Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
If you want to become a professional football player at any level, when you're growing up, you have to make sacrifices, and it's very difficult. It's not easy, but you have to train hard, you have to live right, and you have to rest.
The biggest thing I've found since I left the game - and I'm glad I chose to leave rather than being sacked - is that so many people are in football for the wrong reasons. Not because they love the game, but because they smell money.
Paul Furlong is my vintage Rolls Royce and he cost me nothing. We polish him, look after him, and I have him fine tuned by my mechanics. We take good care of him because we have to drive him every day, not just save him for weddings.
I am very lucky to have a wife who supports me, but the absence from my children was difficult from the moment I took a very difficult decision to have a career which requires so much dedication and focus, just like raising children.
As a manager I always trusted my players on Christmas Day. I did not see any point in dragging them into the training ground - a three-hour round-trip for some of them on icy roads - when they could relax with their families instead.
You go to Madrid, you have four or five teams at the maximum level. You go to Milan, and it's the same. Napoli is similar to Newcastle in terms of everyone supporting one club in the city. It's positive and unique when you have that.
I have to remind Arsene about his team, which used to win the league, that was the dirtiest team in the league. If you cast your mind back to when they were winning the league, they had more seedings-off and bookings than anyone else.
I enjoy the gym. I think if you're fit in your body, you're fit in your mind. So I get up most mornings and I'm first there usually. I stay in there for an hour, an hour and a half, do my work, shower and then I have a nice breakfast.
People go on about my style of play. But I tell you what I do - I go into football clubs, I try to find out what systems suit the players and I try to get the damnedest out of those players. That's what I've done everywhere I've been.
I know how it goes. Six or seven months ago I was the manager of the year and I was going to be this and that, tactically this and tactically that, and now, because we have lost two world-class players, I am useless. But I accept that.
Everything we did on the training pitch, we did with the ball. You'll never see a pianist run around his piano. People ask me, 'Why don't you run through the forest, through the trees?' Well, I've never seen a tree on a football field.
English football gives other leagues an advantage. There are some traditions you can't change, I realise that. Boxing Day is non-negotiable. But you can't play nine games in December and nine in January. You have to stop at some point.
It's always good to have your players with you, it makes you feel great. That is just it. The coach and the players understand one another but people outside don't understand. But it's good to see him, it's good to see all the players.
The game's my life and I'm so passionate about it. When you see your life so intertwined with football it can make things very difficult. You might go and watch a film and start imagining footballers running across the screen, you know?
When I was a player, you only left the club if they wanted to get rid of you. That was your team - if you were at West Ham, you didn't leave until the manager wanted to replace you. You didn't think about playing for Arsenal or Chelsea.
There's got to be a role for an experienced football person helping the manager; not being a threat to the manager, but helping and sorting out a lot of the hassle he has, you know? Letting him concentrate on managing the football side.
We are in a position where we always have to change more players than we really want to and that brings a lot of instability and makes your job so much harder than it should be, because players come and go almost at the drop of the hat.
Because football is an emotional game, it's full of feeling, and that's why we try to train with a smile on our face. At the same time, we work very hard, but it's a fine line, and you've got to try and get that balance right if you can.
All the big clubs set their goals. We have to do that because it is necessary to explain to the fans. But this does not mean I am thinking only of the final results. The work you are doing every day with the team is often more important.
We've got sports scientists who insist it's important for the lads to eat after games to refuel, even if it's 2am. I used to refuel after games at West Ham until half past three in the morning in a different way - but then I'm old school.
What happened in the United changing room has happened to me 50 times in my career. I have kicked bottles of mineral water, bags and shoes but I never hit a player. It's a question of technique, and the Scots must have a better technique.
I've come from a fantastic, working class area and to actually have the fortune to be given that opportunity to get out of that has never left me. I was determined from the first day I left to make the most of it and that will never stop.
I knew the day I left Newport that if I came back, I'd failed. The fear of losing the game, of having to go home and tell my family, 'I tried but it didn't work out,' has haunted me. It is still there, and it is a strength and a weakness.
Jamestown was a very small town and I was thrilled to be there. It was interesting at first be adapting to the pro ball life style of being on the road alot and having a game almost every day but once I got use to it everything felt right.
The formula to beat the press is simple; it's the execution that's tough. If you have the quality to do so, you pass your way through it. And if you don't, you just boot it over the top. And then it becomes a game of winning 'second balls'.
The one who’s really, really impressed me is Benedikt Höwedes because he’s playing out of position. He’s never played at left back before in his life but he’s having a first-rate World Cup. So, the most astonishing player for me is Höwedes.
