A Quote by Michael Ballack
The first league game always feels different from the pre-season friendlies.
Related Quotes
I experienced the heat when I was playing for Madrid. If we went to places like Sevilla early on in the season it was unbearable. Usually you can feel it on pre-season tours in places like Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Jakarta. The humidity levels are unreal, but this is different, the first game of the World Cup.
The mind tells you that you should use the Europa League as your pre-season but you don't really because the players aren't silly, they know it's a real game.
My very first NBA game was against the Los Angeles Lakers; it was a pre-season game against Magic Johnson.
I cried after the game when we won the league - it was hugely special to me. The first season we came second and got to the Champions League semifinal, and I knew I needed to come back and win with Chelsea.
It's a frustrating game because the situations so drastically change at different times over the course of the week, the game, the season. It feels like brain surgery at times.
When I was 6 years old I went to my first A's game at the Coliseum. It was the 1982 season and the A's went on to finish fifth in the American League West that year.
If my career was a basketball season, I'm in the pre-season still. I'm not blowing everybody out by 40 - there's so much work to be done, and there's no time to really sit and look back and be proud of what I've done yet, because it's the pre-season still.
You try to say every week that you're facing a faceless opponent. No matter who it is, you want to have the same mindset, no matter what type of game it is - first game of the season, last game of the season.
The first time I retired, only Sir Alex Ferguson and I knew that the last league game of the 2010-11 season against Blackpool was to be my final game at Old Trafford. I was a little bit sad, but I am not one for tears. The end of a career comes to us all, and there is not a lot you can do about that.
During the first season of European football at Hoffenheim after we lost the Champions League knockout game to Liverpool, I changed a lot of players between Bundesliga matches and the Europa League for fresh legs. I learnt that we needed more stability. You need to keep five or six of the same places to give you structure, to be your spine.
Tottenham set a points and victories record in my first season, missed out on the Champions League by one point and had a great run in the Europa League. In the second season, at the time I left we had more points than in the previous campaign.
The first Premier League season is always tough for anyone.
What puts you in a different level is if you win the Premier League, and you're capable of challenging every season for the Premier League, and if you play Champions League, and you really believe, and you're a real contender one day to win the Champions League. That's my objective in Tottenham.
The first game of the year is always an in-season adjustment game.
When I was a kid, I used to play a game called 'Grand Prix Two.' Interlagos was always the first race of the season on that, and I never really got much past the second race. I would always restart the season, so I always seemed to be doing Interlagos - it was a real pain!
We played 63 games in the treble-winning season of 1999, and I cannot remember feeling tired once. We won the league title with the last game of the season, and along the way, we knew that in any game we could miss out on this chance of a lifetime to win all three. We had 22 players who were ready to be called on at any moment.
Related Authors
Allen Iverson Quotes
American
Athlete
Andy Murray Quotes
Scottish
Athlete
CM Punk Quotes
American
Athlete
Conor McGregor Quotes
Irish
Athlete
Georges St-Pierre Quotes
Canadian
Athlete
Jack LaLanne Quotes
American
Athlete
Jillian Michaels Quotes
American
Athlete
Jon Jones Quotes
American
Athlete
Kenny Smith Quotes
American
Athlete
Kevin Durant Quotes
American
Athlete
Rafael Nadal Quotes
Spanish
Athlete
Ronda Rousey Quotes
American
Athlete
Scottie Pippen Quotes
American
Athlete
Shaquille O'Neal Quotes
American
Athlete
Stephen Curry Quotes
American
Athlete
Usain Bolt Quotes
Jamaican
Athlete