Football Quotes

1. “Football is a simple game. Twenty-two men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans always win.”

2. “Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it's much more serious than that.”

3. “The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office.”

4. “Fear doesn't exist in football, especially for Real Madrid.”

5. “You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.”

6. “Football is like life - it requires perseverance, self-denial, hard work, sacrifice, dedication and respect for authority.”

7. “Unfortunately, everyone thought that Teri Hatcher was my wife. Matter of fact, I would be with my wife, holding my wife's hand at a football game, and someone would come up to me and say, 'Hey, I love those commercials you do with your wife.' My kids almost had shirts made up that said, 'Teri Hatcher is not my mom.'”

8. “Your best ability is availability and if you're not on the field, they can't use you and you don't play. So, I try to play as much football as I can.”

9. “The football field was a place where I could express myself and just be me. Play the game as well as you can and that's what you're judged on. Not the colour of your skin, or your beliefs, or the conversation you have around racism.”

10. “Football is a game of mistakes. Whoever makes the fewest mistakes wins.”

11. “Football is unconditional love.”

12. “I am not a dreamer. I am a football romantic.”

13. “Without football, my life is worth nothing.”

14. “In football, the worst things are excuses. Excuses mean you cannot grow or move forward.”

15. “In football, the result is an impostor. You can do things really, really well but not win. There's something greater than the result, more lasting - a legacy.”

16. “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.”

17. “Football is the most important of the less important things in the world.”

18. “To become a great player, you've got to show real dedication and commitment to football, and you've got to be very humble and hard-working. And, above all, you've got to fight to make your dreams come true.”

19. “When my first semester grades came out, my mom and dad told me I wouldn't be playing football.”

20. “I do everything right-handed - football, tennis, darts and golf - except for snooker.”

21. “Football is a game about feelings and intelligence.”

22. “Football is an art, like dancing is an art - but only when it's well done does it become an art.”

23. “It's so easy for a kid to join a gang, to do drugs… we should make it that easy to be involved in football and academics.”

24. “I am the only player who has been inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame and am the second-best player in my family.”

25. “I am constantly being asked about individuals. The only way to win is as a team. Football is not about one or two or three star players.”

26. “If anything goes bad, I did it. If anything goes semi-good, we did it. If anything goes really good, then you did it. That's all it takes to get people to win football games for you.”

27. “Football is a fertility festival. Eleven sperm trying to get into the egg. I feel sorry for the goalkeeper.”

28. “In football, everything is possible, from the moment you work and you believe in your qualities.”

29. “Fifa has lost the trust of the people. We cannot allow the architects and controllers of world football to get away with dragging the beautiful game through the grime of corruption and bribery.”

30. “Football isn't a contact sport, it's a collision sport. Dancing is a contact sport.”

31. “Nobody in football should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein.”

32. “I do not play football to win the Ballon d'Or. I play football to be happy, because I love it and want to play football.”

33. “I played football for a team called the East Dragons on the east side of town. We only had six regular season games. And six games I played tail back and I had 18 touchdowns in six games. That's when I knew I had some athletic ability.”

34. “The game of life is a lot like football. You have to tackle your problems, block your fears, and score your points when you get the opportunity.”

35. “Men kick friendship around like a football, but it doesn't seem to crack. Women treat it like glass and it goes to pieces.”

36. “It's like everything in football - and life. You need to look, you need to think, you need to move, you need to find space, you need to help others. It's very simple in the end.”

37. “Football is about joy. It's about dribbling. I favour every idea that makes the game beautiful. Every good idea has to last.”

38. “I threw up before every single football game I played, and I did so up through my NFL career. It was good pressure. It was pressure to be good. It was pressure to be the best. It was pressure to want to win.”

39. “Football is great because you always have another opportunity to change history.”

40. “Great moments of entertainment, great football, unforgettable evenings. I think that's what it's all about: experience, emotions, and the special touch that the Champions League brings on and off the field.”

41. “Football's not just about scoring goals - it's about winning.”

42. “You cannot win a game of football on your own; it's about the entire squad working together to achieve something. That's how football works: it has always been about the group, not the individual.”

