Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
When I took over at Everton, the challenge for us was to try to go toe-to-toe with a club having success in Europe and sometimes competing for the Premier League.
In club football you have your players and staff with you all the time, preparing for two games a week, you know them inside out, you have a discipline over them.
If you have a car and you win a race, you cannot just settle for that. You must try and make the car better. We're a good car but you always want a bigger engine.
What I learned was it does not matter how much support you have in the boardroom, from the directors, the executives: you have to get results, and you have to win.
Football can change really quickly; you really are king for a day. Once you get caught up with things and think you've arrived... you've never arrived in football.
The differences between the top teams in Euro 2000 are so minimal that I think you have to be very clever in defence and stop your opponents getting opportunities.
I do wonder how managers like Brian Clough and Bill Shankly would cope. How would Cloughie deal with players taking five pairs of different colour boots to a game?
I used to think you needed a passport to go south of Watford. But when I came to London the people were fantastic, so good, right down to earth, my kind of people.
When you're younger, you have three or four bad results and you worry about everything. You worry about injuries, because they always seem to be your best players.
I remember when I was younger I used to sing that Beatles song, 'When I'm 64', and think that's light years away for me - I was 18 when it came out. Now here I am.
I was under pressure in my first season at Valencia, and we won the title. Two years later, I was under more pressure there, and we won the title and the UEFA Cup.
I think that the problem for any player you want to select for England, not just in isolation, is that it'll be a concern if that player doesn't play for his team.
When I was a player, if you weren't in the team you would be knocking on the manager's door, saying, 'Well, if I can't play here, I'd like to play somewhere else.'
I loved watching Ken Griffey Jr play for the Mariners and when he was trade to the Reds I was especially excited to get the opportunity to watch him play in person.
I have spoken to refs after games, just to ask about something that had occurred during a game. It's always been off the record and I've never had a ref not answer.
When you get sacked, everybody thinks: 'He's a football manager, he'll get lots of money,' but you still get sacked, which for me is a slur on you, it degrades you.
The hardest thing in life is reinventing yourself and staying at the top of your game, whilst the hardest thing in football is finding that club you want to stay at.
Mourinho is very intelligent; he knows what he's doing. He has the right to act like he wants to act, and he's very successful with it, so who am I to criticise him?
The most important thing however is the money. What use would it be to us, to have a a mighty stadium but a useless team, because we couldn't afford anything better?
Despite all that has happened in his career since, one of the biggest regrets of my life in management is not taking Luis Suarez to Tottenham when we had the chance.
My ceiling's broken, my car's got a puncture and we've just lost two matches. But I've got my health and I'll ask the big man upstairs why he didn't give us a point.
But the art of management has not changed. The art of it is still 80 to 90 per cent man-management. It is just a matter of getting the best out of what you have got.
What really, really matters is the dressing room and the people on the training ground being very, very focused in what we are trying to achieve on and off the ball.
Regarding why I left Inter, it was because I wanted the extra edge to fulfil my ambitions as a professional coach, so I took the risk to find my own job at Academica.
I played at the highest level, so I know what kind of things go through a player's mind and how he might behave, what patterns will crop up in the day-to-day routine.
I thought I could go into Cardiff, but different clubs have different cultures, different playing styles and philosophies. I'm more suited to the other jobs I've had.
You need two or three players who can do that - play behind the striker, on the right wing, the left wing... striker, maybe. If we have those, it's good for the team.
There's only a certain amount of times you can tell somebody what they should or shouldn't be doing. If they don't want to take it on board there's little you can do.
They rejected me as a player. Newcastle said I wasn't going to be big or strong enough to make the grade, Burnley said the same. Most people said the same to be fair.
You always have to be very, very careful with statistics. It doesn't mean that we negate them completely; we just don't use them to the extent that people might think.
From the first moment you accept to join a club, the best thing you can do and the most respectful thing to do is ask yourself: 'What is the history behind this club?'
Someone said that my coaching is a combination of Milan's defensive discipline and the Dutch propensity for attacking football, and I think that is a fair description.
In order to stay connected with my fans I do my best to sign autographs before and after every game as well sign all cards that are sent to me via throughout the year.
When you win something, if you don't have that mentality that comes from a tradition of always winning, the built-in demands of a big club, there's always a small dip.
At the moment we've only got 16 first-team players and my initials stand for Mick McCarthy, not Merlin the Magician (the new Wolves manager gets the excuses in early!)
Most of the clubs I have had, they have been in a precarious situation when I have taken over and I have had to change it, even going back to Scarborough and all that.
Villa's history doesn't frighten me. Not at all. I respect it. I actually embrace it, because I've been through it. I know how difficult it is to win the European Cup.
We were almost getting used to playing without fans in the Champions League. Jokes aside though, I think help from our fans will be indispensable for such a big match.
I still say the '94 Double team is the best. They could outfight you or outplay you, depending on the way you wanted it. But this side is moving in the same direction.
If I got sacked because my results weren't good enough at Everton, I accept it, but getting sacked when they finish eighth, it is ridiculous. In fact, it is ludicrous.
I have read loads of books on Napoleon. For him to come from nothing and then lead his country, that fascinated me. It doesn't matter what you think of him. He did it.
How can you change things when you are under pressure? You don't tell a player who keeps giving the ball away not to touch the ball; you keep training and working hard.
It is normal to be under pressure in England and Italy when you arrive in the last two months of the season. Every manager is talked about, and their squad is examined.
Stats can do anything you wish. When we got the sack at Aston Villa it came out there had only been Man City in that calendar year who had scored more goals than Villa.
What we have been doing at Tottenham with my staff is a reaction to the mistakes we made at Chelsea. We did not do everything wrong there, but we could have done better.
In football there is very rarely a "typical day" - there are always issues and challenges that arise from nowhere, and as manager you have to be ready to deal with them.
I am a lucky man because when I was young, I wanted to be a footballer. Suddenly, around 30 years old, I thought, 'I want to try to be a manager because it's different.'
We have played a very good side, playing at the sort of level we are aspiring to. We need to come up a couple of levels ourselves because at the moment we are not there.
Phil Neville could be on the road to one day, maybe, becoming the England manager. I know him closely. He was a great captain, a great leader. He's had great experience.
The English game is not faster than the German game. Perhaps there are a few more sprints. But there is a different style of football here, partially due to the weather.