You have to keep that equilibrium - not getting too carried away or beating yourself up too badly. As a manager you have to be in the middle all the time. If you take water in, people look at you and say - 'look at the state he's in today.'
I always like the players to be within 10 to 15 metres of each other. When the attacking players try what I am asking them to do, and it breaks down, there are players close enough to then go and win the ball back and counter press the game.
As a young centre-back at Ajax, I played with Wim Jansen, and of course you learn a huge amount. I made some mistakes, because we Dutchmen want to solve situations by playing football. So we look at the ball, try to judge where it will come.
If you are young and open, and start loving football and really think about it then there are not a lot of alternatives to LFC. If you are a fan of another club it's okay too. But if you want to be a fan of 'the' club then it's Liverpool FC.
For the record, I've never taken a bung in my life. I might have enjoyed a meal or a bottle of wine on an agent or two but that is it. I was earning £1.5m a year, so I didn't need a little bit extra from an agent. It would have been madness.
Ask anyone in the game: if you want a player from France or a French player, 99 per cent of the time, you will have to deal with Willie McKay or someone like him. If you want to get the job done, then you need the Willie McKays of this world.
It was Tottenham at home. I thought: 'Please don't go on about Tottenham, we all know what Tottenham are about. They are nice and tidy but we'll f****** do them.' Alex came in and said: 'Lads, it's only Tottenham.' And that was it! Brilliant!
There is no point going man-to-man with a player of Messi's ability. He is so clever he would drag your player all over the pitch and still find a way to destroy you, probably exploiting the hole you've left by assigning someone to that role.
Comparing Isco to Zidane isn't ridiculous. He is very close to Zidane in terms of ability, they have a lot of similarities. Zidane is obviously in a better position to judge, and he said Isco isn't there yet but could come close in the future.
Liverpool is a club with a big, big, big history, and all the clubs in the world have a big history if the present is not too successful. If you have never had success, then nobody knows how it is, but in Liverpool, everybody knows how it was.
The sack is a sad fact of life for football managers. I have been axed three times. The chairman at Notts County was on record as saying it's the worst thing they ever did. Within a couple of years they were one game from losing league status.
My best ability was in just being ready when I was called upon. Then, I would be fit, and my legs would be light. If you sulk and are on the bench, and the gaffer calls you on, you are not ready because there's something going on in your head.
Throughout my life, ever since I played for Clausenengen back home, instead of listening to the teacher at school, I was writing down all the chances I missed in a book thinking 'I should have done this.' Scoring goals was all I thought about.
One of my best friendships dwindled in the pub business - we still talk, but it challenged that friendship too much - and that taught me to go into football and find people that I can have good relations with but without being overly friendly.
Tottenham set a points and victories record in my first season, missed out on the Champions League by one point and had a great run in the Europa League. In the second season, at the time I left we had more points than in the previous campaign.
It would make me a lot happier if I could meet up again next year with as many friends as possible from all over the world who I've met during my career. That's where the great opportunity lies, for me personally, in our role as World Cup host.
Arsene has most of the media in his pocket now and is almost - almost - affecting the officials so that you can't tackle an Arsenal player. That's something he's very clever at working on and it's almost working in his favour, you can see that.
What frustrates me more than anything is that I push on so far and people become complacent, lose that bit of edge, and it's very difficult to keep driving people on. That's probably the greatest fault of mine: I expect everybody to be like me.
There's different types of strikers: Harry Kane is a wonderful finisher, Jamie Vardy has great pace and has come onto the scene exceptionally well and is playing consistently, and Wayne Rooney is a player I have admired during all of his career.
I kept my speeches short as captain. I focused on the key points of the opposition of the day. As coach, I was never afraid to give long speeches to the players throughout our preparations. It was important they had all the information possible.
First, as an owner of the club, you must choose a style of football. After that, you must find the managers that will work with the young players in your team in that style. After that, you must put a manager in the squad with the same mentality.
When I arrived at Juventus as the manager in 1999, Antonio Conte was the captain of the club, an Italy international, and a player who had a lot of influence in the dressing room - and when I needed a leader in the team, he was the obvious choice.
My impression of Abramovich is that he loves football, his club, and his players. He wants to know everything that is going on and is very passionate. Berlusconi, too, loves his club, but he was a man of the people and conducted his life in public.
When I was playing, I always preferred to be meeting a side like the Faroe Isles or San Marino early doors. Do things right in those games, and you knew you would get six points on the board, at least be up and running and challenging in the group.