads get more emotional at those soccer and Little League games than at a professional game. — Neil Diamond

At a youth soccer game you'll probably hear parents and coaches on the sidelines yelling, 'Pass the ball! Pass the ball!' ... When we continually tell our young players to pass the ball, we're not allowing them to develop their full potential, especially those who have the ability to take their opponents on and beat them one-on-one. As a result, we run the risk of diminishing a player's artistry and potential. — Tony DiCicco

We all stood and gathered our backpacks and I looked at the floor around my chair to make sure I hadn't dropped anything. I was terrified of unwittingly leaving behind a scrap of paper on which were written all my private desires and humiliations. The fact that no such scrap of paper existed, that I did not even keep a diary or write letters except bland, earnest, falsely cheerful ones to my family (We lost to St. Francis in soccer, but I think we'll win our game this Saturday; we are working on self-portraits in art class, and the hardest part for me is the nose) never decreased my fear. — Curtis Sittenfeld

I don't think I'll ever feel as famous or as popular as I felt when I was a 17-year-old soccer player in Modle. Only about 20,000 people live there and 12,000 of them come to every game. Running onto the pitch each week was just the most fantastic feeling. Nothing can beat that. — Jo Nesbo

The first task is to get to know the players really well-watching them as individuals in training and in match play-to see what is good in their natural game. Then, and only then, can we begin to outline the general tactics. — Helenio Herrera

Soccer is a continuous game, rugby is a continuous game, but for the physical elements that are involved in playing a football game and the number of plays that you play, I don't know that it was ever intended to be a continuous game. — Nick Saban

I'm a soccer mom. I'm T-ball, soccer, karate, homework, keeping them on their schedules. I love being the snack mom, when I get to bring the cut oranges. I have one of those coolers with wheels. I'm at every game, every practice, sitting on my blanket. I love it. — Pamela Anderson

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

I'm attracted to soccer's capacity for beauty. When well played, the game is a dance with a ball. — Eduardo Galeano

You've probably met moms like that. You say, "Yeah, I scored a goal in the soccer game last night." And she says, "Oh, that's nice. All fourteen of my children are the captains of their teams, and they make straight A's and can play the violin." And you just want to smack her. — Rick Riordan

Football's football, if that weren't the case it wouldn't be the game that it is — Garth Crooks

When Ronaldo gave that little wink everyone interpreted it that he had got his team-mate sent off. You felt then that he would become a much criticised figure. But that's not really what happened. So for him to overcome all of that and emerge as one of the players of the season is quite a remarkable achievement. He is a phenomenal talent. He has tremendous pace, he goes past players and he has added the ability to shoot. He can also pick out team-mates. There is not a lot he cannot do now. I believe his game has improved immeasurably over the past couple of seasons. — Cristiano Ronaldo

A soccer game is a Wagner opera. The narrative sets up, the tension builds, the music ebbs and flows, the strings, the horns, more tension, and suddenly a moment of pure bliss, trumpet-tongued Gabriel sings, and gods descend from Olympus to dance - this peak of ecstasy. — Rabih Alameddine

I had to add Oguchi into the list. After all, he's a soccer player - fittest athletes ever. At 6'4 210 pounds, he's one of the most feared men in the world's game.
I've played against a lot of massive defenders. And no one has Oguchi's strength. His shoulders and chest are so big that people confuse him with an NFL player. He can move anyone in the game with one arm, including the best strikers in the world. Guys absolutely fear him. — Charlie Davies

One of the reserves came up to me and said 'I'm finding it a bit hard, it's the first time I've ever been dropped'. So I told him to do what Nick Faldo does and work at his game. Next thing I know he's doing exactly what Faldo does, he's taken up golf. — Ron Atkinson

I've spent the last fifteen years of my life railing against the game of soccer, an exercise that has been lauded as "the sport of the future" since 1977. Thankfully, that future dystopia has never come. — Chuck Klosterman

