Quotes About Tactics

I played many positions under Guardiola. That helps to see the game from a different perspective, you learn more.

I don't think people saw me as a coach. But as a player I concentrated a lot on playing the game and I was always interested in the thinking side of football and speaking to managers about why they would pick a certain formation or play people in certain positions.

When you have a lot of ball possession, you have a lot of ball possession to create chances, not to play the ball around and not score.

With Jorginho it depends what type of football you want to play. If you want to play possession where you have the ball all the time and you play a lot of passes, there are not many as good as him around. If you ask Jorginho to cover 50 metres of pitch in width and get all the balls back, it's going to be difficult.

There's no use to have 70 percent possession if the opponent is creating more chances than you are.

When you master all defensive and offensive aspects of the game and always enjoy the majority of possession, you're sitting in pole position to win.

Mourinho is a coach who likes more the ball practice, works the ball possession and makes short games.

It's modern football - having the ball, controlling the game, and being well positioned when you lose possession.

I don't know much about football but everyone seems to say that it is all about possession.

If you play every time, long balls, you lose possession and you lose momentum. I don't want to be like that.

We have four parts of our game: working against the ball; in possession; losing the ball; winning the ball. If you are good in all four parts, you have a good chance of winning.

Football is open; it is not only keeping possession of the ball and making more passes.

I like it when the team is in control of the match. I like very much the ball possession; I like to play in the other half.

When you play against a top side, you know they will have more possession, and they will be in more control, and you have to find one or two counterattacks.

I want my team to play well almost all of the time and have possession of the ball.

If the guys up front don't get possession, they can't score.

We know it's impossible sometimes to have good defending against Cristiano Ronaldo but we want to keep the ball, with good possession, as then he can do nothing in attack.

If youre possession based, youve got to be as good as a midfielder.

Football can be played in different ways and the more ways you know, the better you will be. If you know only one way, you're limiting your possibilities.

For me, possession is to keep the ball while you are waiting for the possibility to penetrate. Every pass is for a reason.

It's foolish to call Chanakya an Indian Machiavelli. Rather, Machiavelli was possibly an Italian Chanakya.

I don't like isolation play, unless you're in the low post.

I don't back down. Like, I don't know how to flop. That's never been a part of my game. For me to know if a guy likes to turn left shoulder or right shoulder in the post, I have an advantage. Or if he likes to go left all the time, I have an advantage. Or if he can't make open jump shots, I have an advantage.

Guys like Andre Miller and Kevin Garnett - they're posting up hoping a second guy will run at them so they can pass. You're better just playing one-on-one in the post if you can.