Player Quotes - Page 68

Messi doesn't have to do it in the Premier League to prove himself. The Champions League is the ultimate club competition. If he was in the Premier League, he'd be the best player by some distance.

To play chess on a truly high level requires a constant stream of exact, informed decisions, made in real time and under pressure from your opponent. What's more, it requires a synthesis of some very different virtues, all of which are necessary to good decisions: calculatioñ, creativity and a desire for results. If you ask a Grandmaster, an artist and a computer scientist what makes a good chess player, you'll get a glimpse of these different strengths in action.

A lot of amateurs are terrified of going up against a player who is clearly better than they are. They never play their best, because they aren't comfortable. There's one surefire way to get over that, and it's to ask yourself, 'What if I beat him?' Imagine the possibility.

When I was coaching, the one thought that I would try to get across to my players was that everything I do each day, everything I say, I must first think what effect it will have on everyone concerned.

I admit I was somewhat concerned when we started to sign so many players - naturally you are going to worry about whether you can retain your place in the side.

Of course it is going to be difficult for any player to get in the Chelsea side no matter who they are.

In international football, you need pace and you need your players up top to create things out of nothing and run at people.

My idol was Johann Cruyff (a Dutch soccer player) and I wanted to be like him. But when I realized that I would never be, I decided to do something else. I met the kitchen by chance and quickly became completely enamoured by it.

I would love to see as many of the black players as possible in today's Major League Baseball make every effort to go to the Negro Leagues Museum and get a first-hand view of how it all started.

Money is only useful when you get rid of it. It is like the odd card in 'Old Maid'; the player who is finally left with it has lost.

People love a player with ideas, because at the end of the day, the crowd want to be entertained. And with football being only a game, it has to be enjoyable too.

Once I grew from 6'1' to about 6'6', by that time I was going into 12th grade, and that's when I started wanting to play basketball, because, pretty much basketball players always got the girl.

As a former football player who has carried a football more than 4,000 times, trust me, I did not go into ballroom dancing with my body being 100 percent, with no aches or pains or ailments coming with me. When you're dancing, you're doing stuff that your body's not used to, and so you start to aggravate those old injuries.

Pianists don't argue too much generally because we have a hard enough time just getting things right. Arguing is for string players.

I'm not everybody's cup of tea. But sometimes criticism can be hurtful. Be respectful I'm a good piano player, I can sing well, I write good songs. If you don't like it, fair enough. But give me a break.

I want to be the greatest player ever in my era.

Plays are not as important as players, and players are not as important as teammates

I've heard the joke a million times that "Jews in Sports" must be the thinnest book in the world. Actually, I've seen a lot of great players working at the Maccabi Games.

I wanted to avoid service, because I was on the road to becoming a professional basketball player.

When I was growing up, I wanted to be a coach. I had people telling me you can't do this, you're not a great player. Be realistic. When I got rejection letters from colleges where I wanted to coach, my mom would say, "You are going to make it someday. You have something special within you and that is your spirit for life which will help you get to the top."

My dream as a child was to play with a bass player like Ray Brown, who played with the Oscar Peterson Trio. The feeling I had listening to his work was almost carnal, so to actually play for him was earth-shattering for me.

Younger players in this music often turn out to be middle aged; it is not a young music.

A player dreams of being a superstar, but he doesn't want people flocking all over him asking for an autograph.

What invariably distinguishes a good player from a poor one is their respective address positions or setups.

John McEnroe...was arguably the best serve-and-volley man of all time, but then McEnroe was an exception to pretty much every predictive norm there was. At his peak (say 1980 to 1984), he was the greatest tennis player who ever lived-the most talented, the most beautiful, the most tormented: a genius. For me, watching McEnroe don a blue polyester blazer and do stiff lame truistic color commentary for TV is like watching Faulkner do a Gap ad.