Quotes About Football

For what my generation did and went through and so forth, and what these glamour boys earn for what little they play, it's a joke. Is it football? Are you guys football players? Is that what they call football? It's not iron-man football, where you stay on the field for 60 minutes. Everybody! We were iron men. Not a bunch of pussyfoots.

The one great thing about football is that whatever happens it will manifest itself on the pitch. If it's right, you'll see it on the pitch, if it's wrong, it will be on the pitch. In business you can get fellas who are doing crooked deals and nobody knows anything about it. There is an ultimate honesty about football. Politics is part of the lying game, I wouldn't trust any of them. In football you can hide for a while, but ultimately the truth comes out. I always loved that.

I intend to give my best, to improve things and to create the football team in relation to my image and my football philosophy. I'm not a defender of old or new football managers. I believe in good ones and bad ones, those that achieve success and those that don't. Please don't call me arrogant, but I'm European champion and I think I'm a special one.

I wish you guys would just say, 'Michael Sam, how's the football going? How's training going?' But it is what it is. And I just wish you guys would see me as Michael Sam the football player instead of Michael Sam the gay football player.

To me, attacking football happens when Makelele gets the ball and passes it to the central defender who passes it to the right-back who comes forward and judges the situation. If he can do something he passes forward or runs with the ball, if not he gives it back to Makelele who builds the attack again. That is attacking football. In England attacking football is giving the ball to Makelele and having him hit it forward no matter what, even if everybody is marked.

When you take a year off from football, you come back for all the enjoyable moments. When you're not playing, you miss out on all the highs, but you also miss these disappointments. But I would rather be in the arena to be excited or be disappointed than not have a chance at all. That's football. That's why everybody plays it.

If I have any talent, it's in the artistic end of football. The variation of movement of 11 players and the orchestration of that facet of football is beautiful to me.

A losing football team looks at excuses. A championship football team looks at solutions.

Nelson Mandela is my hero outside of football. I was fortunate enough to meet him a couple of times. He was really clued up on his football and he knew me, so that was just unbelievable. It really stuck with me.

In the end, the game is the same. Football is still football. Now, they may play with different formations, they may have a different idea of training, but the game doesn't alter. I don't mind how any performer - indeed, why should I? How arrogant of me if I did? - manages to get to what they have to get to. It doesn't matter how you get there, as long as it isn't going to destroy other people on the way.

Some men develop their own singularity. Football makes men conform to stereotypes: the warrior or the hunter. Football produces a certain kind of masculinity - the drunk kind, the king who will yell the worst nationalist's ideas. In front of those, it is very difficult to be a dignified woman.

I just wanted to defend football, which is not always easy to do. Those of us who have been in the sport so many years now realise we must protect it and look after it. I was speaking about football, what it means. It is our profession, it has been our lives, and we must take care of it a little.

People who are rich want to be richer, but what's the difference? The toys get different, that's all. The rich guys buy a football team, the poor guys buy a football. It's all relative.

They say football is America's greatest game, but it's not. The greatest game in America is called opportunity. Football is merely a great expression of it.

Football is a chess game to me. If you move your pawn against my bishop, I'll counter that move to beat you. Football is the same way. I study so much film that I know exactly what teams are going to do. I love knowing what a offense is going to run and stuffing that play.

The truth is, what Americans enjoy about football is much of what makes the sport dangerous. However, I believe there must be a way to find the art of success and vitality in football, without the driving the level of impact that causes serious risk of head trauma, paralysis and other life-changing injuries.

I think just what my parents instilled in me was hard work and being able to always go out there and focus and be 100%. I took that work ethic into the NFL and everyday I always gave 100% and never wanted anything to be handed to me. I wanted to earn it. And every time I stepped on that football field during practice I wanted to leave that football field with learning something about what the practice was about for me that day...

I come from a generation where I couldn't even contemplate such a thing. I find it amazing... You can become a multi-millionaire as a club player without playing international football. But international football is about individual pride and wanting to perform at the highest level. If I got picked at 41, I would have played, even if I thought I would make a fool of myself. I just wanted to play for my country.

I played football.. my football was kosher.. no pigskin.

People are very proud of Newcastle, very proud to come from here. This is a working class City and they just want to enjoy themselves and live life to the full. They work all week, pick their wages up at the end of the week and they spend it over a weekend by having a good time and watching the football. That's our life.

My favorite football team is the Bears because my favorite player is on there, Devin Hester. I love the whole team, though. But that's just my favorite player.

My workout was running down fly balls, stealing a base, or running for my life on the football field.

To be a Ranger is to sense the sacred trust of upholding all that such a name means in this shrine of football. They must be true in their conception of what the Ibrox tradition seeks from them. No true Ranger has ever failed in the tradition set him.

What happens on the football field matters, not in the way that food matters but as poetry does to some people and alcohol does to others: it engages the personality.

I never gave up as a player, and I won't give up as someone who wants to go to the Hall of Fame, because it's the ultimate goal for a baseball player or a football player or a basketball player.

The things that are happening to me are unbelievable. I'm actually busier right now than when I played football. This is almost like I'm coming back out of retirement. It will be fun to see myself in the game.

A football team is like a society, straight up. There are rapists, but there are creatures and there are film guys.

In football, you're taught to react by being aggressive, taught to react with violence. If you can't separate that on the field and off the field, you're going to be in a lot of trouble in your life.

Well family is obviously the most important. There was a time when I thought football was the most important.

Without football, my life is worth nothing.

I signed schoolboy forms for Watford when I was 12, but then my parents got divorced, and I never kicked a ball for three years. I rebelled, I left home, but getting back into football sorted me out. It was the second chance I needed.

I may be a successful football player, but I feel like such a failure.

Football is not a game for the weak of heart, because every day you've got a hundred reasons to take all those pads off and say, 'F-k it.'

I find American football quite ridiculous generally. I don't understand it. It looks like a lot of guys dressed up as spacemen shouting at each other.

There's never been completion in my football career because I've always been striving for that next thing.

It's cool. You can laugh about it, but at the same time you can't really get caught up in it because you're here for a job and it's to win football games. Being on this team, being with the head coach here and the quarterback we have keeps you humble. It keeps you hard working. You can laugh and giggle about stuff, but then at the same time you've got to make sure you're prepared and practicing hard still.

Of course we want to win every game, but winning forever is more about realizing your potential and making yourself as good as you can be. Realizing that is a tremendous accomplishment, whether it's in football or in life.

Then you get into it, especially if you start talking about football, fighting and Muhammad Ali. Then the ladies get very bored and start delivering ultimatums.

I like both athletic girls and girly girls. It depends on their personality. I like girls who can go out and play sports with me and throw the football around, but you don't want a girl who's too much tougher than you. I like brainy girls who can respond to what I'm saying.

Until Sammy Baugh - pro football in Texas was a one-paragraph story on the third page of the Monday sports section.

Football is Lotto for kids from economically vulnerable neighborhoods.

I don't even like football.

To watch a football game is to be in a prolonged neurotic doubt as to what you're seeing. It's more like an emergency happening at a distance than a game. I don't wonder the spectators take to drink.

That's where the challenge has been. Balancing football and life. Trying not to replay every play in my head while I'm with my family. Sometimes, I've done it well. Other times, I haven't.

Three rules for coaching: 1.) Surround yourself with people who can't live without football. 2.) Recognize winners. They come in all forms. 3.) Have a plan for everything.

If I wasn't playing football, I'd be a juvenile probation officer.

You're the only one that can put pressure on yourself... No one else can put pressure on you. It's self-inflicted. For me, I just want to go out and play football.

She's a Texan, born and raised. Football is in our blood.