Soccer Quotes - Page 39

• Over the last 10-15 years, you've seen soccer finally start to grow at a fast pace, start to get the recognition it deserves, and I think it has to do with all of the people who come to America from foreign countries.

  Claudio Reyna

  Sports, Country, Thinking

  Interview with Jon Robinson, www.ign.com. March 27, 2006.

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• I had a very simple, unremarkable and happy life. And I grew up in a very small town. And so my life was made up of, you know, in the morning going to the river to fetch water - no tap water, and no electricity - and, you know, bathing in the river, and then going to school, and playing soccer afterwards.

  Ishmael Beah

  Morning, School, Happy Life

  "Former Child Soldier Recalls Experiences in Sierra Leone". Interview with Jeffrey Brown, www.pbs.org. April 5, 2007.

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• Unfortunately, at this moment in time, Robbie Keane can't hit a barn door for us.

  Steve Staunton

  Football, Doors, Analysis

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• Professionally, it would be a logical choice, but my personal view is that he is the most insincere man I know in football

  Tony Cascarino

  Football, Men, Views

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• We need to look at our nannying, mollycoddled, politically correct culture in my view, which stops kids from going out and playing competitive sport. I also think we need to look at the shear fatness of the regulations which control people who want to help kids play sport.

  Boris Johnson

  Sports, Football, Kids

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• As long as the human race is able to concern itself with more than mere survival, soccer will have its place.

  Desmond Morris

  Football, Race, Long

  Desmond Morris (1981). “The soccer tribe”, Jonathan Cape

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• Football is the best way to get to know a people and a city.

  Ardal O'Hanlon

  Football, Cities, People

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• Football is not, in my view, a sport: it is somewhere between a business racket and a mental illness. I associate it with all the worst aspects of our society - violence, drunkenness, drugs, racism, exploitation, greed and stupidity; and that's just for starters.

  Simon Heffer

  Sports, Football, Views

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• In a manner akin to the influence of Tiger Woods on the other side of the Atlantic, Thierry Henry has helped kick down a few of the remaining bigoted stereotypes. Through his undisputable class and dignity, Henry has made a deep-seated difference to race relations in this country. Racism will flounder whenever white children grow up with a black man as their hero. That so few comment on Henry's colour is a silent tribute to his impact.

  Pete Gill

  Football, Country, Children

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• I am happy to be a role model for anybody - whether they are black, white, yellow, pink or purple.

  Paul Ince

  Football, Purple, Yellow

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• High national emotions are permissible when a soccer team is playing precisely because they are impermissible at most other times. There aren't, simply, many other places where you can sing your national anthem until you lose your voice without causing a riot. In the context of soccer, flag-waving nationalism - even chauvinistic, anti-foreigner, flag-waving nationalism - is acceptable in Britain.

  Anne Applebaum

  Football, Team, Voice

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• In football, hate can be a beautiful thing; sustaining and nourishing, quite unlike other manifestations of an otherwise destructive emotion.

  Nicky Campbell

  Beautiful, Football, Hate

  "Mugging up on a long lost devotion to the United of old" by Nicky Campbell, www.theguardian.com. December 20, 2006.

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• Nearly everything possible had been done to spoil the game: the heavy financial interest; the absurd transfer and player-selling system; the lack of any birth or residential qualifications; the absurd publicity given to every feature of it by the press; the monstrous partisanships of the crowds.

  J. B. Priestley

  Football, Player, Games

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• It is customary for columnists to complain about the excesses of Premiership footballers, whenever - as happens regularly - there is an incident involving some combination of sex, drugs, drink, violence and the constabulary. But modern footballers have a lot of both money and disposable time, a combination that has proved a recipe for personal disaster throughout history. And these incidents take place generally round night clubs rather than football clubs. The average Premiership player who turned up for work drunk would have a career-expectancy measurable in minutes.

  Matthew Engel

  Football, Sex, Player

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• Avoiding any of the tenets of amateurism, after all, certainly does not make you a good professional. Perhaps it is better to see fearless flair and professional steeliness as two ideas which must always coexist. One half of sport may be about harnessing human talent, but the other half depends on setting it free.

  Edward Smith

  Sports, Football, Ideas

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• All I know of morality I learned from football

  Albert Camus

  Football, Analysis, Morality

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• It is steady, reliable, tough. It never yields to panic. It is never defeated one-sidedly. It achieves everything attainable by character and tenacity.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Football, Character, Yield

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• You know I don't think there will ever be a time when the English player is not respected, and feared, across the world of football. The English footballer is very brave and strong and committed and there is always enough high-class players in his team to cause concern in any opponent. It is a national characteristic.

  Johan Cruijff

  Football, Strong, Team

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• However good an English team is, they will always have an additional advantage. It is that European players know that their English opponents will come at them in the belief they will win, and they can always be guaranteed never to stop fighting. They have a natural aggression that they are born with. If it ever goes, English football will lose its most valuable dimension.

  Johan Cruijff

  Football, Team, Fighting

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• England can end the millenium as it started - as the greatest football nation in the world.

  Kevin Keegan

  Football, World, England

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• I've told him to cut off his ponytail. I think it makes him less aerodynamic.

  Arsene Wenger

  Football, Cutting, Thinking

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• Work on your strong points because they are what made you.

  Arsene Wenger

  Football, Strong, Made

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• I have only been here since 1996 but between 1966 and 1996 England had thirty years without foreign players and didn't win any more competitions in that time.

  Arsene Wenger

  Football, Winning, Player

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• I take pride in the fact that people go home having felt that for 90 minutes today, life is beautiful - and that's it, basically. That's why professional football exists.

  Arsene Wenger

  Beautiful, Football, Home

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• It's a strange atmosphere always over there, it is darker and less glamorous, and you don't feel as high. It is a different kind of test - can you raise your level in a less exciting environment and perhaps still a very difficult one?

  Arsene Wenger

  Football, Atmosphere, Different

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