43. “I grew up in Hockley, Birmingham. It was an environment I'll never forget in terms of playing football on local pitches, kicking a ball around in the front garden and all over the house. It was a positive place to live, and somewhere, that gave me the right grounding for where I am today.”

44. “Football is a wonderful game which can be cruel at times.”

45. “Don't walk through life just playing football. Don't walk through life just being an athlete. Athletics will fade. Character and integrity and really making an impact on someone's life, that's the ultimate vision, that's the ultimate goal - bottom line.”

46. “United is no longer just a football club; it is an institution. I feel the demands are beyond one human being.”

47. “I had pro offers from the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers, who were pretty hard up for linemen in those days. If I had gone into professional football the name Jerry Ford might have been a household word today.”

48. “Gentlemen, it is better to have died as a small boy than to fumble this football.”

49. “In my mind, God made me to play football for a very long time.”

50. “Happiness does not come from football awards. It's terrible to correlate happiness with football. Happiness comes from a good job, being able to feed your wife and kids. I don't dream football, I dream the American dream - two cars in a garage, be a happy father.”

51. “Football is a team sport and not an individual sport. We win as a team, and every individual is better if we are part of the team.”

52. “Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it's important.”

53. “Football is all about fans.”

54. “The natural state of the football fan is bitter disappointment, no matter what the score.”

55. “Politics is like football; if you see daylight, go through the hole.”

56. “I love football, football is my life.”

57. “It is painful to watch children trying to show off for parents who are engrossed in their cell phones. Children are nostalgic for the 'good old days' when parents used to read to them without the cell phone by their side or watch football games or Disney movies without having the BlackBerry handy.”

58. “Dominating the midfield is the most important thing in modern football. To succeed, you have to be good at everything.”

59. “You can spend the money on new housing for poor people and the homeless, or you can spend it on a football stadium or a golf course.”

60. “I played football at uni right up until I broke my leg. This girl slide-tackled me, studs up and broke it on impact. I was in my fourth year and mentally it made such a difference having that taken away from me when I needed it.”

61. “We never had anybody who froze to death playing football. You probably had somebody who died from heat stroke playing football.”

62. “Football fans share a universal language that cuts across many cultures and many personality types. A serious football fan is never alone. We are legion, and football is often the only thing we have in common.”

63. “It has been an honor and a privilege to have had the chance to come back to Liverpool Football Club as manager.”

64. “There are people for whom Rangers Football Club is their entire way of life.”

65. “It's weird… people say they're not like apes. Now how do you explain football then?”

66. “Football is a game you play with your mind.”

67. “People who work together will win, whether it be against complex football defenses, or the problems of modern society.”

68. “When Brian told me he grew up in New Mexico, I told him I thought it is cool that people from other countries play football. He corrected me on my geography and agreed to sit down with me anyway.”

69. “Racism is not only in football, it's in cricket too. Even within teams as a black man, I get the end of the stick. Black and powerful. Black and proud.”

70. “In football as in watchmaking, talent and elegance mean nothing without rigour and precision.”

71. “Unfortunately, in football, sometimes you think that things might go one way, but eventually, they take an unexpected turn or head in another direction.”

72. “I want to play football until my body says, 'You can't run anymore: you're dead.'”

73. “A poet is never one of the people. He is detached, remote, and the life of small-time dances and talk about football would not be for him. He might take part but could not belong.”

74. “I like both athletic girls and girly girls. It depends on their personality. I like girls who can go out and play sports with me and throw the football around, but you don't want a girl who's too much tougher than you. I like brainy girls who can respond to what I'm saying.”

75. “I'm married to football, baseball is my girlfriend.”

76. “I used to play football for Real Madrid, and to be on stage for two hours, I can tell you it takes the same amount of strength.”

77. “The most difficult thing in football is to score a goal.”

78. “Football, to me, is a passion, more than a game. It is everything. But more than anything, it is love for Roma. I have always been Roma. There has never been anything else.”

79. “In the end, for me, football is still a game. Even if you are a professional, you need to have fun when you are on the field. If you don't enjoy your job, you don't have fun.”

