Quotes About Football

Football made me want to train and stay disciplined. It kept me away from things like drugs. Young people are faced with the temptation to stray all the time.

Football puts everything at your fingertips. And I was raised in a way that focused everything on looking after your family. Faith really helped me realise that the temptations that you have on hand will give you joy, enjoyment, whatever, but only for a short while. And after that, it is all gloom.

Being an 18 year-old football player, there are temptations. There are girls. There's going out to parties. There's doing this; there's doing that. There is drinking and blah, blah, blah. But at the end of the day it all comes down to maturity and what you have to do as a man to reach that next level. You have to be disciplined and make sacrifices.

When I retired in 1994, I was never tempted to drop down the divisions to carry on playing. In fact, I never kicked a ball again, not even in a charity match.

I was never tempted by the Premier League. It's simply a personal opinion.

If you made me the national commissioner of football, I'd tell you one thing that I would mandate. The second Saturday in September, we're going to have conference day. Everybody from the SEC plays a Big 12 team. Everybody from the Big Ten is going to play the ACC. Everybody from the Big East is going to play the Pac-10.

I first started going to Chelsea games in the mid-Nineties when I lived off the North End Road, ten minutes' walk from Stamford Bridge.

I just played football from an early age and didn't get involved in any other sports. We had tennis, cycling, ice skating - I'd like to have skated more, because it's so physical. Ten minutes on the ice and you really feel it in your back.

Ten years with Juve was a great love story and I will forever be a fan of Juventus.

I started playing football when I was ten years old, and the main reason was because I wanted to make my parents proud. I didn't even like the sport at the time, but it didn't matter to me.

That's where I spent the biggest chunk of my career, having been at Juventus for ten years. That was the best thing that happened to me because it was where I got to know real football, at an ambitious club with ambitious players.

I tend to personally judge issue by issue rather than sort of endorsing this football-team mentality that we fall into in this country, where it's all about the team.

We watch so much film, calling up pitch by pitch, count by count in order to spot tendencies. Technology is a big part of how I get ready for a game. What's funny is a lot of the NFL guys say they study the 'Madden' game; that's how they learn to read offenses and defenses.

A lot of what I do is try to watch tape and understand how guys come out of breaks - what their footwork looks like, or how they look at the top of a pass route. Guys have tendencies. I try to understand what they do, which allows me to be successful.

My mum had me when she was just 18 and she worked three jobs, including bar tending, to put food on the table and she also went to night college. She worked really hard for us and I kept myself busy with football.

Modern football tends to bring out the narcissism of those who sit on the bench.

When teams play good football, it tends to create chances for the striker.

I chose Tennessee because I thought they'd give me an opportunity to play.

The only bad thing is that we didn't win at Tennessee. Kiffin left that program in a bad position.

I started out with a tennis racquet. Later, during one of the breaks we got from tennis, I started playing football with my friends. I was only five years old.

I play a lot of sports. I played football for 12 years, I like tennis, I surf, I snowboard, and I ski. I always like to do an activity.

I, as a cricketer, would like to see 100 counties playing top-flight cricket, just like tennis and football. If I am alive to see that, I will be very happy.

When I'm playing football, it's what I know; it's what I'm good at. The spotlight is not just on you: you're with 10 of your team-mates. I could have done other sports, like tennis and athletics, but I like being part of a team where it's not just about you; it's about everybody.

I look at our sport as the same as tennis. Male and female tennis is very, very different. The men's is more quick and powerful, and the women's is more about finesse and has more rallies - and that's the same with men's and women's football.