Johan Cruijff Football Quotations

Football is a game of mistakes. Whoever makes the fewest mistakes wins.

I'm not religious. In Spain all 22 players make the sign of the cross before they enter the pitch. If it works all matches must therefore end in a draw.

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

Before I make a mistake, I don't make that mistake.

However good an English team is, they will always have an additional advantage. It is that European players know that their English opponents will come at them in the belief they will win, and they can always be guaranteed never to stop fighting. They have a natural aggression that they are born with. If it ever goes, English football will lose its most valuable dimension.

After you've won something, you're no longer 100 percent, but 90 percent. It's like a bottle of carbonated water where the cap is removed for a short while. Afterwards there's a little less gas inside.

There is only one ball, so you need to have it.

Every professional golfer has a seperate coach for his drives, for approaches, for putting. In football we have one coach for 15 players. This is absurd.

Surviving the first round is never my aim. Ideally, I'd be in one group with Brazil, Argentina and Germany. Then I'd have lost two rivals after the first round. That's how I think. Idealisitic.

I felt sorry for the match ball - it came off the pitch crying.

The most difficult thing about an easy match is to make a weak opponent play bad football.

Football is simple. You are in time or too late. When you are too late, you should start sooner.

Choose the best player for every position, and you'll end up not with a strong XI, but with 11 strong 1's.

Football is about making mistakes. Who makes the most, loses the game.

Players today can only shoot with their laces. I could shoot with the inside, laces, and outside of both feet. In other words, I was six times better than today's players.

Football is a simple game. It's just very hard to play it simple.

You know I don't think there will ever be a time when the English player is not respected, and feared, across the world of football. The English footballer is very brave and strong and committed and there is always enough high-class players in his team to cause concern in any opponent. It is a national characteristic.

For the world of football, Messi is a treasure because he is role model for children around the world... Messi will be the player to win the most Ballons d'Or in history. He will win five, six, seven. He is incomparable. He's in a different league.

Football is simple, you're either on time, or you're too late. If you're too late then you have to leave earlier.

We must make sure their worst players get the ball the most. You'll get it back in no time.

Football is simple but the hardest thing to do is play simple football.

It's all very simple: if you score one more than your opponent, you win.

There are very few players who know what to do when they're not marked. So sometimes you tell a player: that attacker is very good, but don't mark him.

Someone who has juggled the ball in the air during a game, after which four defenders of the opponent get the time to run back, that's the player people think is great. I say he has to go to a circus.

Mourinho is a coach of titles, not football. Or rather, not a football coach if we understand the sport is a spectacle or entertainment for those who watch it, either at home or live in the stadium.

I always threw the ball in, because then if I got the ball back, I was the only player unmarked.

The fun part of golf is the variety of shots. In football you can do anything with a ball, but you can do anything with a golf ball as well. When you hit a shot and the ball does exactly what you want it to do ... that's wonderful. It's just great when you hit the ball well. You should always try not to make the ball cry.

Why couldn't you beat a richer club? I've never seen a bag of money score a goal.

If I wanted you to understand it, I would have explained it better.

In my teams, the goalie is the first attacker, and the striker the first defender.

Playing football is very simple, but playing simple football is the hardest thing there is.

I'm ex-player, ex-technical director, ex-coach, ex-manager, ex-honorary president. A nice list that once again shows that everything comes to an end.

If you have the ball you must make the field as big as possible, and if you don't have the ball you must make it as small as possible.

When you play a match, it is statistically proven that players actually have the ball 3 minutes on average ... So, the most important thing is: what do you do during those 87 minutes when you do not have the ball. That is what determines wether you're a good player or not.

Football is a game you play with your brain

Players that aren't true leaders but try to be, always bash other players after a mistake. True leaders on the pitch already assume others will make mistakes.

Technique is not being able to juggle a ball 1000 times. Anyone can do that by practicing. Then you can work in the circus. Technique is passing the ball with one touch, with the right speed, at the right foot of your team mate.

I find it terrible when talents are rejected based on computer stats. Based on the criteria at Ajax now I would have been rejected. When I was 15, I couldn't kick a ball 15 meters with my left and maybe 20 with my right. My qualities technique and vision, are not detectable by a computer.