80. “Football combines the two worst things about America: it is violence punctuated by committee meetings.”

81. “My dad told me, 'If you're going to go out there and play baseball, or you're going to play basketball or football, work hard at it no matter what. I want you to have fun with your buddies, but you have to put in the time because this is your craft.' He didn't just want me to be good. He pushed me to that next level.”

82. “If you want to surf, move to Hawaii. If you like to shop, move to New York. If you like acting and Hollywood, move to California. But if you like college football, move to Texas.”

83. “I think players tend to get anxious if they've not really done things properly - like eating, resting or training. If you're fully prepared you've got nothing to worry about - it's just a game of football.”

84. “Sometimes people say that coach is a winner, but everyone wants to win. You must know how to behave in victory and in defeat, to look after what is our sport, football.”

85. “Football is a simple game based on the giving and taking of passes, of controlling the ball and of making yourself available to receive a pass. It is terribly simple.”

86. “I'm on the playstation, or else I go out and play football. I enjoy movies and sitcoms. I love reading motivational books too.”

87. “I still love football, though, and I think cooking is like football. It's not a job, it's a passion. When you become good at it, it's a dream job and financially you need never to worry. Ever.”

88. “There's two times of year for me: Football season, and waiting for football season.”

89. “Football is a game you cannot play without making mistakes.”

90. “My dad was a football player - a soccer player - for Manchester United, and I loved playing football, but I also happened to be the guy in class who was pretty good at sight reading. My teacher gave me scripts, and I was very comfortable.”

91. “It's not pleasant when you lose your whole football team.”

92. “I had no ambition to be a football coach. I wanted to be a spy for MI5 or MI6.”

93. “We are a religious family. My mum still goes to church every Sunday. There was a time when I was younger when I started getting games on a Sunday, so it came down to a choice between going to church and playing football. I think my mum knew what I really loved, and she did not stop me from going to football.”

94. “Football is a game of opinions, and some people have a great opinion of me, and some people probably think I'm absolutely useless.”

95. “Football is controlled violence, but it is violence, which people have loved to watch since the gladiatorial contests in ancient Rome.”

96. “Things don't always go your way in football: there are always good and bad times. At the end of the day, you have to have a positive attitude and a strong mentality and not let any setbacks get you down. And that's what I've done - I've tried to keep my composure, even when things aren't going the way I'd like.”

97. “Football is like war. It's about taking territory.”

98. “The language of football is universal. You don't need to speak the local lingo in order to be able to communicate with a ball.”

99. “If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead.”

100. “I play fantasy basketball and fantasy football, soccer.”

101. “Brazil eats, sleeps and drinks football. It lives football!”

102. “Nobody can ever truly replace Cristiano Ronaldo, because he was unique, a one-off, who created an unbelievably legacy of success at the club. But what I see in Vinicius is special too, I believe he is the best candidate in football to replace Cristiano and to conquer the world with Madrid.”

103. “I grew up in a humble neighbourhood in Argentina called Dock Sud. From my house, about 200 metres away was a football pitch. That's where I spent my childhood. It's a neighbourhood where everybody helped each other because there was a lot of difficulties. There, I grew up happily, because I learned a lot of things.”

104. “Well, football is a hard game; there's no denying it. It's a game that can bring out the worst in you, at times.”

105. “I've seen the growth of this game in this country, the stadiums that were built, the great European players that have come and the great American players who've been created. Americans want to be number one at everything. And they are at baseball, football, basketball. Soccer is growing fast, and I want to be a part of that.”

106. “You probably choose x-country because you were too small to play football.”

107. “Football is now all about money. There are problems with the values within the game. This is sad because football is the most beautiful game. We can play it in the street. We can play it everywhere.”

108. “Politics and football don't mix.”

109. “Never played football, but I'm an athlete. I'm a competitor.”

110. “Football is a universal language.”

111. “I was an outcast. I was from a town of wrestlers and football players.”

112. “You can plan, but what happens on a football field cannot be predicted.”

113. “Ben Schwartzwalder was a decent guy, but he was from another era. He was like a Marine, with a real army attitude. He thought there was only one way to play football, and that was the rough way.”