Soccer is simple ... you just need to have the right mentality, fighting in every game, in every practice and for every ball. — Hristo Stoichkov

He slipped his hands around my waist and pulled me against him, tossing the ice cream cone over his shoulder. It landed with a splat on the sidewalk. "So does that mean I have a varsity girlfriend?"
I giggled like a total girl and linked my hands behind his neck. "Yeah I guess it does."
"Sweet." Then he bent his head, and I stood up on my tiptoes and we met in the middle. And it was perfect. — Stephie Davis

Maybe it was teleportation. The Spirit took you there."
"That might explain my visit to the soccer game, but it doesn't elucidate why I was in two different editions of the bakery."
"Elucidate?"
"Clarify, expound, explicate ... "
"You should have stopped at expound."
"Brandon! I need assistance here. — James L. Rubart

There are some nights when everything goes your way and some when it doesn't, and this wasn't our game. I was most disappointed with our lack of aggression as that is normally one of our characteristics. — Fabio Capello

Soccer is a magical game. — David Beckham

England are very light up front. Eriksson's decision not to include Jermaine Defoe can be declared an error of judgment, regardless of Rooney's situation. The Swede should have forgone one of his nine midfield players; much will have to go wrong for Jermaine Jenas to get a game. — Matt Dickinson

There's the beauty of the stage. I don't like filmed theater or opera because you're kind of playing soccer in a hockey game. Either or, they don't do justice to the media and you end up with a hybrid that is purely sensationalistic. Opera is a very theatrical medium that should be seen on a stage with the musicians in the pit in the audience. — Christoph Waltz

My coworkers should understand that I need to go to a party tonight
and this is just as legitimate as their kids' soccer game
because going to a party is the only way I might actually meet someone and start a family so I can have a soccer game to go to one day! — Sheryl Sandberg

I feel very privileged to be asked to be featured in another FIFA Soccer release, ... The game gives me the opportunity to play the matches I want to play every day of the week
even while away from the field. — Ronaldinho

When I see myself in the videogame it's amazing how realistic I look. This is the most authentic and realistic soccer game I have ever seen. It is like I'm looking in a mirror. The attention to detail is incredible. — Claudio Reyna

I never felt the same passion for the game in the States and there were a lot of headaches, a lot of obstacles to overcome - it didn't just run itself for the love of the game because soccer is not the No. 1 sport as it is in Europe. — Hope Solo

Jimmy Greaves and Kenny Dalglish had similar know-how, but Dalglish's knowledge and reading of the game was far superior. He was the most complete footballer in British soccer. — Jimmy Armfield

The ball is round, the game lasts ninety minutes, and everything else is just theory. — Sepp Herberger

And the world around me was nothing if not an infinity of distractions: cute girls, novels and comic books, my budding record collection, neighborhood boys whistling from the playground under my window, beckoning me to a soccer game. — Aleksandar Hemon

He hit the post, and after the game people will say, well, he hit the post. — Jimmy Greaves

When I look in the mirror, I don't see a person who's made the kind of impact that Mia Hamm made on the game. She's still my idol, the greatest player and the greatest teammate. She achieved so much in so many different ways. What she did for women's soccer can't be measured. — Abby Wambach

The crowd in Atlanta was amazing the last time we played there. They were enthusiastic, engaged in the game and were happy to be there. They are excited about soccer. — Kelley O'Hara

Let me ask you something, in all the years that you have ... undressed in front of a gentleman has he ever asked you to leave? Has he ever walked out and left? No? It's because he doesn't care! He's in a room with a naked girl, he just won the lottery. I am so tired of saying no, waking up in the morning and recalling every single thing I ate the day before, counting every calorie I consumed so I know just how much self loathing to take into the shower. I'm going for it. I have no interest in being obese, I'm just through with the guilt. So this is what I'm going to do, I'm going to finish this pizza, and then we are going to go watch the soccer game, and tomorrow we are going to go on a little date and buy ourselves some bigger jeans. — Elizabeth Gilbert

