30 football quotes, with the record straight

Somebody said that football’s a matter of life and death to you. I said, “Listen, it’s more important than that.”

The version everyone prints — "much more important than life and death" — is not a sentence Shankly ever said. This is the real one, and it was a reply, delivered seven years after he retired. His biographer John Keith records it as tongue-in-cheek, born of regret at what the job cost his family rather than bravado. source

When the seagulls follow the trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea. Thank you very much.

Said once, slowly, after his sentencing for the kick at Selhurst Park — then he stood up and left, and a generation read it as mystical philosophy. The BBC reported in 2003 that it had been assembled beforehand in a London hotel room: United’s head of security was asked for another word for a fishing boat, and what small fish were called. source

I prefer not to speak. If I speak, I am in big trouble.

Delivered to a press pack, at length, on the subject of not speaking. The joke is that he then kept talking — and it entered the language well enough to be quoted back at him for two decades. source

Football is a simple game. Twenty-two men chase a ball for ninety minutes and at the end, the Germans always win.

Said after England went out on penalties in the World Cup semi-final. The part nobody quotes: Lineker updated it himself in 2018, when Germany were knocked out in the group stage — "the Germans somehow win" no longer applied, and he said so. source

I wouldn’t say I was the best manager in the business. But I was in the top one.

The most quoted piece of self-assessment in English football, and one of the few that survives every retelling word for word. source

If God had wanted us to play football in the clouds, he’d have put grass up there.

Clough on the route-one game that ruled English football in the 1980s — the argument he spent a career on the other side of. source

Rome wasn’t built in a day. But I wasn’t on that particular job.

Offered as an explanation for how quickly he turned clubs around. He took Derby and Nottingham Forest from the second tier to the league title, and Forest to two European Cups. source

At a football club, there’s a holy trinity — the players, the manager and the supporters. Directors don’t come into it. They are only there to sign the cheques.

Shankly’s view of who a club actually belongs to. Quoted at every fan protest since, usually by people who were not born when he said it. source

He’s worse than the rain in Manchester. At least the rain in Manchester stops occasionally.

One of the game’s great talkers, on the record about another. source

Football is an art, like dancing is an art — but only when it’s well done does it become an art.

Wenger’s standing defence of how his teams played, from a manager who arrived in England in 1996 to a press corps that had never heard a coach talk like this. source

A football team is like a piano. You need eight men to carry it and three who can play the damn thing.

Shankly on squad building, decades before anyone used the phrase. The ratio has not really changed. source

Please don’t call me arrogant, but I’m European champion and I think I’m a special one.

His first day in English football. He had just won the Champions League with Porto, so it was a statement of fact wearing the costume of a boast — and it named him for the rest of his career. source

I’m the Normal One.

A deliberate answer to Mourinho’s line eleven years earlier, delivered at the same kind of unveiling. Klopp had just won two Bundesliga titles and reached a Champions League final. source

Football, bloody hell.

His entire post-match reaction to winning the European Cup with two goals in stoppage time. Three words, and nobody has ever needed them explained. source

Football without fans is nothing.

From the manager who built the Lisbon Lions — a Celtic side whose entire European Cup–winning eleven was born within about thirty miles of the ground. source

Whenever possible, give the ball to George.

Busby’s account of why George Best was told not to bother attending them. That was the team talk. source

I will love it if we beat them. Love it!

Newcastle were chasing Manchester United for the title and Ferguson had questioned whether opponents tried as hard against them. Keegan answered live on air; Newcastle did not win the league. source

My greatest challenge was knocking Liverpool right off their perch.

Said long before it was done. Liverpool had 18 league titles and United seven when he arrived in 1986; he left in 2013 with United on 20. source

Playing football is very simple, but playing simple football is the hardest thing there is.

The sentence that underwrites most of modern coaching. Cruyff said versions of it for forty years, as player, manager and critic. source

Every disadvantage has its advantage.

The most famous of the Cruyffisms — mangled Dutch that turned out to be exactly right. He used it about injuries, about smaller squads, about being outspent. source

Quality without results is pointless. Results without quality is boring.

Cruyff refusing the choice everyone else accepts. Both halves of that sentence have been used against him by people who only read one of them. source

Whoever makes the fewest mistakes wins.

Cruyff’s whole philosophy compressed into five words — and a useful corrective to the idea that he cared only about beauty. source

In my teams, the goalie is the first attacker, and the striker is the first defender.

Written off as a paradox at the time. It is now simply how the best teams are coached. source

To see the ball, to run after it, makes me the happiest man in the world.

From a career that contained everything else football can contain, the thing he chose to say about it was this. source

I was born for soccer, as Beethoven was born for music.

From the only man to win three World Cups. Read as arrogance by people who did not watch him; read as a plain description by people who did. source

It is better to fail aiming high than to succeed aiming low.

The manager who made Tottenham the first English club of the twentieth century to win the Double, in 1961. The club still quotes it; the standard it sets is not a comfortable one. source

If you are first you are first. If you are second, you are nothing.

The other side of Shankly, and a useful corrective to the cuddly version of him that gets quoted at anniversaries. source

The great fallacy is that the game is first and last about winning. It is nothing of the kind. The game is about glory.

The Tottenham captain who won the Double in 1961, arguing for how a team should play rather than what it should collect. Still quoted at Spurs, sometimes ruefully. source

What is a club in any case? It’s the noise, the passion, the feeling of belonging.

Robson managed England, Barcelona, Porto and PSV, and this is what he said a club actually is. It is engraved outside Newcastle’s ground. source

I have my confidence and I believe in myself. People call it arrogant, I call it confidence.

Ibrahimović has never once accepted the premise of a question about his ego. source