This Football Player Quotes & Sayings

I have seen women walk right past a TV set with a football game on and - this always amazes me - not stop to watch, even if the TV is showing replays of what we call a "good hit," which is a tackle that causes at least one major internal organ to actually fly out of a player's body. — Dave Barry

At a play-off game with the Chargers, goose bumps ran down my arms as I rushed through the smoke-filled tunnel onto the field. The energy and voices of 70,000 screaming fans can turn even a veteran player's determined squint into the wide eyes of a child on Christmas morning.
While the cheerleaders performed and urged on the crowd, running back Danny Woodhead turned to me. "Can you believe we get to do this? — Jake Byrne

As a player I won things, had a special 10 years under Martin O'Neill [at Leicester and Celtic] and played in some great teams, beating Manchester United and getting to the last 16 of the Champions League. As a manager, I don't know if I will top this; I hope I do, because I am still young and am still learning. But this is up there with anything I have achieved, not just in my football career but in my life. — Neil Lennon

I find myself thinking back to something I saw on the local news about a year ago. A teen football player had died in a car accident. The cameras showed all his friends after the funeral - these big hulking guys, all in tears, saying, "I loved him. We all loved him so much." I started crying, too, and I wondered if these guys had told the football player they loved him while he was alive, or whether it was only with death that this strange word, love, could be used. I vowed then and there that I would never hesitate to speak up to the people I loved. They deserved to know they gave meaning to my life. They deserved to know I thought the world of them. — David Levithan

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

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

I prefer to win titles with the team ahead of individual awards or scoring more goals than anyone else. I'm more worried about being a good person than being the best football player in the world. When all this is over, what are you left with? When I retire, I hope I am remembered for being a decent guy. — Lionel Messi

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

Just because I'm undersized and under-this and under-that, I've still been a good football player since I was little. — Wes Welker

You know, I started this process of being a football player and I'm going to make it to the NFL very soon and I plan on finishing that. And by 'finishing that,' I mean that I'm going to go out and be the best that I can be and put everything forth to make that happen. — Robert Griffin III

I think Marshawn Lynch is the most important player in this football game. — Kurt Warner

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

I know how it goes. Six or seven months ago I was the manager of the year and I was going to be this and that, tactically this and tactically that, and now, because we have lost two world-class players, I am useless. But I accept that. — Brendan Rodgers

But you know, even worrying about haircuts couldn't depress me. Because every time I started sinking low, I'd just remember about football. All this time I'd thought I wanted to be a trainer, when it turned out I wanted to be a player instead. I saw something I wanted to do and I decided to do it. The feeling of freedom this gave me - I can't even describe it. It was my decision. I chose it. I am not a cow. — Catherine Gilbert Murdock

The main reason for doing it now had more to do with the players. This is a great group. This particular group has really worked hard to prepare themselves. And we have a chance to have a good football team. — LaVell Edwards

Is hockey hard? I don't know, you tell me. We need to have the strength and power of a football player, the stamina of a marathon runner, and the concentration of a brain surgeon. But we need to put all this together while moving at high speeds on a cold and slippery surface while 5 other guys use clubs to try and kill us. Oh yeah, did I mention that this whole time we're standing on blades 1/8 of an inch thick? Is ice hockey hard? I don't know, you tell me. Next question. — Brendan Shanahan

Every professional golfer has a seperate coach for his drives, for approaches, for putting. In football we have one coach for 15 players. This is absurd. — Johan Cruijff

When you're younger, it's about, 'How can I get better? How can I become the player that I want to be?' As you get older, it's, 'How can this football team improve?' While all along getting better along the way. — Tony Romo

I am more mature. I'm a better football player. I just feel like this is my time. — Ricky Williams

The first and foremost requisite of a good football player is that he must have a burning desire to play the game. There is absolutely no substitute for this. — Frank Leahy

At football games the other students would cheer the star black running back, and then when a black player on the other team got the ball, they'd yell, "Kill that nigger! Kill that nigger!" They would yell this sitting right next to her, as though she really were not there. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Then maybe I'll hit on this sweaty, oversexed football player. Maybe we'll have meaningful discussions about politics and philosophy while we bump 'n grind. Ugh. Yeah, right. — Kody Keplinger

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

If you gave Arsene Wenger eleven players and told him to pick his team, this would be it. — Andy Gray

No pro football player should die of heatstroke, any more than cholera, in this day and age if the most basic attention is paid and precautions are taken. — Sally Jenkins

We scored a goal and defended until the end with great spirit. We have a lot of young players and I hope we can keep on like this. — Lorik Cana

The Premier League is very difficult football and very different to when you play in Europe, but the player has to have experience to adapt, and this is the key point. — Fernando Torres

I led the NFL in attempts the past two years and they really didn't go out and get a quarterback to help me so I knew it's going to be all on me again. I could see my mortality as a football player, that I'm not going to be able to do this much longer. It just became obvious to me that playing football for me is not going to be fun, not something I'm going to enjoy and it's time for me to do something different. — Ricky Williams

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

He hadn't developed into the accomplished running quarterback many had predicted he would become over the course of the season.

But he had come to personify this team. He was raw and untested when the season began, but he played his two best games in the two biggest games on the schedule. He wasn't the player anybody expected him to be, but he got the job done-at times spectacularly. — Neil Hayes

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

Beckham in Paris will certainly be good for shopping. I love this player but he is not the footballer he was. And if he comes to Paris now it will be to do something other than football. — Michel Patini

So [Polaroid's Dr. Edwin] Land, at 75, went off to spend the remainder of his life doing pure science, trying to crack the code of color vision. The man is a national treasure. I don't understand why people like that can't be held up as models: This is the most incredible thing to be - not an astronaut, not a football player - but this. — Steve Jobs

I would like to clarify one thing about the 1970 USC game. Talk about urban legend. There have been numerous stories and documentaries about Coach going to the USC dressing room after that game and bringing Sam Cunningham back into our locker room and saying, "This is what a real football player looks like." I was there and it didn't happen. It wasn't unusual for Coach Bryant to go to a visiting locker area after a game and congratulate the other team if they beat us and he did do that after the game. But he never brought anyone back to our dressing room. — Mal Moore With Steve Townsend

People who are following their dreams inspire me. I train at this relatively new gym in West Hollywood called Training Mate. It's owned by a former Australian football player named Luke Milton. The classes are mostly taught by other Australians that are just like Luke: fit, funny, cute, and approachable. Now they're talking about opening another location. He will open another location and be successful because he's following his dream. People like him inspire me because they make me think I can do it too. — Dayna Devon

The reality, ... is that I need to win games of football. That's where the pressure and the sleepless nights come from. There's a fantasy pressure with this job but none of that matters. I need to make this team into a good unit, need to take it forward, give it a change of pace, need to get it younger and to use the experience of the lads we've got here. I need Lennon and Sutton and people like that to go and show how you handle being a Celtic player. — Gordon Strachan

It's freaking football. There are going to be big hits. I don't understand how they can do this after one weekend of hitting. And I can't understand how they can suspend us for it. I think it's a bunch of bull. — Brian Urlacher

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

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

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

LeSean McCoy has become the most exciting player in the National Football League. I believe he's the MVP this year. — Kurt Warner

If he continues like this then I think Messi will be the best player in the history of football. — Xavi

Everyone thinks footballers have it easy and at this time of year see loads of pictures of players relaxing on beaches and in bars but what they don't see is most of them will be doing their own fitness regimes. If you don't you will get back and you will be off the pace, might get injured and won't play football matches. — Colin Kazim-Richards