114. “Ronaldo is the best of the best, I mean not only as a football player but also as a human being. You can see how he developed and how devoted he is to really staying on top every year to excel. I think that is something unbelievable, and I said it before and will say it again: he is an athlete, and an athlete is a positive thing.”

115. “It's better to play football with a smile on your face.”

116. “Football brings happiness.”

117. “I'm at my best when people are depending on me. If it's just on me and I don't have nothing to do, I'm going to be lazy. On the football field, it's every single day, every play, knowing that people are depending on me to make my play. That helps me elevate my game to another level.”

118. “My brother works at Weetabix in Kettering. That was taken over, there were redundancies. My other brother is a builder who has lost jobs, lost work. Football is not immune from that, it just happens to be in more of a spotlight.”

119. “Footballers are super-intelligent and there is only one football language: to win, to win, to win.”

120. “Sometimes it looks like the board and the chairman are the worst enemy of the manager and the coaching staff, the football versus the financial side.”

121. “Loyalty is a big part of football, and it shows if you are a real man or not.”

122. “Football is an incredible game. Sometimes it's so incredible, it's unbelievable.”

123. “It was okay for Wayne Gretzky's dad, for instance, to give him a hockey stick, or Joe Montana's dad to give him a football, or Larry Bird's dad to give him a basketball, but it wasn't okay for Gloria Connors to give her son a tennis racquet.”

124. “I think a big part of success in football is mental, not physical. How you are inside your head matters more.”

125. “I was born in Dortmund and grew up here, so you become automatically a black and yellow. I played here for many years in the youth ranks, but at first I did not have the chance to become a professional football player at BVB and to realize my dream.”

126. “There's something to be said for any boy growing up among lots of other boys who like to play basketball and football, while all I wanted to do was put on musicals. Mentally, I was always in my own world.”

127. “I played football for a long time when I was a kid, and then I went to art college and turned my back on it. Because of that, my toes are mangled; they've been broken. They're like hooves or talons. They're disgusting. I'd never get them out.”

128. “The essence of football was blocking, tackling, and execution based on timing, rhythm and deception.”

129. “Football is about sacrifice, dedication, a lot of work, and friendship off the pitch.”

130. “It doesn't feel good in the NFL when you lose a football game until you get out there and win another one and another one.”

131. “Whilst Solskjaer is a decent football man, you wonder when Manchester United became the side of someone that employs the track record of and capability of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer to bridge the gap against Manchester City, Liverpool, Real Madrid, Barcelona… against all the superpowers that Man United purport to be bigger than.”

132. “Sometimes in football you have to score goals.”

133. “My uncle played rugby, and my dad played football, and they used to argue which game was the roughest - and everybody agreed rugby was. It's a great team sport, and to be successful, every person has to play in the same level.”

134. “Part of what makes college football great is what you learn playing it. Being selfless, learning how to go through adversity as a group, learning about perseverance.”

135. “Contemporary art will never achieve the audience of football, pop music, or television, so I think we should stop comparing its possible area of influence to that of big mass-media events.”

136. “I'm probably more obsessed with football that I am with music.”

137. “I always thought I wanted to play professionally, and I always knew that to do that I'd have to make a lot of sacrifices. I made sacrifices by leaving Argentina, leaving my family to start a new life. I changed my friends, my people. Everything. But everything I did, I did for football, to achieve my dream.”

138. “Without sounding biased, 70 days of football is not enough. Even if Messi plays 70 days he cannot be in the national team. You need to play around the year to be in contention for the national team.”

139. “I majored in theater at San Diego State. My one eye was on football, and my other eye was on Hollywood.”

140. “I see other teams playing aggressive, attacking football, they are games I switch on and watch. They are the football teams I want to produce.”

141. “I was always a tomboy. I always wanted to be around the boys, always wanted to play sports - basketball, football, kickball, whatever it was. I was real aggressive. I wanted to be around the bros!”

142. “The truth is the Super Bowl long ago became more than just a football game. It's part of our culture like turkey at Thanksgiving and lights at Christmas, and like those holidays beyond their meaning, a factor in our economy.”

