Teams in the past have been slow starters yet gone on to win the World Cup.
Everyone dreams of winning a European Cup final, and I was lucky to do it at just 19.
When I came down south, I went to one of the early Wigan Challenge Cup victories at Wembley, and I was totally hooked from then.
Buffon is fearless and has no obvious weaknesses. He has been outstanding for Juventus and was one of Italy’s most important players at the 2006 World Cup finals in Germany, where they were victorious, but what is amazing is that he has been playing like that for years. He never seems to make a mistake.
If I can push myself up to the 2018 World Cup, then I’ll go on. After that, I’ll close the door and stop playing football.
The fact is, an America’s Cup team is more than a sailing team. It’s anywhere from sort of 80 to upward of 100 people; of designers, engineers, boat builders, an incredible group of people, and there are a lot of nationalities in New Zealand’s team.
I have the belief that all the qualified teams can create surprises at the World Cup and not just the traditional top favourites.
Comedy is harder, because if there’s no laughs, it’s pretty bad. But drama, if there’s no reaction, you can say, ‘Well, it’s not their cup of tea. Maybe it’s too heavy for the audience.’
It was never important for a wedding to be about anything other than me and my partner. A big celebration was never my cup of tea.
Every player would love to play a tournament like the World Cup at home.
I had my chance in the World Cup Final and, wow, it was the opportunity I needed to show the whole world what I was capable of.
This is the whole reason you play: to win your country a World Cup!
That first game was so hyped up, and it was obviously my first experience of a crowd in a World Cup. When I first walked out and heard the national anthem, it was just an unreal experience. I didn’t expect a crowd like that.
You know the marathon in my country is just exceptional. It’s like soccer in England. If England win the world cup and Ethiopia win the marathon – it’s the same.
Once the World Cup preparations begin there will hardly be an opportunity to do so, since we’ll have to put all our energy into the team. We coaches have a list of priorities and dealing with the media isn’t in the top five.
The dream of every footballer and why we train and work is to reach the top, and a World Cup is the top.
I’ve never cooked. I can’t do much more in the kitchen than make a cup of tea and some toast.
The World Cup tournament overall and, naturally, the new stadiums at its heart, are the ideal platform to portray Germany as a positive and exceptional location, and above all of course, as a highly capable economic location.
There’s nothing quite like a World Cup.
I have the Sony Reader; I have the Kindle as well. I don’t really use either of them, to be honest. I’d rather sit down with a cup of coffee and a newspaper than read all my digital books.
I want to win games, want to win championships. I want to go to the World Cup. I want to win a World Cup. I want to play in Champions League. I want to have fun throughout all of that, and I want my family to be a part of that through the entire path.
The first time we played in Berlin, there was this guy who went into the show expecting Steve Perry. He was so frustrated, he threw this paper cup filled with beer on me.
How powerful it is to surprise a total stranger with a really nice act: buy them a cup of coffee, pay their toll. It makes their day; it makes your day.
I have reasons to believe that I could win the World Cup, but I take it one race at a time.
Natalie’s estate is handled by Global Icons, and they police the world so her picture isn’t on a T-shirt or coffee cup unless we approve of it.
I don’t have very many little fetishes, but the one I do have is that I like a particular mug to drink out of. It’s just a small china cup, and I get very upset if my husband moves it.
To score in the World Cup final is not a small story, of course. Every footballer dreams of it: first to become a world champion and then, even better, to score in the final. This happened to me, and I’m glad.
If I am a cup maker, I’m interested in making the best cup I possibly can. My effort goes into that cup, not what people think about it.
Right through to the end of the last World Cup game, I still couldn’t bear the thought of not being perfect or letting people down.
I think there’s no reason the Davis Cup couldn’t be as powerful and popular and profitable as any of the four majors are today, given some changes.
The World Cup is a very important way to measure the good players, and the great ones. It is a test of a great player.
