Great footballing quotes, all in one place.
“Players lose you games, not tactics. There’s so much crap talked about tactics by people who barely know how to win at dominoes.”
Brian Clough
“David Beckham is Britain’s finest striker of a football not because of God-given talent but because he practises with a relentless application that the vast majority of less gifted players wouldn’t contemplate.”
Sir Alex Ferguson
“For sportsmen or women who want to be champions, the mind can be as important, if not more important, than any other part of the body.”
Gary Neville
“The work of a team should always embrace a great player but the great player must always work.”
Sir Alex Ferguson
“In my teams, the goalie is the first attacker, and the striker the first defender.”
Johan Cruyff
“Players who can muster the mental and tactical strength to perform their basic task can never get an ‘insufficient’ mark for the match and they are considered perfect team players. However, sometimes it means that you do not stand out in the game and receive a low mark from the journalists who cover the match, but never from the coach.”
Rinus Michels
“Some people believe football 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
“As I get older, the tyranny that football exerts over my life, and therefore over the lives of people around me, is less reasonable and less attractive. Family and friends know, after long years of wearying experience, that the fixture list always has the last word in any arrangement; they understand, or at least accept, that christenings or weddings or any gatherings, which in other families would take unquestioned precedence, can only be plotted after consultation. So football is regarded as a given disability that has to be worked around. If I were wheelchair-bound, nobody close to me would organise anything in a top-floor flat, so why would they plan anything for a winter Saturday afternoon?”
Nick Hornby, Fever Pitch
“If I have to make a tackle then I have already made a mistake.”
Paolo Maldini
“Don’t worry if you shoot and you miss. People will forgive you if you miss, but they won’t forgive you if you have the chance to shoot and you don’t.”
Jimmy Murphy
“I hear people talk about Andy Cole and say: ‘But he needs 2-3 chances before he scores’. Well, if he’s getting that many chances, I want him in my team.”
Les Ferdinand
“You don’t have to have been a horse to be a jockey.”
Arrigo Sacchi, on football management
“If a chairman sacks the manager he initially appointed, he should go as well.”
Brian Clough
“At the end of this game, the European Cup will be only six feet away from you, and you’ll not even able to touch it if we lose. And for many of you, that will be the closest you will ever get. Don’t you dare come back in here without giving your all.”
Sir Alex Ferguson, half-time, 1999 Champions League final
“If you’re in the penalty area and don’t know what to do with the ball, put it in the net and we’ll discuss the options later.”
Bob Paisley
“Of course I didn’t take my wife to see Rochdale as an anniversary present. It was her birthday. Would I have got married in the football season? Anyway, it was Rochdale reserves.”
Bill Shankly
“Some people watch the game, but don’t see the game.”
Gary Neville
“It only takes a second to score a goal.”
Brian Clough
“The day you think there is no improvements to be made is a sad one for any player.”
Lionel Messi
“Play for the name on the front of the shirt, and they’ll remember the name on the back.”
Tony Adams
“What is speed? The sports press often confuses speed with insight. See, if I start running slightly earlier than someone else, I seem faster.”
Johan Cruyff
“There’s only two types of manager. Those who’ve been sacked and those who will be sacked in the future”
Howard Wilkinson
“The world looks a totally different place after two wins.”
Gordon Strachan
“When you play a match, it is statistically proven that players actually have the ball 3 minutes on average. So, the most important thing is what you do during those 87 minutes when you do not have the ball. That is what determines whether you’re a good player or not.”
Johan Cruyff
In football, the worst things are excuses. Excuses mean you cannot grow or move forward.
Pep Guardiola
“Sometimes you can be amazing in a game without a goal and assist, sometimes really poor with a goal and assist.”
Thierry Henry
“The ball is round, the game lasts ninety minutes, and everything else is just theory.”
Sepp Herberger
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