143. “They'll forget all the rubbish when I've gone, and they'll remember the football. If only one person thinks I'm the best player in the world, that's good enough for me.”

144. “Baseball is a slow, boring, complex, cerebral game that doesn't lend itself to histrionics. You 'take in' a baseball game, something odd to say about a football or basketball game, with the clock running and the bodies flying.”

145. “I get up every morning and thank God for giving me the opportunity to play football.”

146. “Football is oneness in action. When played well, it is unity on display. Players come from different races and different backgrounds. However, when they get on the field, they harmonize their differences toward a common goal.”

147. “I think the playbook in American football would be a very good idea for soccer.”

148. “Football's become a non-contact sport, and that's spoiled a lot of the fun for a lot of the people, including spectators.”

149. “Messi deserves to win this World Cup for all he has done for football.”

150. “I'm a football fan, a sports fan, a fan of competition.”

151. “Arsenal have won that advantage, nobody gave it to them. By playing fantastic football and by winning matches and by winning trophies, they won that respect that the opponent has for them.”

152. “My real name is Bob Davis, but for some reason, I got the name Jasper while playing football at the local rec when I was nine years old, and it just stuck. Years later, when someone asked 'Jasper who?' I just said 'Carrott' - but I have no idea why I came out with that particular word.”

153. “When things go well, everyone talks well of you and vice versa. Unfortunately, football is like that.”

154. “I'd heard about Texas football and how much of a religion it is, but to go to Odessa and experience it first-hand is something different than just hearing about it.”

155. “Football is only once a week. NASCAR is once a week. Those sports are insanely popular. Horse racing is oversaturated. Unless tracks cut back to three days a week of full fields, a lot of people will really hurt down the road. Horse racing, to survive, has to go to that. Let's face it: Churchill Downs only does well on Derby Week.”

156. “You need to be able to work with people. Especially in football, it is not a QB's game… even though the media likes to make it into that - it takes the whole team.”

157. “Music was important. Football was the easy part.”

158. “You can control your own destiny a little bit better in college. It's hard to control all the variables, especially with the salary cap and things like that, in pro football. You can't keep your team together, and you are going to have more changes all the time. Personnel decisions aren't always made by you, especially who you bring to your team.”

159. “The certainty that our football, the football of Spain, is recognised, that's very important to us - perhaps more important than the successes and the joy that you can create. Football hasn't always been appreciated, and luckily our football is appreciated now, at all levels of society.”

160. “We play a game called, 'Peru ball,' it's a game we invented in Peru. The rules are so simple. You play with a football and one team's going one direction, the other team's going the other direction. Get the ball across the line, the length of a soccer goal. That's it, that's the only rules.”

161. “In England, football is a religion. In France, football is not a religion. It's wine and food.”

162. “The power which football has is enormous. Football moves the masses.”

163. “The heartbeat of a football team is the quarterback position and I think everyone who has any intelligence about the game understands you must have consistency at that position to be a championship team.”

164. “I look at athletes in all sports and try to picture what kind of football player they'd be, what position they'd play and so on.”

165. “Everything always looked better in black and white. Everything always looked as if it were the first time; there's always more people in a black and white photograph. It just makes it seem that there were more people at a gig, more people at a football match, than with colour photography. Everything looks more exciting.”

166. “I played for Middlesbrough's youth team. At the age of 16, I went into a shed at the training ground and was told that they weren't signing me on, so that was the end of that dream. Football was my life. I played football when I got to school, football every break and football as soon as I got home.”

167. “I work hard every day to try to help my team. I try to have fun too - because football is still fun - and scoring goals, breaking records, that's what drives me.”

168. “As a kid, I always dreamt of being an NFL quarterback. I remember being 10 years old and saying, 'Mom… I'm gonna throw a football in the NFL, and it's going to be a touchdown, and everybody's gonna love it.'”

169. “Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening.”

170. “Louis Tomlinson, who is a member of One Direction, his mum was a chaperone on 'Fat Friends.' So Louis used to come to the set with his mum, and since I was the only sort of young person around, we would kick a football around, things like that.”

