Abby Wambach Quotations

I think there's so much emphasis on body image and results and outcome, but really what you should be after is to be healthy and to feel good about yourself.

The truth is, I've been on a team my whole life. I'm the youngest of 7, so I've been training to be an athlete my whole life.

My parents, they're the kind of people that didn't want me to get a big head, so they just kept challenging me and challenging me.

During events like the World Cup and the Olympics, I tend to get really wrapped up in my own experience to stay focused, but it's like a bubble. I don't see much outside my own perspective.

Whenever you get to win, you feel the satisfaction of all of your hard work, all the sacrifices, all the blood, sweat and tears. It feels right and makes you realise that you are really doing the right thing.

I've always been motivated more by negative comments than by positive ones. I know what I do well. Tell me what I don't do well.

Sometimes when you fail, it allows you the opportunity to grow more motivation and get more intense about your training.

A few goals is the way soccer is meant to be played.

The most important thing is that sometimes you have to go through hard times to get to the good stuff.

As an athlete, you are literally programmed to endure a specific amount of pain.

It's a heavy burden to look up at the mountain and want to start the climb.

I think making the referee aware of a situation, there is nothing wrong with that.

My nephew has type 1 diabetes, and it's my goal and hope that in his lifetime there will be a cure for diabetes. There's no place better to give the money to than the Juvenile Diabetes Association.

To win a championship, you have to have a little bit of luck on your side.

I'm not spending every second thinking about the World Cup, but it's always in my mind when I make choices and decisions.

Any good attacker will always beat a defender who's face-marking you.

The minute you step off that podium is the minute you start preparing for the next world championship. That's kind of how I work. You celebrate for a brief moment, then you move on.

Sometimes there has to be a goat on some level, and I'm totally fine with that being me.

I think that in order to get better as an athlete and to see whatever kind of results you're after, you have to make goals. Whether you write them down or tell someone about them, it's important to set goals for yourself in order to achieve any kind of success.

If you break an individual record, it's because of the greatness that comes before you.

As professional soccer players, we take our bodies to the extreme. We're the people at the gym that look like we're breaking the machines. Pushing our bodies to the limits is what makes us so strong and capable and Olympians. It's not an easy thing to consistently do over and over again to your body.

I always think that struggle can bring out the best in people - or the worst.

Soccer players generally burn through all of their carbohydrate stores by halftime, so how are you going to replace those? That's what we do at halftime.

Having different people come together and be on a team and win a world championship is literally, I think, the definition of being American.

There are standards of the game that FIFA governs and promises to uphold.

Any little touch a defender can make on me when I'm in the air literally moves me. On the ground, I can use my muscle, but in the air, it's harder to fight that off.

At the most elite level, your nutrition becomes a lifestyle: it's not something you have to do when you're preparing for Olympic games or World Cup games - you just do it. You're more inclined to eat healthier because it's better for your muscles.

For any athlete growing up, the Olympics is the one thing you watch with your family, and it's the one thing you dream about. Seeing your country's flag go up as you get a gold medal is the best thing you can achieve.

I'm honestly not the kind of person who wants to step up to a podium, test the microphone and be like, 'Hey, I'm homosexual and this is who I am, hear me roar.' That's not who I am.

One thing I love to do when I'm working out is take my watch off, take my heart strap off, and just run - not for time, not for exertion, but just to get the blood flowing.

People don't understand that the feel of the surface is so important for a footballer. The ball travels on the surface; our feet move on the surface - all of that goes into how the game is actually played.

As a competitor, I want to continue to keep turning the chapters and keep challenging myself.

I have a unique ability to predict the flight of the ball, and my teammates have a unique ability to find me.

I have never once dribbled the whole field and scored a goal by myself.

I haven't won a World Cup. There's things that haven't been finished, and I'm not afraid to fall flat on my face trying.

I know that I was put on this planet to be an athlete.

I know that I'll end up being a role model for many, many people out there for all kinds of reasons.

I really enjoy helping people out, and I enjoy time spent with kids.

I think, as you grow older, you have figure out the best way to utilize not only your body but your skill.

I want to do what I can to give the next generation of athletes added advantages in the game.

I want to reduce my risks as much as possible and hopefully be able to go to the World Cup fit, ready and healthy.

I would love to be a mum if I'm blessed to have children. My wife and I have those plans.

I would trade all the individual awards I've won for a World Cup.

I'm a pretty decent cook. I like to grill. I have a smoker that I love. I love me some steak. And I'll make a huge salad with a ton of vegetables.

I'm not sure if I'm going to get into coaching. I'm sure I'll stay in soccer somehow.

I'm pretty goofy. I laugh at my own jokes.

I've always had a dream of owning a restaurant.

People don't think an athlete nowadays can have a team-first mentality and I do.

Sometimes if you have a coach or team-mates for too long, you get caught in certain routines. I think it's good to shake up things a little bit.

