You’ll never win anything with kids. Alan Hansen
I didn’t want really to be involved in a normal soccer club. Eric Cantona
When seagulls follow a trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea. Eric Cantona
If you have only one passion in life – football – and you pursue it to the exclusion of everything else, it becomes very dangerous. When you stop doing this activity it is as though you are dying. The death of that activity is a death in itself. Eric Cantona
The real fans of football come from the working class. Now they cannot afford to come and watch the game. Eric Cantona
I prefer to win titles with the team ahead of individual awards or scoring more goals than anyone else. I’m more worried about being a good person than being the best football player in the world. When all this is over, what are you left with? When I retire, I hope I am remembered for being a decent guy. Lionel Messi
In football as in watchmaking, talent and elegance mean nothing without rigour and precision. Lionel Messi
The men were out together watching football. And drinking. Timeshift: The Rules of Drinking, BBC 2012
I think the best place to work in football is England. Jose Mourinho
Please don’t call me arrogant, but I’m European champion and I think I’m a special one. Jose Mourinho
I really want to try soccer after I retire because I’ve watched football over the years and I think I could be a good contender. Usain Bolt
I crawled back to bed, knowing I was done for. Hours later, the phone in our room started ringing. It was George. He was not happy.
‘Room 312. Now!’ he shouted.
Bouldy got up. I tried to pull myself together, splashing my face with water and hauling on my shorts and flip flops. It was a lovely day outside, the sun was scorching hot and there wasn't a cloud in the sky, but it might as well have been a pissing wet morning in St Albans for all I cared. I felt sick to the pit of my stomach as we made the Walk of Death to Room 312, which I knew was Paul and Gus’s room.
When we walked in, I thought I’d arrived in downtown Baghdad. Water dripped from the ceiling. The board games were in pieces and all the plastic parts were scattered over the floor. The balcony window was wide open and I could see a bed upended by the pool outside. Paul Merson, How Not to be a Professional Footballer
All that I know most surely about morality and obligations I owe to football. Albert Camus
[Football] has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting. George Orwell, The Collected Essays
I have learned things from the game. Much of my knowledge of locations in Britain and Europe comes not from school, but from away games or the sports pages, and hooliganism has given me both a taste for sociology and a degree of fieldwork experience. I have learned the value of investing time and emotion in things I cannot control, and of belonging to a community whose aspirations I share completely and uncritically. Nick Hornby, Fever Pitch
My companions for the afternoon were affable, welcoming middle-aged men in their late thirties and early forties who simply had no conception of the import of the afternoon for the rest of us. To them it was an afternoon out, a fun thing to do on a Saturday afternoon; if I were to meet them again, they would, I think, be unable to recall the score that afternoon, or the scorer (at half-time they talked office politics), and in a way I envied them their indifference. Perhaps there is an argument that says Cup Final tickets are wasted on the fans, in the way that youth is wasted on the young; these men, who knew just enough about football to get them through the afternoon, actively enjoyed the occasion, its drama and its noise and its momentum, whereas I hated every minute of it, as I hated every Cup Final involving Arsenal. ibid.
Something goes wrong. They suddenly lose speed. The Elizabethan has crashed through a fence. Manchester Utd: Munich Air Crash, Channel 5 2013
Harry Gregg pulls out one passenger after another both living and dead. ibid.
21 people are dead ... Manchester United, one of the world’s greatest football teams, is effectively wiped out. ibid.
These lads they were special. They’re not just the best team. Of course they are. They’re the best loved. United, guard, BBC 2011
Everybody loves you – mighty Duncan Edwards. ibid.
You’re just kids. How can you win like that when you’re just kids. ibid.
This is how movie stars live, lads. ibid.
Looks like we’re getting the train, lads. ibid.
We know there are twenty-three survivors. ibid. BBC News
They’re all dead, Jimmy. Why did this happen to us? ibid. Bobby Charlton
It’s all my fault. ibid. Matt Busby
How can I pass to another player knowing it’s not Duncan? ibid. Charlton
What Harry Gregg did in the accident was marvellous. I can’t believe what he did. It’s just terrific the bravery that he had. Bobby Charlton, re Munich air disaster
The club was never really the same again. Bobby Charlton
Tottenham have impressed me. They haven’t thrown in the towel even though they have been under the gun. Bobby Charlton
Football is a sport built on rivalries ... So when Arsenal played bitter rivals Spurs for a place in the 1991 F A Cup Final it matters. And when it matters it has the potential to become an epic. Hall of Fame: Clash of the Titans
Gazza stepped up [35 yards] ... Spurs had beaten their greatest rivals. ibid.
When England played Germany in the semi-finals of Euro ’96 the tabloid press went into overdrive ... The game went to penalties ... Both teams converted their first five penalties and the game went to sudden death. ibid.
Wycombe was in the middle of an injury crisis ... The [FA Cup] quarter-final against Leicester ... Amazingly, the man Wycombe had found with a teletext advert had scored the winning goal. Hall of Fame: One Hit Wonders
In 1999 Manchester United signed a player whose downfall was so spectacular that it has almost completely overshadowed the memory of his success ... Alex Ferguson splashed £4.5 million to bring in Italian super-keeper Masimo Taibi ... A legend had been born, or so it seemed ... It was a humiliating moment for United’s new keeper, and has gone down as one of the worst goalkeeping gaffs ever. But things were about to go from bad to worse ... He was shipped out of the club a few weeks later. ibid.
The 1990 semi-finals produced one of the greatest rollercoaster matches ever witnessed ... Crystal Palace ... would face the mighty Liverpool. ibid.
Earlier in the season Liverpool had humiliated Crystal Palace 9-0 at Anfield. Most were predicting a similar result ... Crystal Palace managed to restrict Liverpool to just one goal. At this stage though few could have predicted what would unfold in the second period. The Palace players reacted immediately to their half-time talk. ibid.
The FA Cup 5th round tie at Anfield in 1991 was no different – a tight, tense nil-nil draw. But the replay at Goodison Park would be different, and is remembered as one of the greatest rollercoasters of them all. Hall of Fame: Rollercoasters
The World Cup in Mexico in 1986 will always be remembered for the achievements of one man: Diego Maradona. Hall of Fame: In a League of Their Own
Having shown us the Beast, Maradona showed us the Beauty. ibid.
The FA Cup, much like Paul Daniels, seems to have lost much of its magic over the years. Nobody, however, had told Steven Gerrard this in the 2006 FA Cup Final. ibid.