171. “It's something you dream about as a kid. Like when you play all those NCAA video games as a kid and you create your own player and win the Heisman with a bunch of crazy numbers. It's the biggest, most prestigious award in college football, so it'd definitely be a dream come true.”

172. “I just had a normal African childhood; we played football a lot, but it was always in the street and always without shoes. Boots were very expensive, and when there are seven in your family, and you say you want to buy a pair, your father wants to kill you.”

173. “Everyone is beatable, many things are possible in football. We have often seen this.”

174. “Football itself is a great sport with which we are proud to be associated. We want to be proud to be associated with FIFA and hope and look forward to working with them to that end.”

175. “You have to be prepared for situations on and off the field, and everything that happens within the world of football. It's difficult for players at big clubs to deal with these things.”

176. “I went to trials at Northants academy and got in. It was a crossroads between cricket and football.”

177. “As the National Football League and other pro sports increasingly reckon with the early dementia, mental health issues, suicides and even criminal behavior of former players, the risk of what's known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), is becoming clear.”

178. “It was always like that. After school, we would eat and then it was straight into the garden to play football. We would play for hours.”

179. “When I'm alone, there is nothing else in my head except football.”

180. “You know that a given in life in human nature, is that at a sporting event, a baseball game, a football game, you never introduce a politician, is because he'll be booed. I don't care if he's the most beloved person in the world, its part of the game.”

181. “When I started playing, there were no teams and no structure, so I had to play with the boys. I get very emotional when I think about the humiliation that I've suffered playing football.”

182. “I work hard every day not only to be a success on the football field and a credit to my team - but to be a good husband, father, son, grandson, teammate - to be the kind of man that is as respected as Walter Payton was.”

183. “I'm an avid University of Miami Hurricanes fan. I hope to come to the day where I can still do some stuff for NBC and somehow integrate it with an RV tour of the South for college football. Luckily, my wife, she's a Florida State alum, so I wouldn't have to talk her into it. I think our kids would think we're weird.”

184. “Some people try to find things in this game that don't exist but football is only two things - blocking and tackling.”

185. “I made the wrong decision many times. Sometimes I can accept it, sometimes not because football is like that. But in the end it depends on yourself and whether you are ready to move on or not.”

186. “I grew up in the small German village of Bosingen, which is located between Black Forest and the state capital of Stuttgart. And when I say small, I mean small. In our village, there were no more than 1,700 people. And we all loved football, but there weren't a lot of places for us boys around town to play in.”

187. “I can honestly say that relegation is the single most traumatic experience you can have in a football career.”

188. “In football, I don't have a lot of friends. The people who I really trust, there are not many… Most of the time, I'm alone.”

189. “My dream was to play football for the Oakland Raiders. But my mother thought I would get hurt playing football, so she chose baseball for me. I guess moms do know best.”

190. “My dad's from Barbados, but I lived with my mum. She brought me up; my uncle took me to the football. I grew up in a white family, I'd say.”

191. “When I'm out on the football field, I have so much confidence in what I'm doing.”

192. “Some years ago there was a study to discover the most stressful occupation. It turned out not to be the head of a large business, football manager or prime minister, but rather: bus driver.”

193. “I love football and I believe in fair play, both on and off the pitch.”

194. “When I was younger, I played football and table tennis for local teams. I also played mini-rugby at primary school - I was tall for my age - and Preston Grasshoppers wanted me, but I wasn't that interested in rugby. It was always going to be cricket for me.”

195. “When I'm asked to define football, I always talk about emotions, the heart, love. It's something you feel deep down inside when you enter a stadium, raise your eyes, and look at the stands, the fans coming in.”

196. “The mint julep may be sacred in the South, but so is college football, and that doesn't stop us from enjoying it.”

197. “A friend got attacked outside a nightclub just for being deaf. I stuck up for him but ended up getting in a bit of a trouble myself. I played with a tag at Stocksbridge. I had a little curfew. Luckily, it didn't stop me playing football. Being put on a tag, I could have lost playing football again.”

198. “One hundred religious persons knit into a unity by careful organizations do not constitute a church any more than eleven dead men make a football team. The first requisite is life, always.”

