Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I’m very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.
Bill Shankly

We are at a good level. Our secret is that we play the same way against each opponent.
Lionel Messi

Soccer is not just about scoring goals – it�s about winning.

You will go through tough times, it’s about getting through them.
David Beckham

Football’s a difficult business and aren’t they prima donnas. But it’s a wonderful game.
Queen Elizabeth II

Some people believe football is a matter of life and death…it is much, much more important than that.
Bill Shankley

We lost because we didn�t win.

The Glaswegian definition of an atheist: a bloke who goes to a Rangers-Celtic match to watch the football.
Sandy Strang

Every time I went away I was deceiving my mum. I’d tell her I was going to school but I’d be out on the street playing football. I always had a ball on my feet.
Ronaldo

The goalkeeper is the jewel in the crown and getting at him should be almost impossible. It’s the biggest sin in football to make him do any work.
George Graham

If they are going to win this match, they�re going to have to score a goal.

Some people tell me that we professional players are soccer slaves. Well, if this is slavery, give me a life sentence.
Bobby Charlton

If a team wants to intimidate you physically and you let them, they’ve won.
Mia Hamm

Five days shalt thou labour, as the Bible says. The seventh day is the Lord thy God’s. The sixth day is for football.
Anthony Burgess

Soccer is simple, but it is difficult to play simple.

At a football club, there’s a holy trinity – the players, the manager and the supporters. Directors don’t come into it. They are only there to sign the checks.
Bill Shankley

I’m here to score a lot of goals. It’s my speciality, that’s what I’ve been brought here to do, and I want to score plenty ; like I did with Barcelona. And here, there’s every reason to think I can do it.
Ronaldo

Soccer is the ballet of the masses.

The rules of soccer are very simple, basically it is this: if it moves, kick it. If it doesn’t move, kick it until it does.
Phil Woosnam

If you are first you are first. If you are second, you are nothing.

To say that these men paid their shillings to watch twenty-two hirelings kick a ball is merely to say that a violin is wood and catgut, that Hamlet is so much paper and ink.
J. B. Priestley

If you don�t concede any goals you�ll win more games than you lose.

In football everything is complicated by the presence of the opposite team.
Jean Paul Sartre

If you�re attacking, you don�t get as tired as when you�re chasing.

Every single day I wake up and commit to myself to becoming a better player.
Mia Hamm

As long as no-one scored, it was always going to be close.

I fell in love with football as I would later fall in love with women: suddenly, uncritically, giving no thought to the pain it would bring.
Nick Hornby

Failure happens all the time. It happens every day in practice. What makes you better is how you react to it.
Mia Hamm

Whoever invented soccer should be worshipped as a God.

To say that these men paid their shillings to watch twenty-two hirelings kick a ball is merely to say that a violin is wood and catgut, that Hamlet is so much paper and ink.
J.B. Priestley

The vision of a champion is someone bent over, drenched in sweat, to a point of exhaustion, when no one else is watching.
Anson Dorrance

If this can be termed the century of the common man, then soccer, of all sports, is surely his game…. In a world haunted by the hydrogen and napalm bomb, the football field is a place where sanity and hope are still left unmolested.
Stanley Rous

I was surprised, but I always say nothing surprises me in soccer.

Five days shalt thou labour, as the Bible says. The seventh day is the Lord thy God’s. The sixth day is for football.
Anthony Burgess

I loathed the game, and since I could see no pleasure or usefulness in it, it was very difficult for me to show courage at it. Football, it seemed to me, is not really played for the pleasure of kicking a ball about, but is a species of fighting.
George Orwell

Football is the opera of the people.
Stafford Heginbotham

Soccer is all very well as a game for rough girls, but is hardly suitable for delicate boys.

A sport where the players actually enjoy getting hit in the head by a ball.

Every kid around the world who plays soccer wants to be Pele. I have a great responsibility to show them not just how to be like a soccer player, but how to be like a man.
Pele

Concerning football playing, I protest to you it may rather be called a friendly kind of fighting, rather than recreation.

I always used to put my right boot on first, and then obviously my right sock.

In Latin America the border between soccer and politics is vague. There is a long list of governments that have fallen or been overthrown after the defeat of the national team.
Luis Suarez

Fail to prepare, prepare to fail.
Roy Keane

If you’re attacking, you don’t get as tired as when you’re chasing.
Kyle Rote, Jr.

