Top 66 Adebayo Akinfenwa Quotes

People may laugh or whatever, but my strength is something that I have to work on. It’s not something that just happens overnight, it takes dedication and hard work and it has a purpose as it helps me every week on the pitch.

Like individuals in all walks of life, footballers want stability and we have families to look after.

To have the support of your team-mates is massive.

I like being the biggest on the pitch, I don’t want to look at the other guys and think his arms are bigger than mine.

I’ve always been big, my brothers are my size, we come from good stock.

As long as I am feeling good I will play football. As long as I am feeling fit, strong and being affective on and off the pitch, I will play the game I love.

Sometimes I think it would be nice to be in a warm office every day. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining because I know how lucky I am to be playing football for a living. The positives by far outweigh the negatives.

Obviously you know match-fixing is out there but you don’t really associate it with the English game.

Let me clear something up: I don’t like KFC. Or McDonald’s.

There was a long period when I was younger where people always talked about my size and I was going ‘but look, I can play, though, I can play’ but you look at it, to have a career, 12-13 years, you’ve got to be more than just a brute.

I’ve been in football a long time now and I’ve seen plenty of managers and players come and go. It is part and parcel of the game.

People said I’m too big to play football.

Boredom does get you into trouble and we footballers have a lot of time on our hands, and sometimes we fill up that time with stuff that isn’t always positive.

I’m human just like everyone.

I’m an eclectic individual when it comes to film. I love my Disney: ‘Aladdin,’ ‘The Lion King.’ Also, ‘Romeo+Juliet,’ the Leonardo DiCaprio version.

Gym sessions will always consist of 40 minutes to one-hour cardio. I try to stay off the treadmill because of the pounding, so it’s the rower or the cross-trainer.

As you go through your career you learn what works for you and what doesn’t and you pick things up with experience.

As you get older, you know what you’re good at and you know what you’re not so good at. Your ego comes out of it, and then you realise you can’t play every game, there’ll be certain games where you won’t be so affected… so you’ve just got to concentrate on what you are.

I enjoy watching England but I won’t rearrange my schedule just to make sure I’m in to see the game.

I know that I don’t look like a footballer but I’ve always enjoyed working out and I’ve always been bigger than most people out there. I come from big stock. If you see my brothers and me together, we look like a wrestling tag team trio.

I do think there is a responsibility for myself as being a senior professional footballer to be able to pass on my experiences to the younger generation.

I’m not a gambler and I never have been.

Playing on Sky Sports doesn’t really make a difference to me.

John Barnes was my idol growing up and he’s the reason I’ve supported Liverpool. I play nothing like him, though!

It used to get my back up because people would only say ‘he does well for his size’ and it’s like, forget the size, I do well because I do well.

I think if you score lots of goals but nobody likes you as a person then it stands for nothing.

You play football to go out there and win – that’s the bottom line.

When you’ve only got two days between games the recovery process is key.

People said: ‘You’re too big to play football,’ but I kept playing and it just happened that people have caught on to me and taken to me. The nicest thing I get from it is that I can be myself and people seem to like it.

Even though I am getting my coaching badges, I am more into mentoring.

During my career I’ve come back to clubs after the summer break to see one of my team-mates not really at it because he’s been denied a move to a bigger club for whatever reason, and you can see in his body language that he doesn’t want to be there and that kind of thing is massively disruptive and negative.

When you hear Beast Mode, you automatically go to my size, but I always say the strongest thing I own is not my chest, my legs, not my arms. It’s my mind. It’s that mindset that says: Look, you’re not always going to succeed but don’t take it as a loss, take it as a lesson. That’s the mindset of Beast Mode.

My arms are probably the same size as John Terry’s legs.

I’ve always liked to keep myself busy so I don’t get sucked in by temptations and that was part of the reason why I set up my BMO brand – to keep me occupied during my career, but also for when I finish football.

I would never lie about another professional.

The time you are happy to sit on the bench, is the time you should retire in my opinion.

Sometimes it’s nice to be a bit different.

When I look back at my career it is nice to know that I’ve been appreciated on and off the pitch because not everyone is.

Sometimes you’re not blessed with the materialistic stuff but you’re blessed with a work ethic.

You see it all the time, in all divisions, that teams raise themselves and apply themselves that little bit more when they play a ‘bigger team.’

If you want to gamble, so be it, but when it gets to the stage where gambling is the only thing you are thinking of and it is affecting your life, that’s when you need to put a hold on it.

I’m not one of those players who always gets to games or watches every game on TV. If a game is on and I’m free, I’ll watch it but I won’t make my schedule around a football match.

My favourite chant is ‘you’re just a fat Eddie Murphy.’ When I heard that I could not stop laughing. I would prefer a ‘muscular Eddie Murphy.’

People have tried to push me into other sports, but it’s always been football.

I’d always been one of the strongest players in the game, but officially in ‘Fifa 14’ I was the strongest in the world. If they say so, I must be. I like that.

Sometimes it is tough and frustrating to sit on the bench.

I think I would have held my own in the NFL.

Of course I know I am not the average footballer. But I’d be lying if I said I set out to be different, I didn’t set out to go against the grain.

To be recognised as the best in the whole world at something is an achievement.

With hard work comes rewards and I want to make youngsters who could have gone left but went right find the right path.

I’m aware that there are a lot of guys playing at amateur level with a build like mine and I say stick at it, use what you’ve got to make an impact on the game.

Don’t try to kid yourself that your game is about pace if it isn’t. If you’re a big guy like me you need to look at how similarly built players use that physical presence to influence a game. Accept that your build may have some limitations – but plenty of plus points too.

I want to be playing competitive first-team football every week and not reserve team football.

Everyone likes to be praised for their work and footballers are no different but the key thing is staying level-headed.

As a big man you may struggle to get much height when jumping for a ball – but by training with your defender team-mates you can develop a technique for making strong challenges in the air, making defenders uncomfortable and work on taking the ball down.

There ain’t nobody going to run me out of nowhere.

As players we have to be careful what we put out there and make sure everything we do is appropriate. And it is not always easy.

Defy the limitations people put on you.

Football players value job security and stability as much anybody else.

A footballer who says they don’t want to start games is in the wrong job.

More than anything I prefer the ball on the floor. I think I play my best football on the floor. There is a delicacy to this big giant.

Look, nobody can begrudge Steven Gerrard doing what he wants to do. He has just been a legend.

My old boss Aidy Boothroyd is a great man and I’ve got no malice or anything toward him.

That’s one reason fans take to me. They like the battle side of it. They look at me and think this guy shouldn’t be on the pitch, he’s just bulldozing his way through.

As a footballer I know what I’m good at and I’ve now embraced it.

My size works against me as well, as some players I would just touch and they would fall over to get a free kick.