You can plan, but what happens on a football field cannot be predicted.
I could speak for hours about equality and what needs to change in football and in society as a whole. But in the end, everything comes back to respect.
I’m not going to revolutionise football. I’m in a system. You have to know how to respect it and to stay in place.
It is easy to criticize me from behind a pen or a microphone, from someone who never set foot on a football field.
I’m happy to be in the centre for Wales – that’s my favourite position and where I play my best football.
Hockey is no longer a big four. It’s football, basketball, baseball and soccer. Now, I’m not talking MLS. I’m talking COPA, World Cup, men’s, women’s, MLS, youth… and there’s a lot of reasons for it.
Sharks are as tough as those football fans who take their shirts off during games in Chicago in January, only more intelligent.
I love being a running back. But I really love being a football player.
I really enjoy the football season.
In terms of the pricing of football tickets, there’s no need – given the massive amount of money that’s coming in now from television rights, there’s no need for them to be greedy. Look after the supporters; make sure they can still afford to go and watch football.
Everyone asks me about why I care about anime and football so much, but that’s because anything dark that happened in my life, those two things would make me feel better. I just used to sit in front of the TV and watch football and breathe a sigh of relief. You know what I mean? It’s another world. An escape.
I feel like a fight is a season. When you’re in the UFC, one fight is the equivalent of a whole football season, so when you lose a fight, the fans only remember you from your last fight, so it’s very important to perform well, and to keep winning.
I love football but it doesn’t come in front of my family. One time when I was manager of Braga I cancelled my contract because I had a problem with my family.
The media likes me because I give honest answers. How many people in football give honest answers? I don’t lie. Always the truth. OK, maybe my truth. But it is the truth.
The emotional compact between football clubs and their supporters is visceral and usually lifelong.
Football is a game of zone blitzes, West Coast offenses and check-offs, sure, but it’s really a game of field position: Even without a touchdown, a solid return game can quietly be the difference between an offense that’s pinned against its own goal line and one that’s in the driver’s seat to score.
Lombardi, a certain magic still lingers in the very name. It speaks of duels in the snow and November mud… He remains for many the heart of pro football, pumping hard right now.
I enjoy the football, I really love our kickarounds. I would say Chris Woakes is the best – a real Rolls-Royce midfielder. He gets himself around and he’s got a silky touch. He’s the main man.
I came from a rugby school and rugby nation, but I fancied giving football a go, and luckily, it paid off.
Your best ability is availability and if you’re not on the field, they can’t use you and you don’t play. So, I try to play as much football as I can.
In Spain, the game’s a lot more open. They score a lot more goals. They play football more. Here in Italy, they are much more concerned with tactics and strategy, and sometime we don’t play football.
The romance of English football is fantastic, but it has lost its identity under the influence of other cultures.
It’s all about the chairman, listening to what he wants to do with the football club on and off the pitch.
It happens in football, sometimes you can face trying times or sometimes you can play.
I was always active – I went from baseball to football. I didn’t have time to work out.
Fifa has lost the trust of the people. We cannot allow the architects and controllers of world football to get away with dragging the beautiful game through the grime of corruption and bribery.
If you take golf, you have a teacher for the drive, a teacher for the approach play, and a teacher for the putt. That’s three specialist coaches for one player. In football, one coach looks after 25 players.
It’s been a privilege to get to watch one of sports greatest athletes prepare and get to play with him; honestly… it’s a dream. I remember being in eighth grade saying, ‘I’m Tom Brady,’ on the asphalt at recess, you know, playing football.
When I went to high school, an all-boys’ school, a Catholic school, I tried out for football, and I didn’t make it. It was the first time, athletically, that I was knocked down.
The five big mistakes in football are the fumble, the interception, the penalty, the badly called play, the blocked punt – and most of these originate with the quarterback. Find a mistake-proof quarterback and you have this game won.
I have been working really hard to make a career in football since I was 14 years old.
I originally was more into baseball and football, but being in Los Angeles, you just couldn’t help but to fall in love with the game of basketball because they had such a winning tradition.
Tiger had the advantage of high school, college, and a father who knew golf. I was self-taught. Blacks really won’t play golf in great numbers until some of these basketball and football stars buy some golf courses where blacks can play.
There’s been a lot talk about football and safety issues. My big thing is the benefits far outweigh the risks.
There is a version of me people see. I don’t think I play up to it, I think it’s more other people put it out there. People see the football side of me, but I’m a different character away from it.
I had no ambition to be a football coach. I wanted to be a spy for MI5 or MI6.
I take my life and put it on the football field, and I take the football field and put it in my life.
Football is whatever you want to play.
When Bale first started at Tottenham, they were struggling to win whenever he played at left-back, but it is unbelievable how quickly things can change in football.
In football, anything can happen. You can have an injury, and then you won’t play at the highest level anymore. If you don’t have a diploma, what then?
At many a moment on many a day, I am convinced that pro football must be a game for madmen, and I must be one of them.
Ever since I started playing football, I’ve always taken the number 10 shirt.
Football has a thing: You have to decide on an action in a moment, and your head has to be fresh for taking that decision in the moment.
I’ve never needed to play for money. I play because I love football.
Honestly, being a 5’11” quarterback, not too many people think that you can play in the National Football League. And so for me, you know, I knew that my height doesn’t define my skill set, you know? I believed in my talent. I believed in what God gave me. I believed in the knowledge that I have of the game.
Football is my biggest passion in life, and I’ve worked really hard to get here. It’s so important to me, so I can’t sit and watch things not go in the right direction.
I had this urge to play the game of football, because so many people – I shouldn’t say so many, a handful of people – said I couldn’t do it. For me, it was one of those things that I just believe in my talent that the Lord gave me, and I wanted to take advantage of it.
You can’t be Allen Iverson on a football team. And even Iverson got run out of Philadelphia when he was still a spectacular talent because the Sixers got tired of the headache and his bad attitude.
I knew Portuguese football and I knew that Rio Ave was a medium-sized club but I also knew they are organised off the pitch. We felt that we could achieve something special playing in a different way.
I never dreamed about being an actor, because that was out of reach. Coming from a small town that was big in farming, and also big in clothing factories, you don’t dream about being a professional football player or an actor.
Football is an art, like dancing is an art – but only when it’s well done does it become an art.
I threw up before every single football game I played, and I did so up through my NFL career. It was good pressure. It was pressure to be good. It was pressure to be the best. It was pressure to want to win.
There are always going to be some people who are uncomfortable getting any football information from a woman. And honestly, I know that’s supposed to bother me, but it doesn’t, really.
Football is unconditional love.
I was lucky to come from a difficult area. It teaches you not just about football but also life.
A consulting position might work in another profession, but not in pro football. There’s no such thing. They give a guy a parking spot and put his name up as a consultant, and in six months, they erase the name.
English football is very physical, much more so than Spanish football – I felt it in the first match.
To play at Real Madrid, it is not enough to just have football quality. You must be mentally strong.
Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, there is no reason either in football or in poetry why the two should not meet in a man’s life if he has the weight and cares about the words.
I want to be remembered as the football player I was. The private person is nobody’s business.
People go on about my style of play. But I tell you what I do – I go into football clubs, I try to find out what systems suit the players and I try to get the damnedest out of those players. That’s what I’ve done everywhere I’ve been.
I’m just grateful I get to play football every single day of my life. So I’m never really in a bad mood.
