Football Quotations | Page 6

I've always really just liked football, and I've always devoted a lot of time to it. When I was a kid, my friends would call me to go out with them, but I would stay home because I had practice the next day. I like going out, but you have to know when you can and when you can't.

I played pretty darn competitive-level hockey. Then the good old knee injury. Obviously, it's a blessing in disguise, but growing up Canadian, that's our religion, that's our football.

Football is a sport of emotions, and we have to capture that in our films.

When I was young, it wasn't about the money, it wasn't about the fame and fortune, it was about playing football.

I suppose young people think football is glamorous - soccer - it's big money and the stars of it, they look good and have a great big house and a huge Ferrari.

I've always been like that. I was a tomboy when I was a kid, so I was always playing baseball and basketball and football and stuff as a kid with the boys.

Sophomore year, I got hit in the stomach playing football, and I was out of school for four months. I was in the hospital for two and then out of school for two.

Arsene Wenger's idea is not only to play good football. It's to play good football to win. In my day, we knew that with our style we could hurt teams and win trophies too. But we did it our way, with the positional game, passing, movement.

I got scars on my face that tell some kind of story. I'm looking in the mirror, and I got one scar that's really two scars - half from a baseball bat and half from playing football in college. I'll tell you, though, after a while, your face gets so wrinkled up you can hardly see them.

Back then I said to myself 'screw football.' Actually I just took part in this camp as there was nothing better for me to do. They also didn't draft me because they thought I was too wild and undisciplined.

Football is only once a week. NASCAR is once a week. Those sports are insanely popular. Horse racing is oversaturated. Unless tracks cut back to three days a week of full fields, a lot of people will really hurt down the road. Horse racing, to survive, has to go to that. Let's face it: Churchill Downs only does well on Derby Week.

Any game is important to me. At Boston College, when I went out for the spring games, I wanted to win. Maybe it is more important than other preseason games. It's just that everyone is expecting a lot from me in my first week of professional football. I want to confirm my expectations.

I have done well out of TV, but not well enough to buy football clubs. I'm not sure it's ever a way to make money.

I think as far as any kind of pressure on a football team or on an individual in professional sports really depends not only on that individual but the leadership they have on the team and the leadership they have on the coaching staff. A lot of times, they can divert some of those pressures off of the individual and off of the team.

If people feel 4-4-2 is the way forward in international football, they'll have to wait until I'm out of a job.

I need to go play football. I don't care about anything else.

I was a halfback on an American football team in Athens, Greece - the Kississia Colts - where I went to high school, and we took the Cup my senior year. The downside, and somewhat unfortunate piece of information I have to pass on, is there were only two teams in the league because of the limited amount of Americans.

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

To me, having 500 rolls of fabric around is the most calming thing in the world. I think it's what football is to some guys.

I love the game so much. I've been penalized. I've been fined. I have some regrets in my career. But for those four hours on Sunday, you can be free and just let it all go. Retiring had nothing to do with football; it had to do with my family.

There's a lot of dancing in football. You can see Victor Cruz doing a little bit of cha-cha or sambra move in the end zone. You can see Terrell Owens getting his popcorn ready. You can see Ochocinco doing the river dance. But not so much in the ballroom.

Even though I support the blue side of Manchester's football heritage, I don't really mind that wherever I go in the world it's not Manchester City that starts the conversation. 'Ah, yes, Manchester United,' is the response when I say where I come from. It's commonplace everywhere - in Europe, Africa, Asia and even the U.S.

In football, you can always maim a person if you wanted to.

Nah, I've always had a great relationship with my two brothers, I have always had their support in my football and in everything. They've been very close to me and we have a great relationship.

In football you always get judged on your last game. Whoever you are, or how amazing you are, it's the last game that everyone has seen.

I was writing very early, like I was involved in our high school literary magazine, which was called 'Pariah.' The football team was the Bears, and the literary magazine was 'Pariah.' It was great. It was definitely a real sub-culture. But I wrote stories for them.

We all have experiences in our lives that change us, and we all learn from people, like my dad, but at the end of the day, it's only us. And we're only responsible to make ourselves happy.

You know, I played football, I was offensive tackle in college.

Football's about the young players, bringing youth team players through to the first team and hopefully getting the best out of them so they can go on to play for their country.

I'm not trying to win a popularity poll. I'm trying to win football games.

Basketball players want contact to get a foul called. Slaps on the wrist and bumps on the shoulder are big time to them, and they don't like that. In football, you get that all the time. The whole mental makeup is different.

If what you did yesterday seems big, you haven't done anything today.

We didn't lose the game; we just ran out of time.

I don't have a lot to share with other men. My heart sinks when I get into a taxi and someone starts talking to me about football.

Many people agree with me that many things are not clear in football these days and it is not something people who watch football deserve. The situation will be the same while football is run by people who do not understand football

Because I love football and I love the footballers.

It's my whole life of being the little guy and having a little chip on my shoulder, from year to year trying to prove myself, and at the end of the day to be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame is a very special honor for me.

It's not pleasant when you lose your whole football team.

No, I didn't quite know to what extent the football might be, but it was quite a bonus for me to try to learn new skills and to keep fit at the same time.

You have to know what club you are playing for, or you just play for yourself. Every time I put on a Liverpool shirt, I know it is more than just a football game.

Generalities don't count and won't help you in football.

In the late-'80s, there was a big push to make American football big in Scotland. The Super Bowl was on TV, but it didn't really catch on. When I was a kid, though, I became a big Miami Dolphins fan. I don't really know why - I just liked the logo, I guess. I didn't really know what was going on.