A million wouldn�t buy him, and I�d be one of them.

I get a kick out of soccer.

I’m sure sex wouldn’t be so rewarding as this World Cup. It’s not that sex isn’t good but the World Cup is every four years and sex is not.
Ronaldo

Football is all very well as a game for rough girls, but is hardly suitable for delicate boys.
Oscar Wilde

If you don�t believe you can win, there is no point in getting out of bed at the end of the day.

Soccer is not about justice. It’s a drama – and criminally wrong decisions against you are part and parcel of that.
Pete Davies

Pele called me the greatest footballer in the world. That is the ultimate salute to my life.
George Best

Other countries have their history. Uruguay has its football.
Ondino Viera

It�s why we play the game. Anything is possible, anything can happen, and we proved that again tonight.

The roots of our Soccer Tribe lie deep in our primeval past.
Desmond Morris

The goal was scored a little bit by the hand of God, another bit by the head of Maradona.
Maradona

To the aesthete it is an art form, an athletic ballet. To the spiritually inclined it is a religion.
Paul Gardner

The more time you have, the more mistakes you will make.
Football is all very well a good game for rough girls, but not for delicate boys.
Oscar Wilde

The Glaswegian definition of an atheist: a bloke who goes to a Rangers-Celtic match to watch the football.
Sandy Strang

We were a little bit outnumbered there, it was two against two.

Up to five goals is journalism. After that, it becomes statistics.

I am a member of a team, and I rely on the team, I defer to it and sacrifice for it, because the team, not the individual, is the ultimate champion.
Mia Hamm

I�ve never wanted to leave. I�m here for the rest of my life, and hopefully after that as well.

Rugby is a beastly game played by gentlemen; soccer is a gentlemen’s game played by beasts; football is a beastly game played by beasts.
Henry Blaha

We didn�t underestimate them. They were a lot better than we thought.

The goalkeeper is the jewel in the crown and getting at him should be almost impossible. It’s the biggest sin in football to make him do any work.
George Graham

I took a whack on my left ankle, but something told me it was my right.

Italians can’t win the game against you, but you can lose the game against the Italians.
Johan Cryuff

The rules of soccer are very simple, basically it is this: if it moves, kick it. If it doesn�t move, kick it until it does.

Some people tell me that we professional players are soccer slaves. Well, if this is slavery, give me a life sentence.
Bobby Charlton

He�s one of those footballers whose brains are in his head.

Whoever invented football should be worshipped as a God.
Hugo Sanchez

My legs sort of disappeared from nowhere.

Five days shalt thou labour, as the Bible says. The seventh day is the Lord thy God’s. The sixth day is for football.
Anthony Burgess

The Vision of a Champion is someone who is bent over, drenched in sweat, and the point of exhaustion, when no one else is watching.

In Latin America the border between soccer and politics is vague. There is a long list of governments that have fallen or been overthrown after the defeat of the national team.
Luis Suarez

Sometimes in soccer you have to score goals.

At a football club, there’s a holy trinity the players, the manager and the supporters. Directors don’t come into it. They are only there to sign the checks.
Bill Shankly

Every defeat is a victory in itself.

The person that said winning isn’t everything, never won anything.
Mia Hamm

Soccer is the opera of the people.

Failure happens all the time. It happens every day in practice. What makes you better is how you react to it.
Mia Hamm

The opening ceremony was good, although I missed it.

When I go to the press conference before the game, in my mind the game has already started.
Jose Mourinho

If we played like that every week we wouldn�t be so inconsistent.

We lost because we didn’t win.
Ronaldo

Soccer is an art more central to our culture than anything the Arts Council deigns to recognize.

You can have the top stars to bring the attention, you can have the best stadium, you can have the best facilities, you can have the most beautiful project in terms of marketing and all this kind of thing. But if you don’t win… All the work these people are doing is forgotten.
Jose Mourinho

Winning doesn�t really matter as long as you win.

A champion is someone who does not settle for that day’s practice, that day’s competition, that day’s performance. They are always striving to be better. They don’t live in the past.

The most important thing for a forward is speed of thought. Top players read the game.

Soccer is a game in which everyone does a lot of running around. Twenty-one guys stand around and one guy does a tap dance with the ball.
Jim Murray

The roots of our Soccer Tribe lie deep in our primeval past.

Some people say soccer’s a matter of life or death, but it isn’t. It’s much more important than that