Top 1200 English Football Quotes & Sayings - Page 19

My father wanted me to play pro football, and he didn't like the fact that I'd left school. And he said, "It takes a man to play football. And any fool can go up on the stage and make an ass of himself.

I don't follow anything blindly. I have to know the entire thing, if I have to get in to it. It might sound funny to you, but it's like using English language. I use an English word only when I know its meaning and understand its connotation. You won't hear me say, 'What's up, dude' or anything like that just for the heck of it.

Every football coach worries about every football game.

I grew up in a bookless house - my parents didn't read poetry, so if I hadn't had the chance to experience it at school I'd never have experienced it. But I loved English, and I was very lucky in that I had inspirational English teachers, Miss Scriven and Mr. Walker, and they liked us to learn poems by heart, which I found I loved doing.

The short English miles are delightful for walking. You are always pleased to find, every now and then, in how short a time you have walked a mile, though, no doubt, a mile is everywhere a mile, I walk but a moderate pace, and can accomplish four English miles in an hour.

It's not like I played my first football match in England. For me, football is pretty much the same everywhere; the ball is round, but maybe tactically, things are different than at other clubs I've played for.

Playing football and being a tight end scoring points, it's awesome to see so many members throughout the United States join to play fantasy football, to expand the sport, to make the game more interesting while you're watching.

No one's going to remember you after football. No one cares about you after football.

Poor Knight! he really had two periods, the firsta dull man writing broken English, the seconda broken man writing dull English.

Talk English to me, Tommy. Parlez francais avec moi, Nicole. But the meanings are different-- in French you can be heroic and gallant with dignity, and you know it. But in English you can't be heroic and gallant without being a little absurd, and you know that too. That gives me an advantage.

We definitely have a lot of talent in India for football. It is great to see football's growing popularity and I really hope a larger number of corporate companies invest in the game so that one day we have a great team to boast about.

In England, football is a religion. In France, football is not a religion. It's wine and food.

Sign language is my first language. English and Spanish are my second languages. I learned Spanish from my grandparents, sign language from my parents, and English from television.

I grew up playing football since the day I could walk; some of my greatest memories of childhood are playing touch football in all kinds of weather with my best friends. That's a part of the American experience that no corporation can destroy.

We are always giving foreign names to very native things. If there is a thing that reeks of the glorious tradition of the old English tavern, it is toasted cheese. But for some wild reason we call it Welsh rarebit. I believe that what we call Irish stew might more properly be called English stew, and that it is not particularly familiar in Ireland.

When I came here, I couldn't speak a word of English, but my sex life was perfect. Now my English is perfect but my sex life is rubbish

You never know what little idea or joke, what flame flickering really quickly, will become a song. That first idea, it can come any time. If it's in Spanish, you go on in Spanish. If it's in French, French. If it's in English, English. Or Portuguese. I'll try to do my best. I like Italian, though I don't speak it much.

Football used to be my god but no longer is. I still love it, I'm still aggressive, I still want to be very successful at it, I want to win a lot of football games. And my job is to be the best football player in the world, because it affords me a life; it pays, it's my job, and so it hasn't dulled my senses for the game or the love or the great excitement I get from the game. It's just that I'm very much at peace with myself because of my faith.

I think I needed to hit the reset button and figure out how I want to play football. I want to play football at a smooth, calm level.

People like to focus on a narrow stereotype, like if we didn't have football then we wouldn't have made it, ... The reality is, there are a lot of football players like me who came out of the middle class.

We have demonstrated that we are the best, I'm also happy because everyone seems to enjoy our football, whether or not they are Barca fans. All over the world, I've heard people saying that they have been enchanted by us. This type of football deserves to be rewarded with titles.

Football is about having the best offensive play possible. I always like to play offensive football, and nobody will convince me otherwise.

When I was playing in the Ajax youth teams - when I was, say, 14, 15 - you started to get all those international youth tournaments. All those English teams came. Well, the English were much further than we were.

Brazilian football has always been very much admired in Japan and, of course, after my participation and so many other Brazilians, it was like they created a new style of play in homage to Brazilian football.

Because it was my first time acting in English, everyone on set was difficult to understand. It was a mix of Scottish, Irish, British and American English. To understand a Scottish accent or an Irish accent was so hard.

I think college football is a reflection of Middle America. You go into a college football town, and you will find three generations of a family sitting together. It's a rallying point for the university, the community, and the families.

I was a football player. I liked it a lot...unfortunately that's where I first wrecked my knees. Playing high school football, getting cut across the knees. They haven't healed since. Back then they didn't have the surgery techniques that they have now.

When I decided I wanted to go to drama school, I realized that a lot of the actors whose careers I really admire and whose work I really admire were English and English trained. I felt there was a real vocational feel to work in the U.K.

I think the part that people get confused is that when you come in National Football League at a young age, they tell you to try to look for other things to do, and be ready for everything else in your life just in case. But as soon as you have a bunch of success, they think that's the only thing you can do, that you can only be a football player. I think God has gifted me with so many other things other than just football, and that's what I want to bring to the world.

Football is hope. To be a better human being but also hope one day, one day, to leave your country to be somewhere, let's say admired, as a football star.