As a kid, I was always pretending to score the goal in the FA Cup final, and I managed to live my dream.
I’d love to feature for the Barbarians. I’d love to win a Champions Cup, and I’d love to get to another World Cup and make a fist of it: get to a World Cup final at least and see what could have been, particularly after 2011 when Wales reached the semi-finals.
I think that the World Cup is a big factor for this increased interest. I don’t believe all of this is a result of just myself but also because of the others who are playing abroad.
The biggest memory I have is the 1984 European Cup final against Roma and my ‘spaghetti legs’ routine during the penalty shoot-out that won us the trophy. People said I was being disrespectful to their players, but I was just testing their concentration under pressure. I guess they failed that test.
When you have lived through something as magical as the 2014 World Cup final, you want to relive that experience as many times as possible.
I usually wake up around 9, and the first thing I do is make myself a cup of tea. I drink a lot of tea – green tea, white tea, and all kinds of herbal teas.
I came back from the World Cup and then started playing for Mumbai again. My game was the same because even in New Zealand, we played the One-day format.
I was born in 1970. In 2002, I became a world champion. I was captain. I had the honor of receiving the World Cup Trophy from no less than whom? Pele! Man! If I say any more I’ll cry. It’s really emotional!
I went from being a player who had received just a few yellow cards in his career to a red card in a World Cup. It was a devastating moment for me. It was my first game in the World Cup, so I was excited and thankful for the opportunity. Being sent off was a big blow.
To be captain and win a lot at Juventus, to play for 20 years, to play in the World Cup, European Cup, I think I had a good career, no?
This will help us next year with the World Cup. I can imagine a lot of visitors from abroad will be here and asking what happened between 1933 and 1945. A lot of that will come up. I think this will make an important contribution to those discussions.
It was very painful to be so close to a World Cup final.
I spent the afternoon of Sunday 9 July, 2006 in Berlin sleeping and playing the PlayStation. In the evening, I went out and won the World Cup.
Sweating the small stuff is important in boxing and life. On a movie, we have production assistants who’re 18 and 19 years old. If someone asks you for a cup of coffee, and you bring them a cup of coffee that’s cold, I make a big deal of that. I make a really, really big deal of that. You have to pay attention to details.
I keep two sentimental mementos on my desk to remind me of two favorite men. There is an inkwell that my Uncle Seymour made, a brass grotesque he mounted on a marble base. And my grandfather’s shaving cup is there, used to store pencils and pens.
Nobody is offered a World Cup.
If you desire to drain to the dregs the fullest cup of scorn and hatred that a fellow human being can pour out for you, let a young mother hear you call dear baby ‘it.’
It’s true that if it’s always going to be that if you win the World Cup or European Championship, you’re a success, and if you don’t, you’re a failure, then you’re bedding yourself for a lack of success because there aren’t many coaches who have won those things, and there are thousands who haven’t.
There are so many different factors – luck, being in good shape when it matters, the draw. For these reasons, it’s hard to win a European Cup.
Winning the World Cup is something that will always be inside your mind and inside your body.
Winning the World Cup was very special because it meant so much to so many. One thing about our country that is constant is cricket. The smile it brought to people’s faces was the thing I shall always remember. It reminded me, reminded all of us, of our importance to the lives of the Indian people less lucky than we are.
Here in Denver, we want to thank Jeremy Jacobs for the way he runs his business. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have gotten Ray Bourque and won a Stanley Cup.
It wasn’t until 1999 when my idols Mia Hamm and Kristine Lilly took home the women’s World Cup trophy at the Rose Bowl in front of 40 million TV viewers that I remember thinking how rare it was to see women play sports on TV.
The gaffer Gareth Southgate knows I can play with my feet, but he knows the capability I have in goal as well. He has put the faith in me, and I had to repay him in the World Cup, and I think I did.
Just in a matter of eight months to win the U-19 World Cup as captain and then make the Test team is quite unreal.
