Quotes & Sayings About Team Players

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

I think the most important thing of all for any team is a winning attitude. The coaches must have it. The players must have it. The student body must have it. If you have dedicated players who believe in themselves, you don't need a lot of talent. — Bear Bryant

If a player is trying to intimidate a skilled player on your team, what do we want? We want our skilled players playing, so we shouldn't be doing that. — Bobby Orr

The president requested me to restore order in the national team. I have been designated to be part of the official delegation to Egypt to help boost the morale of our players. — Roger Milla

You don't have to be best friends as basketball players but I do believe in chemistry. I think it makes everything different if a team is really together and they're all on that same page. They might not like each other, per se, but if you're on the same page and the chemistry is there, you can play great basketball. You can go back to teams like Detroit, the Bad Boys. Those guys had great chemistry, that's why they won. — Dwight Howard

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

Milan is my favorite team. Every weekend I check the Serie A results to see how Milan fared. Milan has really great players, like Seedorf, Ibra, Pato and Thiago Silva. Then there is Nesta who is a great champion, it's enough just to look at his career. — Mamadou Sakho

I don't know if we are the best team in the world. I am lucky to be playing alongside some of the best players around. It's a dream. — Zinedine Zidane

I think what coaching is all about, is taking players and analyzing there ability, put them in a position where they can excel within the framework of the team winning. And I hope that I've done that in my 33 years as a head coach. — Don Shula

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

It is an interesting balance in trying to find players to make your team really good and at the same time running a financially sound operation. That is the challenge for every team. — Steve Kerr

I remember how inspiring it was to meet players like Bobby Charlton or Bryan Robson when I was a kid. I still remember Clive Allen showing up when I received a trophy for my Sunday league team. — David Beckham

Finding good players is easy. Getting them to play as a team is another story. — Casey Stengel

I am so very proud of you - your openness, your ambition, your aggression, your intelligence. My job, in the little time we have left together, is to match that intelligence with wisdom. Part of that wisdom is understanding what you were given - a city where gay bars are unremarkable, a soccer team on which half the players speak some other language. What I am saying is that it does not all belong to you, that the beauty in you is not strictly yours and is largely the result of enjoying an abnormal amount of security in your black body. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Real Madrid is a legendary team that stands above all others and is the target of all players. — Franz Beckenbauer

The Spurs really are a family. They have a bunch of good guys that want to win, and the way they play is so unselfish. I'm looking forward to being involved in it. I feel that teams with players who are very close end up winning. — LaMarcus Aldridge

Winning is irrelevant when you're 11 or 12 years old. It really is it. At youth tournaments, I look at the technical ability of the players. Whether the team wins or loses - I don't care. — Brad Friedel

For years Paul Scholes has been one of the best players in the Premiership. He's incredible. He has always been under-rated throughout his career. He's a team player, a one and two-touch footballer who makes good decisions on the pitch and makes his team play. — Thierry Henry

Whether we have the best individual players doesnt matter, you have to have the best team — Philipp Lahm

Players should know that if you can't make the contribution of the winning shot, that your attitude every day when you come to practice, or the positive contribution you make through cheering and keeping up team morale, is just as important in the overall picture. — Sue Wicks

Winning teams at the NBA level, the college level, and the high school level all play team basketball. Championship teams have five players on the same page at all times. — Hubie Brown

You need a lot of leaders, but a hockey team needs a voice, not only in the community, but more importantly between the coaching staff and the players. There are always ups and downs in a season; the captain is the guy players look to in those situations. — Joe Sakic

The experience she gained should be invaluable to her continued growth and contribution to our team. In reality, compared to American players, she would just be finishing her college career. — Mike Thibault

Growing up in Harlem, I had the chance to practice with a Negro League team. At fifteen, I was over six feet tall and a fair athlete, but my skills didn't come close to some of the players I saw. — Walter Dean Myers

I think in the future we need to look at our youth department to provide more players for the first team think it is important for a club to have a good amount of players that have roots with the club and region. — Arsene Wenger

I was an ambassador for Betway during the Rugby World Cup and at the moment I'm working as an ambassador for Artemis Investment Management. I also organised the first Rugby Aid in 2015. We had celebrities playing rugby against former England team players and raised a ton of money for Rugby For Heroes [a charity for former servicemen and women]. Only one celeb got crunched quite badly - Jaime Laing from Made in Chelsea ended up with cracked ribs. — Mike Tindall