199. “It's my whole life of being the little guy and having a little chip on my shoulder, from year to year trying to prove myself, and at the end of the day to be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame is a very special honor for me.”

200. “Sometimes in football you have to hold your hand up and say, yeah, they're better than us.”

201. “I play football once or twice a week. I eat pretty healthy. I'm in fairly good shape most of the time.”

202. “I've learned a lot from my mistakes, stumbles, and losses in football.”

203. “You can relax more when you're playing a silly character than when you're playing a really rigid character. But to be fair, I think George Clooney is a bigger teenager than any of the 'Twilight' cast. He's the guy throwing a football at your head and then hiding around the corner, pretending it wasn't him!”

204. “I've always been a fan of football, always watched the NFL and it's great to always sit back wherever I can this year. You sit back and enjoy the games, pop a little sports drink - not any pop or soda - lay back, watch the games. It's always cool to see how the games go down and just enjoy them.”

205. “Football runs in my blood, and I did really want to play football.”

206. “It took me a while to realize that basketball wasn't football.”

207. “I take football as an avenue to different opportunities. Football is not using me; I'm using football.”

208. “Football is not about suffering. It's about enjoyment. Control the ball, be friendly with it, try to attack, try to score goals. Of course defending is part of it, but you can defend in a lot of ways.”

209. “When I first started playing football, a headache was called a 'headache.' And now it's called 'a concussion.'”

210. “Yes, it is one of my ultimate aims - it is the ultimate sense of football: to make the people happy, to let them live some emotions that you usually can't get.”

211. “The RAF allowed me to play a lot of football, but like England later, they failed to recognise real talent when it was under their noses.”

212. “Football can generate excitement and bring people together.”

213. “Not all single women want to be married. Not all boys like football. Not all homemakers like to cook. Not all messy people are lazy. And not all the obese are gluttons. There are glands and diabetes and a dozen conditions you never heard of that may account for things. Put your sermon through the counter-stereotype sieve.”

214. “I played international football for England, and in many games, we were technically inferior to the opposition.”

215. “I don't think it's my job or anything that I owe somebody. But it is nature - coaching - and I like to think I'm pretty charitable in the sense that I like to help people out, share and talk football.”

216. “It's a dream for every football player to play in the Premier League; the atmosphere, the stadiums are always full.”

217. “The reason women don't play football is because 11 of them would never wear the same outfit in public.”

218. “Dad is a skilled athlete and runs his own football school for kids. While football is his entire life and he encouraged us to play, he still found time to take me to ballet and tennis lessons.”

219. “When you're throwing the football the way you want to, you're not thinking about it. You're not thinking about your drop or your release point or the trajectory or where your feet are. It's just coming off your hand exactly the way you want it to, fluid and confident.”

220. “I grew up in Doncaster and have felt the love for football run through the town; it's for that reason that I have a real personal passion to make Doncaster Rovers a success story.”

221. “I played football. I played trumpet. I could draw.”

222. “Because I was big, I didn't have to listen to anyone doubting me. I was just considered good at football or whatever, there were no questions about it.”

223. “My workout was running down fly balls, stealing a base, or running for my life on the football field.”

224. “I like the way football is played in England: the speed, the style of play, the high rhythm.”

225. “Academe, n.: An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. Academy, n.: A modern school where football is taught.”

226. “When I talk football with my friends, I don't talk about Tom Brady's hair. I talk about how he handles the blitz, or how he runs his offense. I talk as a fan. I don't want pink jerseys, and I don't want dumbed-down content. I want to be treated as a real fan - because I am proud to be one.”

227. “My dad wanted me to play football so bad, he took me to Washington High School on the west side of Atlanta because they were number one. They never lost.”

228. “In high school, I played football and became an all-American offensive lineman, but my father hadn't been to any of my games. In those instances, you still hold your head up high. But, when you look up into the stands and you see everyone else's parents cheering and supporting, you have to just stay focused and push through.”

229. “I don't care if you're my brother - if we go play football, I'm gonna try to crack your head open. It doesn't mean that I don't love you. It doesn't mean that I don't respect you.”

