Top 60 Gianluca Vialli Quotes

Having someone breathing on your neck can be good for you.

The truth is, Chelsea would like a manager who is more of a club man.

Sometimes when Premiership referees drop down a division they think they can have an easy ride.

If other teams want to score they must know they have to get past all 11 players. It’s a simple philosophy.

I am not a warrior.

I’m looking forward to staying on the bench as a manager. I’m not going to push myself into the team or play for the sake of it.

Obviously, I love playing football and I have kept fit.

I gave up at the right time, scoring a goal against Derby. I didn’t hear anybody shouting, ‘Please stop, you are getting too old.’ That’s a success. And I don’t want to come back for the sake of it.

It’s an indescribable moment when you lift the cup and you scream with your supporters.

It’s difficult to be both a good player and a good manager.

I never want to make the people dearest to me suffer: my parents, my brothers and my sister, my wife Cathryn, our children Olivia and Sofia.

As a player I had the opportunity twice a week to play football in front of thousands of people and I could make them happy by just scoring a goal.

I think I’ve got my muscles back. I’ve been working out every other day with my wife.

You realize just by writing down everything you own that it’s just materialistic stuff. We are much more than that.

I’m mentally drained even when I’m just sitting on the bench and not playing.

I’m lucky because my life has been very exciting.

Success comes from the culture you create in your organization.

I knew that was going to be the last chance to play in the Champions League final – I was desperate to win, I put a lot of pressure on myself. Finally I got hold of that cup – it was the defining moment of my career. I got really emotional and nearly fainted on the pitch.

I’m here with all my faults and my many fears, but also with the desire to do something important.

We were all in love with the club. We went to bed with Sampdoria pajamas on, while going to the Bogliasco training ground in the morning was always a joy: the blue of the sea on one side, the green of the hills on the other. Wonderful.

If I played again it would be like Maradona or Platini playing again!

Cancer is an unwanted travel companion, but I can’t help it.

Italian football has a lot of appeal, even though it must improve.

Clubs have sponsors. They are just there for commercial reasons but the club calls them partners. Then you have the fans. The fans are emotionally involved, they are loyal, and the clubs call them customers. I think fans owning a share of the club would mean the owners know what ‘customers’ really think and feel.

When you meet people you don’t want them to look at you and say ‘poor you.’ I just wanted to be treated like a normal person.

It’s very important for me to play in London. It’s a wonderful city.

I always felt I didn’t want to fight cancer, because it would be too big and powerful an enemy.

The defenders can be clever and use everything within the laws of the game to stop the strikers scoring goals and, while some pulling is allowed, you need to be clever.

I tried to start looking at things differently; I tried to surround myself with positive energy. Meditation helped, exercising, writing, reading and learning new things.

I’ve always been perceived as a tough guy.

Italian football lost credibility because of the match-fixing scandals – the best footballers didn’t want to come.

At Chelsea, even though I achieved a lot, they did not have great confidence in me.

I have my family. I’ve got the love of my wife, my daughters and friends, people who like me, think about me and send me prayers and positive energy.

You need to be unbelievably fit for Gaelic football.

In England you probably have too many cups with the Champions League as it is now. You have the FA Cup and another cup; what’s the point in that? Probably one cup should be more than enough.

You need to be humble, play with pride but also aggression.

I still get upset if the pasta is not cooked how I like it, but I’ve learned to put things into context.

Chelsea are like a beautiful wife who married a richer man after leaving me.

I wasn’t particularly good at showing my emotions and I kept things inside. It’s not good. Now I realize that whenever I want to cry, I cry.

The Champions League is worth more and allows you to write a page in football’s history.

It’s because of football that I bought my first car, I bought my first house and I probably had sex for the first time… actually, that was definitely because of football.

If I was a wealthy foreigner I wouldn’t want to invest in Italy because there are so many uncertainties, all the scandals related to corruption and match-fixing.

I think England are a very exciting side because they have got so many young, talented, creative players, playing up front.

Celebrations have now become too selfish and I don’t like it. When I used to score I was happy to celebrate with my team-mates. Now when players score it is all about them.

Football is something great, but it is like making love: if you do it every minute you get bored, so you have to take your time and do it now and again.

A sore ankle, a swollen knee or a bruise makes you feel alive.

I really enjoyed coaching Chelsea. It was a different atmosphere with less money and a more familiar environment.

One of the important things, which I wrote on yellow post-it notes and stuck on the wall during therapy, was that we are the product of our own thoughts.

The Italian players, they eat pressure for breakfast, so they grow up with a lot of pressure and they know how to handle it.

I have been thinking quite a lot about retiring… it is getting very difficult to be both a player and a manager.

If you want to sell a service, you have to be the first to believe that the service has value.

Lifting the Champions League trophy would be something Juventus deserve.

I don’t like thinking ‘Why me, why me, why me?’ when I was diagnosed with cancer because that would be hypocritical. I didn’t say ‘Why me?’ when I was one in a thousand who made it as a professional footballer.

I am a man who is on a journey and cancer has joined me on that journey… my goal is to keep walking, keep moving until he’s had enough and leaves me alone.

Pressure is a combination of expectations, scrutiny and consequences. If the consequences are grave, then you feel more pressure and if you feel more pressure you learn how to cope with that.

Management is about improving your relationship with the players and the journalists, about learning to read a game better so that you can make changes.

They say the Premier League is best league in the world. Or Roy Keane says we are brainwashed into believing it. He might be right. But I can definitely say it’s the most entertaining league.

In Italy, you lose a game, you can’t walk out of the stadium without having a police escort. You lose a game in England and you get out and, as long as you’ve done your best, you are asked to sign autographs and you see the kids and you see everybody and nothing happens.

Italian football is a laughing stock.

You need pressure… I think in England players are not trained to deal with pressure.