The growth of women's soccer and women's sports all around the world has been slow.

The most important thing is to get better at your craft, and concussions and head impacts are a setback.

When you can score three goals without the most prolific scorer in the world, you know you have a lot of depth, and it gives you confidence.

Your heart can only take you so far - sometimes the physical body tells you otherwise.

As soon as I started to realize that I could make a living playing professional soccer, I went to that place where I could torture myself because I knew it would make me better for the championship game.

From a pretty early age, my mother realized that I was a little bit more gifted and talented than my own age group. So, she moved me over to play with the boys' travel soccer team when I was about 11 years old.

I am not a politician by nature, but I will say I think there need to be more women in FIFA, and I would be open to having those conversations when the time is right.

I can't speak for other people, but for me, I feel like gone are the days that you need to come out of a closet. I never felt like I was in a closet. I never did. I always felt comfortable with who I am and the decisions I made.

I don't care how many championships you've won or how many records you've broken - if you've had a hand in pushing forward not only a game but women in sport's movement, then I think that's pretty darn good.

I hope we can get to a point where women players are being paid properly all around the world so the only thing they have to worry about is playing football and playing football alone.

If I can help a kid feel more comfortable in their skin because they're struggling with maybe the things I struggled with in high school, that's great.

My eldest sister Beth is a doctor who studied at Harvard and Columbia and played basketball for Harvard. She set the athletic and academic standard for the rest of us to follow.

My teammates have put me in all different kinds of positions to score goals, and I can't say it enough, and I really through and through believe it in my heart that I'm only as good as my teammates allow me to be.

This might sound masochistic or narcissistic‚ I don't know‚ but when I'm not playing the game‚ the validations I feel about life are always through the hardships. I relate more to sadness‚ in a lot of ways‚ when I'm not playing.

When I look in the mirror, I don't see a person who's made the kind of impact that Mia Hamm made on the game. She's still my idol, the greatest player and the greatest teammate. She achieved so much in so many different ways. What she did for women's soccer can't be measured.

When I was in college, I learned to really take care of my body and figured out what works best for me and what doesn't work for me when it comes to my nutrition. That helped so much on the field because soccer is such a fitness-oriented game.

When I was really young, the women's national team wasn't on a grand media stage, so my role models were male basketball and male American football players.

You know me, I'm not that kind of person that cares to unveil all of my personal things to the world because frankly, in terms of my soccer, it doesn't matter.

worn in gold medal game against Brazil 2-1.

My sole focus is to help bring a World Cup back to the U.S.

We're a great team. We can play this game, and we've got a lot of naturally talented athletes who are ready to work to be better.

It's always really challenging trying to go from player to player/coach. You have a kind of friendship basis of relationship with all of your teammates and now you go to this power position where you have to make decisions that might hurt people's feelings.

Playing on turf affects everything, you know, it affects the way the ball rolls, it affects the way the ball bounces, it affects the way you think about whether or not going into a slide. It's kind of a nightmare.

Today was about execution, period. Every single player, all of us in the dressing room right now, we’re embarrassed because that’s not the way we want to play soccer.

You can do as many sprints as you want but there's nothing like playing in a 90-minute soccer game. There's no better way to gain your fitness, in my opinion, than playing in consistent games.

Four goals in (16) minutes. Literally I don't even know how that happens especially in a World Cup final.

I don't care who scores the goals, I'm going to leave my human beingness on the field!

If given a really great chance, I'm going to put it away every single time.

I'm not going to tell people how to live their life and I surely wouldn't tell people my life is the way you should be living. People get to choose what they do want to do with their life and I appreciated that.

It's not pressure. It's responsibility We put it on ourselves.

If we can trust each other and leave everything-all our hearts-out on the field, I think we're going to have something to come home to and cheer about.

No I or individual is better than the team. I've scored no goals just on my own. Every goal I've ever scored has been because of someone else on my team, their excellence, their bravery. And I'm kind of the end product of a collection of a really good vibe, and feeling, and creativity on the field.

To watch people push themselves further than they think they can, it's a beautiful thing. It's really human.

You must not only have competitiveness but ability, regardless of the circumstance you face, to never quit

You never know if you can actually do something against all odds until you actually do it.

I've never scored a goal in my life without getting a pass from someone else.

Right now we have a very recent goal of beating Canada and leaving this World Cup with our heads held as high as we can hold them. There's a lot of pride in still being in the World Cup right now, and there's a lot of pride going into the next 10 months of our preparation for the Olympics.

People do this to live a healthy lifestyle and that's exactly the type of life I want to promote,

This game was a bit of a heartbreaker.

It's always really challenging trying to go from player to player/coach. You have a kind of friendship basis of relationship with all of your teammates, and now you go to this power position where you have to make decisions that might hurt people's feelings.

For some of them it's going to be their last go-round for an international event. I think that's going to be all the more motivation.