I think the ability to motivate might be interpreted as the ability to lead, or to show people their goals or, perhaps more important, what their potential is - as a person as well as a player. You've got to show players that being part of a team will carry over to the experience of becoming part of society. — Bobby Knight

The greatest ally you have to get things working well and the players performing as a team is the bench. Don't be afraid to use it, either for the star player or anyone else. — John Wooden

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

You always want to be able to convey items of interest, items that make the fan see what's happening, help them in their conversations of comparing teams or players and then be able to back it up to open his eyes to the history of the league. — Hubie Brown

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

But how is it your team if you don't play in it?" The boy thinks this over for a moment. Then he seems to take a firm grip on the ball. "We've supported this team for longer than most of the players in it. So it's more our team than theirs." "Preposterous," snorts Britt-Marie. In — Fredrik Backman

While it would be as wrong of me to attribute these traits to women at the exclusion of men as it would be for a man to do the reverse, I think women can often be very strong team players and good communicators and collaborators. — Diane Nelson

When your great players are team players, everybody else follows their lead. The best team doesn't always win - it's usually the team that gets along best. — John C. Maxwell

What keeps you motivated? The challenge of putting all the elements of a team together and seeing how you do and what you become is the thing that I still enjoy. I also enjoy the associations and relationships with the players and other coaches - to be in the arena, so to speak. I still enjoy that. I'm also at the point, though, that if we're not doing well - it's tough enough as it is - that I'm not going to be hanging on just to be hanging on. Because it's not anything I need from an ego standpoint or anything else. I just thoroughly enjoy what I'm doing. — LaVell Edwards

If Jurgen Klinsmann thinks that the best way for his team to be successful is if his young players go to Europe, there is nobody in the world who can argue with that. That is his opinion, whether you agree with it or not. — Tim Howard

Portugal have a national team called Cristiano Ronaldo and a group of players who run after him. — Carlos Queiroz

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

Instead of speaking about Real Madrid, Mr Wenger should speak about Arsenal and explain how he lost 2-0 against a team in the Champions League for the first time [Braga]. The history about the young kids is getting old now. Sagna, Clichy, Walcott, Fabregas, Song, Nasri, Van Persie, Arshavin are not kids. They are all top players. — Jose Mourinho

It takes the pressure off of your better players to know they don't always have to be on top of their game for the team to do well. — Cal Hubbard

In my regular life, I am very involved in commissions for cities and sometimes countries. And I think of public art as a team sport. The outcome is only possible with the interaction of all the players. — Janet Echelman

Why don't they allow professional wrestling at the Olympics? They allow pro basketball players and hockey players. Olympic pro wrestling would be awesome. The team from Mexico could wear those Mr. X masks. The French wrestler could hit his opponent with a baguette. Or perhaps just surrender. — Craig Ferguson

It's not that introverts aren't good team players. We just don't need to be in the same room as the rest of the team at all times. We would much prefer to have part of the project carved out for us to squirrel away with it in our offices, consulting as necessary but working independently. — Sophia Dembling

If two baseball players from the same hometown, on different teams, receive the same uniform number, it is not ironic. It is a coincidence. If Barry Bonds attains lifetime statistics identical to his father's, it will not be ironic. It will be a coincidence. — George Carlin

The model for an NHL without fighting is right there in front of us. The [playoffs are] the time of year that fans love best; when the best hockey is played ... [The] enforcers don't play. Even mini-enforcers ... remain on the bench. Teams and coaches can't afford anything stupid and unpredictable ... With no one to fight back for them, players go harder into the corners, more determinedly to the front of the net. If they want to fire up the crowd and their teammates, they have to do it themselves. And in the playoffs, they do. — Ken Dryden

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

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

The team comes first. We want to keep all of our players. We want to take care of all of our players, but the team comes first. — Bob McNair

Louis 'Thunder Thumbs' Johnson was one of the greatest bass players to ever pick up the instrument, as a member of the Brothers Johnson, we shared decades of magical times working together in the studio and touring the world. From my albums 'Body Heat' and 'Mellow Madness,' to their platinum albums 'Look Out for #1,' 'Right On Time,' 'Blam' and 'Light Up the Night,' which I produced, to Michael's solo debut 'Off the Wall,' I considered Louis a core member of my production team. He was a dear and beloved friend and brother, and I will miss his presence and joy of life every day. — Quincy Jones

