Quotes about football

„I am more worried about being a good person than being the best football player in the world. When all this is over, what are you left with? “

—  Lionel Messi Argentine association football player 1987

„I thought about quitting after Istanbul because nothing made sense any more…I no longer felt like a man. All of a sudden, football had become the least important thing, precisely because it was the most important: a very painful contradiction. I didn't dare look in the mirror in case my reflection spat back at me. The only possible solution I could think of was to retire.“

—  Andrea Pirlo Italian footballer 1979

On the losing the 2005 Champions League final to Liverpool
Ibid [pp. 84-86]

„I can't believe it. I can't believe it. Football. Bloody hell.“

—  Alex Ferguson Scottish footballer and manager 1941

„Football is the ballet of the masses.“

—  Dmitri Shostakovich Russian composer and pianist 1906 - 1975

„Football is like chess, only without the dice.“

—  Lukas Podolski German footballer 1985

Fussball ist wie Schach, nur ohne Würfel.
Quoted in David Gordon Smith. "German Football's Greatest Sayings." http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/like-chess-only-without-the-dice-german-football-s-greatest-sayings-a-558638-druck.html Spiegel Online International. 6 October 2008. Retrieved 10 April 2018.

„I wasn't given the genetics for football. This is my gift right here. I was always well-built. You can't do certain sports without the genetics, and talent, too, of course.“

—  Ronnie Coleman American bodybuilder 1964

Ellen Mazo (May 1, 1999) "Building the Image of a Role Model", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, p. A-1.

„Ronaldo (Brazilian footballer) was my hero. He was the best forward I've ever seen. He was so fast that he could score a goal from nothing and he struck the ball better than anyone I've seen.“

—  Lionel Messi Argentine association football player 1987

Interview with FourFourTwo, 2012 http://www.fourfourtwo.com/news/messi-brazil-striker-ronaldo-my-hero

„The big test in football is how a captain leads under conditions of adversity.“

—  Jack Gibson Australian rugby league player and coach 1929 - 2008

„O'Connell: It's been suggested […] by teachers that live football should be shown after kids have gone to bed. Is swearing in football really such a big deal?“

—  Stuart Hall sociologist and cultural theorist 1929 - 2014

Rawling, Kelly answer
BBC Fighting Talk (2005)

„The socialism I believe in is everyone working for each other, everyone having a share of the rewards. It's the way I see football, the way I see life.“

—  Bill Shankly Scottish footballer and manager 1913 - 1981

[Powley, Adam, Robert, Gillan, Shankly's Village: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Glenbuck and its Famous Footballing Sons, https://books.google.com/books?id=Qe7NCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT162&lpg=PT162&dq=%22The+socialism+I+believe+in+is+everyone+working+for+each+other,+everyone+having+a+share+of+the+rewards.+It%27s+the+way+I+see+football,+the+way+I+see+life.%22&source=bl#v=onepage, 2016-08-18, 2015, Worthing, UK, Pitch, 931595421, 9781785310706]

„A big, studly football jock like me? I got plenty of blood to spare. For you, I have anything to spare.“

—  Kristin Cast, book Betrayed

Source: Betrayed

„Nor was my attendance at the Polo Grounds limited to baseball games. I sat in the lower left field stands to watch the championship professional football game between the undefeated Chicago Bears led by Bronc Nagurski and the New York Giants. Because the field was so icy slick—the temperature dipped to four degrees above zero that Sunday afternoon—the Giants' owner Wellington Mara had a minion at halftime break into Manhattan College's gymnasium and steal the school's basketball sneakers. Clad in sneakers and suddenly able to keep from sliding all over the joint, the Giants turned a 13-3 deficit into a 30-13 victory. All this despite an advisory to his teammates from a former Chicago linebacker named George Halas, "Step on their toes! Step on their toes!"“

—  Arnold Hano American writer 1922

From his Foreword https://books.google.com/books?id=jF7v30gqs_0C&pg=PA8&dq=%22Nor+was+my+attendance%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAGoVChMIr7rJg_3UxwIVRDc-Ch0APQ6M#v=onepage&q=%22Nor%20was%20my%20attendance%22&f=false to The Early Polo Grounds
Sports-related

„Aside from earning their livings, what did your people do, mostly? Games. Sports. Casinos. Loud machines that went fast. Shopping. Lawsuits blaming other for whatever went wrong. What did they believe in? Conspiracy theories. Racial superiority. Heroes with superpowers. Faith healers. God-loves-you religions. State-supported lotteries. All that enormous energy expended to conquer nothing at all, stadia full of people watching no conquering going on. For every scientist or person in government who really tried to conquer, there were a thousand people buying lottery tickets, drinking beer, watching football, and growing old.“

—  Sheri S. Tepper American fiction writer 1929 - 2016

The Visitor in Ch. 44 : the visitor, pp. 460-461
The Visitor (2002)

„My offensive player of the year is going to be Javon Ringer for the way he has carried his team and the workhorse load that he’s carried all year long. Everyone knows he’s getting the football yet he continues to produce.“

—  Javon Ringer All-American college football player, professional football player, running back 1987

Charles Davis of the Big Ten Network, quoted at Ringer 23.com (undated)

„He’s very elegant, he commits few fouls because he’s always first to every ball and this is an important gift. He’s also fast and has good technique and these are important skills for a defender. Italian football puts players to the test and he immediately showed he was up to the task and ready to play for Milan, at the San Siro. Playing with the kind of continuity he had this season proves he really belongs to the elite.“

—  Thiago Silva Brazilian footballer 1984

Franco Baresi, 2011 https://www.acmilan.com/en/news/show/134347
From former and current footballers

„To feminine eyes a man's prestige, or his fame, envelops him in a luminous haze which obscures his faults. The triumphs of an aviator, an actor, a football player, an orator are often responsible for the beginning of a love affair.“

—  André Maurois French writer 1885 - 1967

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Loving

„(To a football player) If you lie to me, I'll mop the floor with you worse than anyone who's ever tackled you.“

—  Judith Sheindlin American lawyer, judge, television personality, and author 1942

Quotes from Judge Judy cases, Being cocky

„When blimp photographs are taken of giant stadia packed full of rock-concert or football fans, we get an idea of what 100,000 people look like. We all think of Hiroshima as the worst single killing of humans by humans. That was about a 75,000-capacity-coliseum-full. Each day of each year, year after year, a 75,000-capacity-stadiumfull of around-the-world humans perish from starvation or its side effects, despite an annual average 5-percent world food-production overage of the amount of food adequate for the total world's population. This daily kill of innocents dwarfs the awful Auschwitz killing.“

—  Buckminster Fuller American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist 1895 - 1983

From 1980s onwards, Grunch of Giants (1983)

„There is no academic virtue in playing mediocre football and no academic vice in winning a game that by all odds one should lose…There has indeed been a surrender at Notre Dame, but it is a surrender to excellence on all fronts, and in this we hope to rise above ourselves with the help of God.“

—  Theodore Hesburgh Congressional Gold Medal recipient 1917 - 2015

"The Facts Of The Matter," Sports Illustrated (1959-01-19), ( online http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1070047/1/index.htm)