Sentences I never thought I would write. (1) That John Prescott certainly has a way with the ladies. (2) Give it to Steve McClaren, he seems like the man for the England job. (3) Peter Crouch is the man to replace Rooney.
Sven-Göran Eriksson, confronted with arguably Europe's weakest qualifying group, has a problem; it is the same one that afflicted Jacques Santini, the France coach at the time, before Euro 2004. Not that there are no easy matches at international level; rather, there are no hard ones. In qualifying for the 2004 European Championship finals, France faced a group not of death, but of sun-block, comprising Slovenia, Israel, Cyprus and Malta, which they duly won by ten points, averaging 3.6 goals per game. We all know what happened next.
Greece won the 2004 European Championship with the oldest trick in the book: man-for-man marking. Why? Because nobody expected it - and by the time they knew what Otto Rehhagel's team were about, it was too late. Great football is like great comedy in that way. It is all in the timing.
Ken Bates is a football cretin.
Just when you feel like hauling him off and strangling hin, he gets some goal out of nowhere.
My youth coach told me he'd got these two great 15-year-olds. I told him I don't want to know, because by the time they're 18 I'll be dead.
Ally McCoist will always get you a goal, whether he's playing or on the bench.
In Louisiana, we don't bet on football games, we bet on whether a politician is going to be indicted or not.
Football gives the African people hope, a true motivation for their life.
Football became my obvious metaphor as it does for many, and I began to equate this as being 'halftime' in my life. As I reflected on my professional life I realized how much time I had spent trying to make first downs and score touchdowns. My focus had now changed into trying to be more about people and serving others.
Professional football is no longer a game. It's a war. And it brings out the same primitive instincts that go back thousands of years.
You're not a real manager unless you've been sacked.
I don't get it: they re-package the same shitty football games every year, update a few stats, call it a new game and millions of suckers keep buying them. What's the point? Why not just go outside and play real football instead? Or even better yet, get bent. Nobody likes football.
Offside killed my team. They are not God. They made a mistake and I understand. I don't want three points, I just want 'sorry.'
I am in a lot of pain. They say it is more pain than when you have a baby but I don't know as I have not had one. It is not possible.
I've always really just liked football, and I've always devoted a lot of time to it. When I was a kid, my friends would call me to go out with them, but I would stay home because I had practice the next day. I like going out, but you have to know when you can and when you can't.
Motivation is not something I struggle with. I love playing football, I love being in training.
I still have a lot of room for improvement. For example, I want to shoot equally well with both feet.
Football is not played on paper, it is played on a pitch. This game is not mathematics and in football, two plus two very rarely equals four - it's usually three or five.
If my mother hadn't thrown my football boots on the fire, I might have become as famous as Denis Compton.
I love the values football can teach. It gives young people a sense of how to defer present gratification for future success, it teaches self-discipline, it teaches teamwork, it gives them a bonding experience that can be hard to find somewhere else, it teaches the ability to process large amounts of information and apply it in real time.
Sometimes he does the brilliant things really well.
Football is not part of that lifestyle anymore.
There is something to be said for waking up every morning and seeing the sun.
The linesman flagged initially because he thought I was an Oldham player. Fair enough, I did have a replica shirt on - but I also have a big furry head.
