Quotes About Soccer

I like playing deeper, but I'm not Casemiro.

I play the number ten role but also off the side or deeper.

I try to be a complete player - in attack and in defence - and to improve every year.

Goals often come from a mistake much further up the field, yet the analysis and blame will always be on the defence.

I was only used to 4-3-3. For me as a left-winger you have also a left midfielder and a left-back behind you. But in a 4-4-2 you are basically also the left midfielder so you have to help more in defence and I wasn't used to that.

Central defence is my favourite position.

My playing style? I'm a right back who likes to attack but I also know when it's time to attack and when you need to stay behind. I have to put a balance between defence and attack.

My first mind-set when I am out on the field is to defend well and not concede.

I came from Ajax where you play 4-3-3 and as a winger they didn't want you to defend.

I won the title with Arsenal in 2004 and it is harder to defend it the following season.

The players who defend against him make fouls because it's always hard to defend Neymar and take the ball without fouling him.

I just think I have to be a defender. If I can attack, it's a bonus.

Any good attacker will always beat a defender who's face-marking you.

I played a lot of times at the beginning at Ajax as a left full back with a fantastic combination with Mark Overmars but I think as a central defender and a leader in the back it was my best role I think.

Midfielders, on average, get somewhere between half a second and a second to think before they have to move the ball on. For strikers, however, it is significantly less: between 0.1 and 0.2 of a second before a defender is on them.

I started out as a defender. I played as a full-back, and then I moved into the centre. I played defence right the way through until the Under-18s. Honestly!

I wasn't a natural defender. I was a striker as a kid. I have learned a lot but there is more to learn, of course.

I've always played left-back and I'm an established defender so that is the focus for me in games.

The strikers are the first defenders. And the first defender is the first striker to build from the back.

Positional play is good for training, but in games, to win matches, you need someone who can go past defenders and take chances.

I'm liking the Bundesliga. There's a lot of top, top defenders that you come across.

I think defending is more of, like, a science, and it's fun to learn that. And then I see attacking as an art.

I loved being an attacker so much. I mean, it wasn't so much that I didn't think defending was fun or anything like that. It was just - growing up, that's kind of all I knew - was attack, attack, attack.

Modern football is like handball. You see 11 players defending on the edge of their own area.