Indian cricket, and the youngsters themselves, are dealing with issues inconceivable a few summers ago. Riches and all the attendant temptations are thrown at them before they have started shaving regularly. It's not their fault. It's no one's fault. That is the marketplace. Inevitably, though, it can distract attention from the long struggle towards mastery. Cricket does not give itself away; it expects players to apply themselves, to think and study and seek. It plays tricks, too, pretends that sixes and slower balls and the other shortcuts matter. Cricket sets traps, flatters players and calls them kings when they are barely princes. — Peter Roebuck

You always miss a great player, but I think the players on this team have taken a lot of pride in overcoming obstatcles when we have a player down ? not only the offensive players, but the defensive players. We were very fortunate that we played that well. — Bobby Petrino

I think we deserved to get through and I congratulate the players. We said before the game that nothing was decided and that we had to play a good team which is very dangerous. We did well and we didn't give away many chances. — Frank Rijkaard

There's players like myself in the league who deserve to make the All-Star team and aren't given a chance. I've put up numbers, as good if not better than players that are making the team. — Jeff Cunningham

Gansey had been rescued; Blue had been stranded.

Mr Gansey saw it, though, and he caught the ball before it even hit the ground. "I would love to read something from you, Blue, on growing up in a house of psychics. You could go academic or you could go memoir, and either way, it would just be fascinating. You have such a distinct voice, even when speaking."

"Oh yes, I noticed that, too, the Henrietta cadence," Mrs Gansey said warmly; they were excellent team players. Good save, point to the Ganseys, win for Team Good Feeling. — Maggie Stiefvater

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

The whole kiss-and-tell thing is a negative approach that often happens in a World Cup. We will see negative stories about the players and it can affect their confidence and the overall performance of the national team on the pitch, let alone the bid to actually stage the competition. — Gary Lineker

Playing catch is often the first professional act of the day, it's a transition from personal life to team business. Lastly, as all position players think they can pitch, at least half of us are working on our off-speed stuff likely at the detriment of our elbows and shoulders, but we can't help it. It's too much fun. My changeup has come a long way since high school. — Fernando Perez

Honestly, I think winning changes all of that. It doesn't matter where you are - it could be Timbuktu - if you win, people will watch, they'll follow and they'll support. It's my responsibility to put a team on the floor that will win, and that attracts players. Look at the teams that have been successful in the NBA. Yes, you have big, glamorous cities like L.A. But Miami has won, and so has San Antonio. Oklahoma City is a very successful team. They're not the biggest markets. — Masai Ujiri

This team [England] has some of the best players in England — David Beckham

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

A pitching coach is a manager's best friend. He's handling 12 out of the 25 players on the team. — Lou Piniella

As long as you don't criticise individual players in public, admonishing the team is fine, not a problem. We can all share in the blame: the manager, his staff, the players. Expressed properly, criticism can be an acceptance of collective responsibility. Under — Alex Ferguson

Don't let talent get in way of team performance. Great players do what's outstanding for team, not what makes them stand out — Jerry West

My ambition is that I have the best players
who can collaborate with each other to form
the best team in the world. — Louis Van Gaal

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

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

The highest level of achievement is attained by the teams with the best conditioned players — Jack Ramsay

A lot of players know how to play the game, but they really don't know how to play the game, if you know what I mean. They can put the ball in the hoop, but I see things before they even happen. You know how a guy can make his team so much better? That's one thing I learned from watching Jordan. — LeBron James

People will think there are no other great ballplayers. Look at Garnett. Look at Duncan, Shaq, Kobe. Look at the players with Sacramento. The have a really good basketball team. — Oscar Robertson

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

My life has changed in many ways, both on an economic and personal level. All major league players are accorded the respect they deserve. In Cuba, it was not that way. National team players were not respected. The treatment was not adequate. — Yoenis Cespedes

The analysis of statistics is a big part of the modern game, and it's important as a modern manager to embrace areas that can help your team and players improve. — Brendan Rodgers

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

No cricket team in the world depends on one or two players. The team always plays to win. — Virat Kohli

We may not be the best conditioned team in the country, but our players think they are. — John Wooden

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

Bringing together disparate personalities to form a team is like a jigsaw puzzle. You have to ask yourself: what is the whole picture here? We want to make sure our players all fit together properly and complement each other, so that we don't have a big piece, a little piece, an oblong piece, and a round piece. If personalities work against each other, as a team you'll find yourselves spinning your wheels. — Pat Summitt

