These are some of my favorite soccer quotes from inspirational soccer players.
“Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I’m very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.”
-Bill Shankly
English soccer manager
“Football’s a difficult business and aren’t they prima donnas. But it’s a wonderful game.”
-Queen Elizabeth II
To Premier League Chairman David Richards, November 2006
“If a team wants to intimidate you physically and you let them, they’ve won.”
-Mia Hamm
American World Cup Soccer champion
“I’m here to score a lot of goals. It’s my speciality, that’s what I’ve been brought here to do, and I want to score plenty ; like I did with Barcelona. And here, there’s every reason to think I can do it.”
-Ronaldo
Brazilian soccer player
“The rules of soccer are very simple, basically it is this: if it moves, kick it. If it doesn’t move, kick it until it does.”
-Phil Woosnam
Welsh soccer player and manager
“In football everything is complicated by the presence of the opposite team.”
-Jean Paul Sartre
French philosopher
“Every single day I wake up and commit to myself to becoming a better player.”
-Mia Hamm
American female soccer player
“The vision of a champion is someone bent over, drenched in sweat, to a point of exhaustion, when no one else is watching.”
-Anson Dorrance
American women’s soccer coach
“Every kid around the world who plays soccer wants to be Pele. I have a great responsibility to show them not just how to be like a soccer player, but how to be like a man.”
-Pele
Brazilian soccer player, considered possibly world’s greatest
“Fail to prepare, prepare to fail.”
-Roy Keane
Irish soccer player and English football club manager
“Pele called me the greatest footballer in the world. That is the ultimate salute to my life.”
-George Best
Northern Ireland soccer player, from his autobiography, The Good, The Bad and the Bubbly
“The goal was scored a little bit by the hand of God, another bit by the head of Maradona.”
-Maradona
Argentinian soccer player, on goal against England in 1986 World Cup
“Football is all very well a good game for rough girls, but not for delicate boys.”
-Oscar Wilde
Irish writer
“I am a member of a team, and I rely on the team, I defer to it and sacrifice for it, because the team, not the individual, is the ultimate champion.”
-Mia Hamm
American female soccer player
“The goalkeeper is the jewel in the crown and getting at him should be almost impossible. It’s the biggest sin in football to make him do any work.”
-George Graham
Scottish soccer player and manager
“Italians can’t win the game against you, but you can lose the game against the Italians.”
-Johan Cryuff
Dutch soccer player
“Some people tell me that we professional players are soccer slaves. Well, if this is slavery, give me a life sentence.”
-Bobby Charlton
English soccer player and 1966 World Cup winner
“Whoever invented football should be worshipped as a God.”
-Hugo Sanchez
Mexican soccer player and coach
“Five days shalt thou labour, as the Bible says. The seventh day is the Lord thy God’s. The sixth day is for football.”
-Anthony Burgess
English writer
“In Latin America the border between soccer and politics is vague. There is a long list of governments that have fallen or been overthrown after the defeat of the national team.”
-Luis Suarez
Mexican journalist, quoted in The Soccer War by Ryszard Kapuscinski (1969)
“Failure happens all the time. It happens every day in practice. What makes you better is how you react to it.”
-Mia Hamm
American female soccer player
“When I go to the press conference before the game, in my mind the game has already started.”
-Jose Mourinho
Portuguese soccer manager
Hope you enjoyed and feel inspired!