I feel I have grown up. I am a man. It's important in my football too. When everything is good, I don't think you grow up fantastically, I think maybe you need a few problems to grow up. It is good if people in England have started to admire me. I think I have changed a little since the World Cup. I am stronger with my mentality and with my game as well. — Cristiano Ronaldo

It's not often you find yourself writing about a game that you haven't seen one kick of. But it's not often that the favourites lose 5-0 in one of their most important matches of the season. But all things considered - the difference between expectations of success and margin of victory, the fact of Strachan's debut, the injury to Chris Sutton, the joy it will bring Rangers fans, and the potential financial loss of going out of Europe completely in the first week in August - it is hard to remember the last defeat this bad for any team. — Phil Cornwell

We've got nothing to lose, and there's no point losing this game — Bobby Robson

The thing that's really kept me on my toes is how my mom would always tell me - it's not the best thing for a mother to tell you - but she'd never tell me after I'd lose a soccer game, 'You'll do better next time.' She'd always say, 'There's always somebody better.' — Brandon Flowers

It was a game we should have won. We lost it because we thought we were going to win it. But then again, I thought that there was no way we were going to get a result there. — Jack Charlton

I was glad to watch the soccer because it helps my tennis game, realize maybe they're just rooting for the underdog. — Serena Williams

When you've got a player who does what he does at that pace this late in the game than you know you've got an invaluable talent. — Cristiano Ronaldo

You have to control what you can control, not the entire game, and try to play the best soccer possible and play clean and be smart and professional. — Heather Mitts

Nearly everything possible had been done to spoil the game: the heavy financial interest; the absurd transfer and player-selling system; the lack of any birth or residential qualifications; the absurd publicity given to every feature of it by the press; the monstrous partisanships of the crowds. — J.B. Priestley

Football is a simple game. It's just very hard to play it simple. — Johan Cruijff

Football is a game based on emotion and intelligence. Anyone can be clever, the trick is not to think the other guy is stupid. — Jose Mourinho

I've seen the growth of this game in this country, the stadiums that were built, the great European players that have come and the great American players who've been created. Americans want to be number one at everything. And they are at baseball, football, basketball. Soccer is growing fast, and I want to be a part of that. — David Beckham

You can do as many sprints as you want but there's nothing like playing in a 90-minute soccer game. There's no better way to gain your fitness, in my opinion, than playing in consistent games. — Abby Wambach

What she revealed was not sexy lingerie, but a supportive piece of athletic equipment. After the consolation match that preceded the championship game, both Brazilian and Norwegian players removed their jerseys and exchanged them on the floor of the Rose Bowl. Chastain had previously removed her jersey after regulation to air it out. While training in Florida, the players frequently doffed their shirts after practice in the smothering heat, and they sometimes gave interviews in their sports bras, which were items of utility, not titillation. Chastain 'has brought instant attention to a piece of clothing that is humble and practical, not a traditional bra of shine and lace and cleavage, but a sturdy compression garment,' wrote Ann Gerhart of the Washington Post. 'The sports bra is the cloth symbol of Title IX's success. — Jere Longman

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 game of soccer has been able to give me what I wanted out of life. I just remember being a total Tomboy and athlete as a girl, but never having a lack of opportunity. — Tiffeny Milbrett

I think where we're still a little bit behind some other countries is just our pure soccer knowledge and our savvy on the field. That takes time and generations that have watched soccer growing up, played the game growing up. — Landon Donovan

Soccer's not a game that you can restrict players, especially creative players and players who have proven themselves at that level. — Tiffeny Milbrett

Baseball is a team game but, at the same time, it's a very lonely game: unlike in soccer or basketball, where players roam around, in baseball everyone has their little plot of the field to tend. When the action comes to you, the spotlight is on you but no one can help you. — Chad Harbach

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

A game of soccer induces more than enjoyment, more than entertainment. — Rabih Alameddine

