Top 273 Footballers Quotes & Sayings - Page 4

And I don't really like golf. I know a lot of English footballers play, but I know that if I go with the club to play, sooner or later I will end up trying to smash the ball with my foot.

My role models were Kevin Phillips and David Beckham, and, for me, now girls can look up to female footballers and want to aspire to be them and try to follow in their footsteps and even be better than us.

I'm a street footballer and you still get street footballers from Africa, South Africa and really poor parts of Europe.

I think, just as footballers play better at home, maybe film-makers, too, create better at home, even though the rules of football are the same wherever you go.

This is what footballers are used to. You're used to playing matches throughout the Christmas period so for us it doesn't feel weird. We're working on Christmas Day and we've always done it.

I think obviously the media need to help promote the game and make it bigger so the younger girls have women role models to look up to and try and aspire to instead of just male footballers.

The game's my life and I'm so passionate about it. When you see your life so intertwined with football it can make things very difficult. You might go and watch a film and start imagining footballers running across the screen, you know?

Actors, movie stars, rock stars, I can meet them with no worries - but with footballers I go weak at the knees. All of them.

A lack of street footballers dulls the imagination, dulls that natural thinking outside the box. You need that on the street when you're 9 and have to beat a 14-year-old on the dribble. Or if you get knocked out and have to sit on the side and come on.

I have kids, so I can understand the image that footballers have. They are fans of some players; I see in their eyes. They admire and try to imitate their gestures, their words, their celebrations. They love Ronaldo and Messi. Since Euro 2016, though, they have no right to pronounce the name of Ronaldo!

Ever since Pele's extraordinary talents blessed the world of football, black footballers have been accepted in the pantheon of the greats. But to achieve commercial recognition is somewhat different: it requires a form of adulation that also spells identification and role model.

Those of us who have feeling, who are sensitive, who can be affected, need a good shield. Footballers are very young and they're exposed. Even at under-15s, players have Twitter and I'm sure they're already getting insults... it's ugly, it sullies society and football.

In England, footballers are respected more, the game is more noble, there's less cheating. Every Spaniard who goes loves it - and comes back a better player. If I had ever left it would have been to England.

As footballers, we do get lazy sometimes and take the ball with our preferred foot to control it, but that split second of controlling it with your left foot and playing with your right can make all the difference in creating a chance or scoring a goal.

Players know that they can trust me which is really important. They know that I had the ability to adapt to change, and they have seen that many times over the years. I think these are important parts of being in control of footballers.

There are a lot of football clubs that are fantastic football clubs but how they treat footballers is another story.

In England, footballers are respected more, the game is more noble, there's less cheating. Every Spaniard who goes loves it - and comes back a better player. If I had ever left, it would have been to England.

One of our problems is the culture of Brazil which focuses on men's football. Of course we would like to change that. Maybe one day we will have a strong competitive league instead of our women footballers always having to play abroad.

In my years at United, I witnessed some signings who, over their careers, transformed the fortunes of the team. From Eric Cantona, when I was an apprentice, to Dwight Yorke, Ruud van Nistelrooy, and Wayne Rooney. These were great footballers who became great United players.

We are footballers, so if you've got to play with someone, you've got to play with them. What happens off the pitch, well, you can't get on with everyone you work with.

When I first started playing I was earning 27.50 a week, and Id offer to clean the senior footballers cars for a couple of quid. Id sweep the stands in the off-season and even paint the changing rooms.

We are getting to the point where, like the men's game, playing football is not only a legitimate career but enables you to live really well and can perhaps even set you up for life. It will allow little girls to tell their mums and dads they want to be professional footballers and not have their dreams dismissed so easily.

English footballers are honest - they will run for 90-odd minutes - but that is not always what you need. Sometimes you need to rein back a bit and try and control the game with your passing.

I'm very happy to play at the World Cup, and that is a message to all footballers and others around the world, that you should believe in your dreams and fight to make them come true.

If Im out and Im around loads of very high-profile footballers, fans always come up to me. I think they just feel comfortable coming over.

These days, you can watch many different sports; you are saturated with it 24 hours a day. And young boys all want to be footballers because you don't even need to be that good, and you can still earn £100,000 a week.

We as footballers, like with Sancho, have a lot of power to reach other people, to be role models and to say something. What we say to people outside gives us a big chance to make a statement.

There are people who enjoy the life in England but don't pay a penny in tax, whereas my footballers pay more than half their income in tax.

If you look at the footballers, you look at our celebrity culture, we seem to be saying, 'This is the way you want to be'. We seem to be a society that celebrates all the wrong people.