Except for a handful, chess players don't have such illusions. The game has a severe analytic quality that makes self-deception difficult. Unlike the undiscovered poet who, despite the harsh criticism of his peers, lives on his fantasies for the day that he will be recognized as the next Dylan Thomas, even a young chess player can usually gauge his talent. When Josh was six, he played several games against a pudgy thirteen-year-old who was the top player on his high school team. He beat Josh every time, but a couple of the games were close, and afterwards the boy seemed gloomy about his performance. He explained that if he didn't make significant improvement during the next year, he would wind up as just another wood-pusher. Despite his celebrity in school, he seemed to know that he didn't have it. While — Fred Waitzkin

On a good team there are no superstars. There are great players who show they are great players by being able to play with others as a team. They have the ability to be superstars, but if they fit into a good team, they make sacrifices, they do things necessary to help the team win. What the numbers are in salaries or statistics don't matter; how they play together does. — Red Holzman

To play with ten players for over half of the match is never going to be easy against anybody, particularly on their home field. But I thought the team adjusted fairly well and at times we looked really good with only ten players. Still, it's a win, and it's a win for the Rivalry Series and I'm happy about that. — Jerry Smith

Gettin' good players is easy. Gettin' 'em to play together is the hard part. — Casey Stengel

I won an MVP trophy with the St. Louis Amateur Baseball Association. I didn't even start. I was a sub on this team. This was, like, an All-Star game where we had athletes from different teams, different mixtures. We had, like, the only black team in the league, basically. We had four players go to the All-Star game. — Nelly

Today, he showed the world why he is considered the best batsman around. Some of the shots he played were simply amazing. Earlier, opposing teams used to feel that Sachin's dismissal meant they could win the game. Today, I feel that the Indian players, too, feel this way. — Wasim Akram

I'm a pretty easygoing guy. I'm not hard to get along with. I never had anybody that I had trouble with. On the other team, sometimes you don't like players because of the way they act, but then you get to know them and then they're very good people. But I never disliked anybody. — Bengie Molina

When I gave up me, I became more. I became a captain, a leader, a better person and I came to understand that life is a team game ... And you know what? ... I've found most people aren't team players. They don't realize that life is the only game in town. Someone should tell them. It has made all the difference in the world to me. — Don Mattingly

My focus was always first and foremost to stop the puck. I never let the other players on the other team get to me. — Andy Moog

In some ways, I was a little bit surprised [by how dominant we were] but then I look at the players in our changing room and it doesn't surprise me because we've got quality in there. If we click and play well like we did in the first half, we can open up any team. — Rio Ferdinand

Regard your team as a family. Give the same attention to the bottom guy as you do the top guy. You have a responsibility to all of your players. — Pete Newell

By analogy, if we were to develop a soccer team, then we would not invite basketball and volleyball players to the try outs. We would invite soccer players to apply. — Jean-Marie Le Pen

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

In a team situation, I think the players are more inclined to give the answer they believe the psychologist is looking for rather than maybe being totally honest. — Brian O'Driscoll

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

I'd say I'm a bit antimadridista although I do not know where my future will be, but it's a team that I never liked. I get the impression that it is an arrogant club, about how the players are. Without humility, you cannot get anywhere. — Isco

I'm not going to lie and say that I'm good at Madden. There are some good players out there. There are some good players on the team. I get skunked all of the time. — Calvin Johnson

Being named as a finalist for the USA Basketball National Team is an unbelievable feeling and an opportunity that is truly humbling. It is an honor to be included with such talented players and I look forward to the chance to represent my country this summer. — James Harden

At Alabama, our players don't win Heisman Trophies. Our teams win National Championships. — Bear Bryant

The greatest players fit with the team. They play within the team's style, rather than asking the team to change its style. — Patrick Ewing

More and more teams are using almost exclusively the draft to build their teams. And that means you have younger players to develop in those key depth positions. Younger players are more susceptible to streaks than veterans. They go up, they go down. — Ozzie Newsome

When humans team up with computers to play chess, the humans who do best are not necessarily the strongest players. They're the ones who are modest and who know when to listen to the computer. Often, what the human adds is knowledge of when the computer needs to look more deeply. — Tyler Cowen

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