Another atrocity of summer is soccer. When the Euro Cup is on, it brings out the worst in people. It turns them into ravaging beasts who complain when a team they like, which they have done nothing to deserve, slips from grace and loses the match.
An old man sitting beside me at the cafe was watching the men watch the soccer rather than watch the soccer himself. He found their reactions more entertaining than the game.
"All this stuff and nonsense over men kicking a ball," he groused. "And they don't do any of the work themselves."
I told him, "We should just have wars. Then we would not need sports."
He laughed and quite agreed with me. — Michelle Franklin

This is the face of our political class: arrogant, authoritarian, and on the level of some banana republic south of the border. Welcome to the New America, where leader-worship has taken the place of politics, Team Red and Team Blue battle it out to see who gets to be El Supremo for the next four years, and politics resembles a prolonged soccer game. — Justin Raimondo

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

This will be their 19th consecutive game without a win unless they can get an equaliser. — Alan Green

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

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

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

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

In reality, the vagina is not a game of soccer to be kicked around like a ball. Its goal is to love and not keep score of how many times it's beaten the competition. Having a vagina is a beautiful thing and shouldn't be locked up or controlled by those who do not have one. — Sadiqua Hamdan

Two Dutch researchers did a study in which they had groups of students answer forty-two fairly demanding questions from the board game Trivial Pursuit. Half were asked to take five minutes beforehand to think about what it would mean to be a professor and write down everything that came to mind. Those students got 55.6 percent of the questions right. The other half of the students were asked to first sit and think about soccer hooligans. They ended up getting 42.6 percent of the Trivial Pursuit questions right. The "professor" group didn't know more than the "soccer hooligan" group. They weren't smarter or more focused or more serious. They were simply in a "smart" frame of mind, and, clearly, associating themselves with the idea of something smart, like a professor, made it a lot easier - in that stressful instant after a trivia question was asked - to blurt out the right answer. — Malcolm Gladwell

The best place to play' means you love the guys you're playing with. It means you develop deep relationships that go well beyond soccer. It means you have awesome team chemistry where what the team needs is more important than what you need - and you fully buy-in to that. It means you fight for game time but you don't hold that against your teammate - that you're not mad when you're subbed out, but instead, you're excited for the guy who came in for you. And it means we have each other's back. — Michael A. Zigarelli

[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

There were seven people on a Quidditch team: three Chasers, whose job it was to score goals by putting the Quaffle (a red, soccer-sized ball) through one of the fifty-foot-high hoops at each end of the field; two Beaters, who were equipped with heavy bats to repel the Bludgers (two heavy black balls that zoomed around trying to attack the players); a Keeper, who defended the goalposts, and the Seeker, who had the hardest job of all, that of catching the Golden Snitch, a tiny, winged, walnut-sized ball, whose capture ended the game and earned the Seeker's team an extra one hundred and fifty points. — J.K. Rowling

Okay, on my first night, he tried to chat me up. You know how the story goes. 'You have the most beautiful eyes, I'm very rich, want to see my bedroom?' Blah, blah, blah."
"And because you turned him down, he's more determined than ever," Will guessed, with amazing accuracy. "You did turn him down, right?"
"Of course," I told him, insulted by the insinuation I would drop my knickers for a glass of wine. "Do you think I'd risk my job for a quick tumble in the sheets with him? — Kyra Lennon

This is a game between players from 12 national sides, a game that if you have a friend in China, in Brazil, in Qatar ... in half the world he wants to watch. I was thinking of this game when I signed for Chelsea. — Luiz Felipe Scolari

Any parent who tells their kids that they can't attend a school play or go to a soccer match because they have to work is kidding themselves. It's OK to miss a game or two or a performance here and there, but it's not all right to miss the majority of them. — Simon Sinek