Life coaching, the mental and physical well-being of footballers, is going to be really important. I don't mean necessarily in a deep psychological way. But they're surrounded by a lot of people. Important people, seemingly. Not always. But important in their worlds. They're mini companies.

There is a history of footballers in my family; my granddad played for Notts County and my dad played at county level.

I didn't have one single hero. Many footballers I looked up to and said, 'Wow, I want to be like them,' but be like them not just as a person but also for their skills.

I've seen a life many, many footballers had never seen.

I remember when I was retiring I said to my kids 'I promise you I'll never put on weight' because people always think footballers retire and eat and drink and put on loads of weight.

Acting has never been a thing that me and my dad have talked about. It's like footballers: when they get together, I bet the last thing they talk about is football.

Before we are footballers or fans, we are ordinary members of society. We are doctors, lawyers, milkmen, postmen, unemployed people, students... So why are they called racist football fans? Are they just racist for the 90 minutes of a match, when the other six days a week they're not?

There are some who when they play football they carry the ball ta-ta-ta, but they are jugglers not footballers. The less you have the ball at your feet the better.

People usually think that it is the coach who has to raise the spirits of his players; that it is the coach who has to convince his footballers; that it is his job to take the lead all the time. But that's not always the case.

We bought good footballers. But many haven't got it, that football is a running and fighting sport. Against Bayern every team outdoes itself. And we do too little to counter that... We need a couple of attack dogs. Sometimes I sit on the bench and think, 'Man, is this a friendly match?'

People with a lot of money aren't in the business of throwing it away, and those paying footballers' wages, organising parking spaces for dead sharks, and even, dare I say it, buying iPads, are doing it because, for them, it's worth the money.

As a player, you want to win every game. That's what footballers do: they want to play, and they want to win.

I am not dealing with footballers, I am dealing with people. They have fears and worry about failing and making fools of themselves in front of 80,000 people. I have to make them see that without each other they are nothing.

In England, especially, mentally if you're not strong it can eat you up. There's the media, all the negativity surrounding footballers. If you're not mentally strong, it can eat you.

A lot of youngsters want to be footballers and a lot dont make it. It is very difficult but if your education is good and you work hard and do everything the best way, then why not?

When you're out there together on the pitch, you're fighting for each other. It's amazing, overwhelming and you either sink or swim in that atmosphere. It's what makes professional footballers what they are. You can't replicate that in any other job.

Footballers, managers, pundits and fans make up possibly the biggest tribe of them all, especially in this country. Whatever is said by pundits is echoed across sofas and in pubs all over the nation.

In Brazil, we think we can help by using our image, the fact that we are very well known, to help others. I think lots of footballers want to do something, but many don't know how.

Where the costs of entry are minimal, there is a wide avenue of opportunity for those with little or nothing, which is why football is just about the most democratic sport of all: African and Brazilian footballers compete on a level playing field with their rich white European counterparts.

We can work together to produce better footballers for both FK Sarajevo and maybe Cardiff City and maybe even to play for other clubs. We hope this will be well received by everybody and enhance good relations between Malaysia and Bosnia.

It's the life of the manager: when you make a decision, and the team doesn't win, the pressure comes. But that's part of the life of a manager and footballers as well.

I don't know if my perspective is different because my dad played but I've always admired footballers: second division players, second division B players.

There are hundreds and hundreds of women who are married to footballers, and we get to see a very small handful of them. They are all different individuals, and they choose the way they want to live their life or look, and I don't think it is really fair on anyone else to judge.

There are a lot of distractions in London, which is the downside to things, for a lot of young footballers as well, and my aim is to beat that. I don't want to get distracted by anything, my aim is to concentrate on football and do the best I can.

For most footballers, they just have to give their all for 90 minutes two times a week, and apart from a few training sessions spend the rest of the time resting. They only train intensively for six weeks before the new season.

I hope Stoke stay up this season, and stay up for long enough so that they can get enough money and buy some footballers.

Footballers' 'lack of loyalty,' for instance, is not an indication of players' moral delinquency. Instead, the capacity to move on quickly without forming lasting attachments is a skill that the contemporary capitalist world inculcates and relies upon.

Sometimes there is a disconnect between footballers and supporters, because there are highly-paid people here and supporters over there, and nothing in between.

The crazy thing about my story is that I only came to Leicester City because Leeds didn't want me. A lot of footballers say that, and it's almost a cliche. But the chairman literally told me that they didn't want me.

The trouble for today's footballers is they have too many distractions. We used to get our old players coming to watch training with football magazines in their hands. Now, more often than not, they are checking the share prices.

It's a different world now and as we see with footballers and everybody else, and the fall from grace of any sportsman, it's a difficult balancing act now of going out and being nice to the general public and being very wary.