This is football from the 19th century. It's very difficult to play a football match when only one team wants to play. A football match is about two teams playing. I told Big Sam, they need points. To come here the way they did, is that acceptable? Maybe it is, they need points. The only thing I could bring more was Black & Decker - a Black & Decker to destroy the West Ham wall.

It's a complicated process being so bilingual. Sometimes it's a mere word or sentence that comes to me, if I'm writing the book in English, in French. It's not always easy to deal with. Sometimes even during an interview somebody can ask me a question in English that I want to answer in French and vice versa - that's the story of my life!

If you think I'm a loser, that I'm a bust, that's fine, but you don't know me. I don't have a problem with people thinking I was a bad football player. I wasn't a particularly good pro football player. But I was a great college player, and that's something.

Being born white in South Africa or anywhere in the empire and Commonwealth automatically conferred this special status. You had no problem finding a place to live, a job, trade union membership, access to social services. Being white, speaking English, you were accepted as English, entitled to all the rights of citizenship.

Basically, I played football to share with others, to excel together, to achieve a goal. After, we all have our ego, our pride and our personality. But all alone, in football, it does not work.

My favorite sport, frankly, is college football. I'm a college football junkie, even though I'm associated with golf and like golf and have played it all my life.

Football and me have never got on. My instinct and love for the harder end of contact had always meant I was perhaps a little too heavy-handed for football. Somehow it left me feeling unfulfilled.

You train far more in France than in England. Here, we still see football as a game. Football is a job. There is still the mentality where training is at 11, you come in at 10:30, and when it is finished, you leave straight away.

And in spite of everything, Ireland remains the brain of the Kingdom. The English, judiciously practical and ponderous, furnish the over-stuffed stomach of humanity with a perfect gadget--the water closet. The Irish, condemned to express themselves in a language not their own, have stamped on it the mark of their own genius and compete for glory with the civilized nations. This is then called English literature.

Literature belongs first and foremost to the language in which it is being written. The very same book, even if it is translated very accurately, let's say from Hebrew into English or from English into Hebrew, becomes a different book because language is a musical instrument.

For me, going out on loan and playing men's football was crucial, and I was getting bored of playing Under-23 football because I wasn't getting tested.

Football can change really quickly; you really are king for a day. Once you get caught up with things and think you've arrived... you've never arrived in football.

Football is not played in shorts and it's not fair to the big guys. So many guys look bad in shorts and then they put the pads on and they're football players.

St James' Park was always, in the course of my career, a great place to play football, for the wildness of the crowd and the no-holds-barred football that both my team, Manchester United, and Newcastle would play.

I always wanted to become a good role model for kids as a professional football player. Unfortunately, I didn't attain that through football, but I was smart enough to realize that professional wrestling provided another opportunity for that.

For me, I want to put football in the best possible way: where the girls play professionally, get the sponsorships they deserve, and set themselves up after football so that they're not struggling and asking themselves what they're going to do.

English actors feel vaguely apologetic for being there at all. American actors know that the most important thing is to get one take out of fifty that is great, and they'll go to any length to get it. The English are used to working within consistently small, low-budget things and think, I mustn't waste their time.

You kind of have to be secretive about what you're doing post-football because if you're really outward and everyone knows about it while you're playing football then the rap on you is, 'Oh, you don't care about the game.'

Football is strange like that. People become a big part of your life and then they lose a job and you might never see them for the rest of your lives. It's the worst thing about football, really.

Football is business. It's all about being quick, quick, quick - nobody has any patience nowadays. But then again, that is how things are in normal life, away from football.

In any football I have played in - and I have played in League One and as an international at the World Cup - the bare minimum is running around and showing the desire for the shirt. Then, the higher you go up the leagues, your football takes control of that.

It was very lucky for me as a writer that I studied the physical sciences rather than English. I wrote for my own amusement. There was no kindly English professor to tell me for my own good how awful my writing really was. And there was no professor with the power to order me what to read, either.

My mom said to me: 'Sonny, you need to study English.' And I replied to her: 'Mom, I do not need it. I'm going to be horse-boy, would I speak English with horses?' Mom said: 'Darling, you need to.' But I did not listen to my mother.

I love football, but I also want to give back. I want to take care of kids and single moms, so it's not only about playing football. I want my life to matter in that way.

I'm not claiming that football is the nation's salvation in this area, but it's one of them, one little thing that apparently has captured the imagination of a large sector of our society. But when football can't be a relatively pure outlet, a fun thing, then it hurts itself.

We've conflated football games with patriotic zeal. I don't think attending a football game is any more patriotic than walking down the street to my local library. It's just another activity we all enjoy.

There are several differences between a footballl game and a revolution. For one thing, a football game usually lasts longer and the participants wear uniforms. Also there are more injuries at a football game.

My dad was a football player - a soccer player - for Manchester United, and I loved playing football, but I also happened to be the guy in class who was pretty good at sight reading. My teacher gave me scripts, and I was very comfortable.

I was terrible in English. I couldn't stand the subject. It seemed to me ridiculous to worry about whether you spelled something wrong or not, because English spelling is just a human convention--it has nothing to do with anything real, anything from nature. Any word can be spelled just as well a different way.

A British imperium enabled Scots to feel themselves peers of the Ebglish in a way still denied them in an island kingdom. The language bears that out very clearly. The English and the foreign are still all too inclined to refer to the island of Great Britain as 'England'. But at no time have they ever customarily referred to an English empire.