Whatever exists is inevitably flawed. Buddha, in his detachment from the world, finds all its hustle and bustle ridiculous because he has nothing to do with it. A cynic finds the feelings of his fellow human beings ridiculous because he has no feelings himself. Someone who does not play soccer thinks it ridiculous to chase around after a little leather ball for hours at a time. He doesn't bother to ask whether this game might be a lot of fun. All he sees is the ridiculousness of grown men playing like little boys. People who do anything will no doubt appear ridiculous to people who do nothing. A person who acts can always make a fool of himself. A person who doesn't never runs that risk. We might even say that life is always ridiculous but death is never ridiculous. — Fritz Zorn

There was this old soccer game called 'Goal' for the old Nintendo, and ever since then, I've played everything from the old school games to the 360. — Landon Donovan

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 felt that we couldn't win the game. It was absolutely shocking. — Martin O'Neill

To combat the monotony of gym workouts, I started playing soccer. I looked at workouts as training sessions. My soccer training includes squats, pushups, resistance-band work, and sprints. Ninety minutes of running became part of my love of the game rather than a chore. — Adam Richman

In many ways, my job in soccer was like my job in basketball now. I had to protect the goal. That was the name of the game, not letting the other team score. — Hakeem Olajuwon

Believe it or not, goals can change a game. — Mick Channon

Soccer is a game for 22 people that run around, play the ball, and one referee who makes a slew of mistakes, and in the end Germany always wins. — Gary Lineker

Soccer's appeal lay in its opposition to the other popular sports. For children of the sixties, there was something abhorrent about enrolling kids in American football, a game where violence wasn't just incidental but inherent. They didn't want to teach the acceptability of violence, let alone subject their precious children to the risk of physical maiming. Baseball, where each batter must stand center stage four or five times a game, entailed too many stressful, potentially ego-deflating encounters. Basketball, before Larry Bird's prime, still had the taint of the ghetto.
But soccer represented something very different. It was a tabula rasa, a sport onto which a generation of parents could project their values. Quickly, soccer came to represent the fundamental tenets of yuppie parenting, the spirit of Sesame Street and Dr. Benjamin Spock. — Franklin Foer

The game must have been past my bed-time. — Theo Walcott

Growing up, I played about every sport imaginable except soccer and hockey. I've always had a passion for basketball. I remember actually playing basketball when I was two or three years old. The time I knew that I could really take my game to the next level. — Dwight Howard

The truth is that I've never cared anything about sports. In PE, I do my best to get hit with the dodgeball on the first throw so I can sit out and read instead of play. I'd rather eat a hot dog at a baseball game than play baseball. I'd rather paint a soccer ball than kick one. I don't mind running, but only if I'm running towards something wonderful. i don't see the point in running away from anything, ever. -Felicity Pickle — Natalie Lloyd

Indeed, the maligned American pastime of baseball may be by-far the greatest and best sport by one criterion, when it comes to emulating and training for genuinely useful Neolithic skills! Think about it. The game consists of lots of patient waiting and watching (stalking), throwing with incredible accuracy and speed, sprinting, dodging ... and hitting moving objects real hard with clubs! And arguing. Hey, what else could you possibly need? Now, tell me, how do soccer or basketball prepare you to survive in the wild, hm? — David Brin

As soon as I started to realize that I could make a living playing professional soccer, I went to that place where I could torture myself because I knew it would make me better for the championship game. — Abby Wambach

Everybody was waiting for Chelsea not to win every game and one day when we lose there will be a holiday in the country. But we are ready for that. — Jose Mourinho

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

I'd work with soccer coordinators at Game Changing Films and have one or two combat training sessions with my stunt double, who's a wushu master. — Gabriel Luna

Soccer is a great game, and the rich variety of styles and passions that come with being truly global makes the World Cup a nonpareil event in the universe of competitive sport. — Serge Schmemann

I play for the intense challenges that the game on the highest levels present. The whole team enjoys playng exciting soccer for the fans and my part in that makes me feel good about myself. The whole concept of teamwork is what keeps us all going. It's my role to create scoring chances, and to come through for my teammates is extremely satisfying. — Mia Hamm