Quotes About Football

I was walking along somewhere in the Maldives and there were West Ham fans there. It's crazy.

At West Ham, I was never able to buy the top-flight players. It was a case of looking around, trying to do deals. I was always taking a gamble.

I hope that the future is great for West Ham.

In football winning games is all that matters, but a team like West Ham and every team apart from Man City are going to lose games.

I went to West Ham in order to play against Arsenal as often as possible.

I went to West Ham and I had a manager that played me out of position. To be honest with you it was very tough to take.

When I saw there was interest from West Ham I wanted to become a part of what they are building here.

I was at Arsenal but I didn't like the manager of the under-10s at the time so I went to West Ham where my brother played.

I enjoyed my time at West ham, scored a few goals there but was bitterly disappointed when we were relegated.

The lowest period was when I was with Tottenham, and they loaned me out to Dulwich Hamlet.

I don't understand American football. If you're going to line a bunch of behemoths up in front of a bunch of other behemoths and ask them to hit each other as hard as they can, why tell them they can only hit one another a certain way? Too many rules, that's the problem.

The most famous footballing episode was Captain Nevill's kicking a ball into No Man's Land on the first day of the Somme. A prize was offered to the first man to dribble the ball into the German trenches; Nevill himself scrambled out of the trench in pursuit of his goal and was cut down immediately. (Perhaps the Somme was not only an indictment of military strategy but also of the British propensity for the long-ball game.)

Di Stefano was manufactured on earth, Pele was made in heaven.

I sat behind Thurman Thomas for my first couple of years, then my first year starting I won the Heisman. After I won the Heisman, that's when things changed as far as going to the NFL.

The five big mistakes in football are the fumble, the interception, the penalty, the badly called play, the blocked punt - and most of these originate with the quarterback. Find a mistake-proof quarterback and you have this game won.

Dad used to reminisce about the good old days when Everton won the old first division championship and the FA Cup back in the 1970s and 80s but they weren't quite so good when I started supporting them.

A lot of people, when they see my career, they hear or remember, 'Sat on the bench four years in college, got cut by the Packers, worked in a grocery store, and then won the Super Bowl.' That's kind of the timeline the people see when they hear 'Kurt Warner.'

Arsenal have won that advantage, nobody gave it to them. By playing fantastic football and by winning matches and by winning trophies, they won that respect that the opponent has for them.

When I was a wide receiver for the Minnesota Vikings, I lost in Super Bowl XI. It was a crushing defeat. Now I don't even think about it. It doesn't even come to mind. Had we won, maybe it would've been in my head longer.

In England, there is a tradition of playing on Saturday. But in Spain, I won the UEFA Cup with Valencia playing on Thursday and Sunday, which was just the same.

I was captain in Atletico at 19, playing in the same team as Demetrio Albertini, who won three Champions Leagues, and Sergi Barjuan from Barcelona, who had won everything, and they were 32, 33. I was a kid as captain, so I wasn't the real captain, just a kid learning from them.

People sometimes ask me to name the greatest coach in NFL history. George Halas may have set the standard, but Don Shula has won more games than anyone, and he has done it in the most competitive era. He had an incomparable ability to evaluate players, to motivate them, and to teach them the game of football.

When I was playing for Real Madrid, we competed in the UEFA Champions League most of the time and won it three times. When we didn't win we always ended up in the later rounds.

If the Ballon d'Or was fair, Xavi would have won five or six. He deserves all the respect in the world.