You can play pickup basketball, but you can't really re-create football.

Charles Haley changed the way the Cowboys played football in the 90s. And the reason why I say that is because he was such a dominant force coming off the edge, where it took two and three to block him.

That's another thing, we made up games. We didn't have equipment. When it snowed, we would play slow motion tackle football. We would play hockey, but we wouldn't skate. We just made things up. I loved doing that.

I knew nothing about football, then someone showed me a film of Petit and I realised how interesting the game could be. He is divine. When I met him I could barely speak, he was so gorgeous. Women will love that show.

Becoming a dad was the proudest moment of my life. Playing football does not even compare.

The game of football is one of strategy and tactics.

I'd love to play at Wembley. It's special for Barca - and for everyone in football.

Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening.

When I was 10, I knew there was something different about me. Everyone was football-mad, but I just wanted to watch musicals and see art.

I just wanted to get back to playing attacking football after my time in Italy. It was a little difficult at first but the atmosphere and the fans were just fantastic.

If you can miss getting up in the morning and running into a wall, I miss playing football. I'll never be a frustrated athlete.

I just read 'The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work.' To be married 25 years, you have to put as much energy as I put into being an actor or being a great football player into being a better husband and a better father.

In America, we have three major sports - baseball, football and basketball. They get the most coverage. Then there's things like golf which mop up most of what is left. But track and field? We are way at the bottom of the totem pole.

I grew up in Doncaster and have felt the love for football run through the town; it's for that reason that I have a real personal passion to make Doncaster Rovers a success story.

Basketball is my favorite sport, and I'm also a very passionate football fan.

I hope our hopes and aspirations are bigger than setting records.

You have different sorts of people in life, so why should it be any different in football?

The positions I played in football, being a quarterback and a defensive back, you had to kind of have a little independent thinking.

People say you should go out at the top but I was enjoying my football so much. Robbie Fowler's exactly the same: he's not playing for money any more, he's playing for enjoyment. Why go out at the top if it's going to make you miserable? I just wanted to play as long as I could.

When you have a problem, rules don't solve your problem. It's caring and education.

I've found that prayers work best when you have big players.

Once you become an owner of a team, you get so much more into the sport and you can't help it. So I really love NFL football now to the degree of following it much more than I did previously.

If architecture is, as is sometimes said, music set in concrete, then football and basketball may be said to be creativity embodied in team sports.

The World Cup must remain the number one competition, because it is our only source of money and, with that money, we can develop football in the whole world.

Football is a game about feelings and intelligence.

I believe if I stay tall and run up high, I can see better.

The reason I became a manager was to have full control over training. If you are a coach, you are bound by what the manager wants you to coach. The other reason is that I just like the company of football people.

Then I went to UCLA - so of course I became a huge Bruin basketball fan... and later came to football.

I grew up watching Monday Night Football with Howard Cosell and the other guys with my dad.

There have always been card schools at football clubs and always will be.

The true competitors, though, are the ones who always play to win.

I would play football, because I love it.

Football is such a great game, but football players are so dull,

Whether I played marbles, whether I played football or slam anything else, I wanted to excel.

If I feel I'm not influencing games, not scoring goals or making goals, then that's the time I'd pack it in.

I played English football - soccer - instead of American football, because we couldn't afford the equipment.

The most deceptive course in football is straight at the goalposts.

Nixon was a crook, of course, but he was also a rabid football fan - and he knew the game, which still astounds me, but I have always had a soft spot for him because of it.

I was always active - I went from baseball to football. I didn't have time to work out.

If you grew up in a household with a football coach who looks like a drill sergeant, you would think you would be tough.

Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, there is no reason either in football or in poetry why the two should not meet in a man's life if he has the weight and cares about the words.

In college, you had to worry about that math class or this exam that's coming up on Tuesday, but not in the professionals. You eat, sleep, and do everything related to your craft - and your craft is football. You can be at it from sunup to sundown.

I am endlessly fascinated that playing football is considered a training ground for leadership, but raising children isn't.

The Bible is big in my teaching. It's a wonder the ACLU didn't get after me pretty good. I really kept thinking they would. I took my boys to church. I took my football team to church. I only did it two times a year. Before I signed a kid, I'd write the parents and I'd tell that parent we were gong to take your son to church twice.

We've got our football where no one wears anything and the guys are in little shorts and they beat the crap out of each other, and they can catch it and they can kick it, and it's the only place it's played in the world.

Because, they're only thinking about one team when that game's over. Before the game, they're talking about two football teams. When the game's over, there's only one winner.

We should confine booing in sports arenas to sport. I love a good boo as much as the next football fan.

Trip Hawkins - and this was the early 1980s - was saying there's going to be a day when everyone has a computer and they're going to want to do more on it, including playing games. So he started up a company, EA Sports, and he was going to have three games, football, basketball and baseball. So I was the football game.

I think professional sports, football, to use it as an example, it's fundamentally a form of entertainment.

I was always doing something physical. My brothers and I used to have handstand contests. We'd walk around the projects on our hands and see who could get the farthest. I was always playing football with them, basketball or racing in the street.

I'm used to performing under pressure, but that's playing football.

I'd say that Spanish football is probably the best I've seen.

Football is a game played with arms, legs and shoulders but mostly from the neck up.

The game of football, especially in the NFL, is all about situations, and coming out on the big end of that stick.

Yes, in general, I think there is too much club football on TV.

I don't give players a chance to hit me.

I played football when I was little. I didn't want to be an actress at all, I wanted to be a majorette in an Australian circus. That was my ambition.

It took me 35 years of being involved at a decent level of football to become manager at a great club like Celtic.