230. “I'm from Santa Cruz in Northern California, and the 49ers were my dad and I's bonding time. We would go to games in the '80s. It was a good time to fall in love with football when your team was unstoppable.”

231. “I think the thing about that was I was always willing to work; I was not the fastest or biggest player but I was determined to be the best football player I could be on the football field and I think I was able to accomplish that through hard work.”

232. “Pro football is like nuclear warfare. There are no winners, only survivors.”

233. “I also developed an interest in sports, and played in informal games at a nearby school yard where the neighborhood children met to play touch football, baseball, basketball and occasionally, ice hockey.”

234. “Sectional football games have the glory and the despair of war, and when a Texas team takes the field against a foreign state, it is an army with banners.”

235. “In football it is all about control.”

236. “I think that's one of the cool things about football - there's a place for every kid to play, regardless of size, shape or speed.”

237. “I like metal detecting, collecting Civil War artifacts, fishing, hunting, cigars, Labradors, the outdoor life, my baseball game, football.”

238. “I used to tell the players that professional football is a part-time profession. I used to tell them it gets you ready for your life's work.”

239. “Modern football tends to bring out the narcissism of those who sit on the bench.”

240. “I didn't start playing football a lot until I was in high school. I played it in seventh and eighth grade, but I didn't play Pop Warner or anything.”

241. “It's a massive compliment to me to be known in Asia because Asia is the way forward in football, along with the Middle East. I believe that strongly.”

242. “Football (soccer) is a matter of life and death, except more important.”

243. “I went to Ohio University studying arts and history, and playing football. But I was only interested in girls, my pals and sports. I only did the minimum for school.”

244. “First of all, I'm so glad that the city of Houston has a football team again. They have such great fans. I'm really happy for the people of Houston because they deserve a football team.”

245. “I don't look at football as a violent, barbaric sport. It's a very spiritual sport, especially for someone facing the challenges during a game: the fear of failure, the fear of getting too big an ego, of making a mistake and everybody criticizing you.”

246. “Dementia pugilistica was discovered in 1928… And we still have boxing. Football will continue.”

247. “So like any football or basketball coach, you always always believe you're going to win.”

248. “A lot of things look good on an academic's blackboard in terms of the actions that need to be taken. It's almost like a football coach, when you draw the X's and O's: Every play that is chalked on that board goes for a touchdown. Well, there are a lot of yards to be made between the line of scrimmage and the touchdown.”

249. “Nixon was a bad loser. He hated losing worse than death, and that is why I enjoyed him. We were both football fans, both addicts; and on some days, nothing else mattered.”

250. “I'm so proud of myself. I got to this level through my hard work, my determination and I'm fortunate enough to be working for a football club that I adore, that have given me license to do this and I work with a set of players that were always in control, even when I didn't feel like I was!”

251. “And I think because of the passion of every English player and every English supporter, and every English journalist for the game, most of the game is played with passion, love for football and instinct, but in football you also have to think.”

252. “There are always things we can improve on, but that is normal in football.”

253. “I have fun like a child in the street. When the day comes when I'm not enjoying it, I will leave football.”

254. “I love Halloween, trick or treating and decorating the house. And I love Thanksgiving, because of the football and the fall weather. And of course, I love Christmas - that's my favorite of all!”

255. “I'd say that Spanish football is probably the best I've seen.”

256. “I do play football no-holds-barred. Any edge I can get, I'll take. I'd grab a face mask only in a fit of anger. Uncontrolled anger is damn near insane.”

257. “Football is a game of errors. The team that makes the fewest errors in a game usually wins.”

258. “There's much more to life than football.”

259. “Football has an important role to play in society. Players should have a sense of social responsibility, have a moral dimension to them which shows up in good conduct.”

260. “I'm a very active person. I'm a big tomboy, throwing around a football, hiking… all that stuff I love.”

261. “Baseball players are smarter than football players. How often do you see a baseball team penalized for too many men on the field?”

262. “From middle school to the first year of high school, I went to a school in Miami that seemed like a private country club. The whole cheerleader, football player, clique-y thing there was terrifying. Those people were so scary. They're the scariest kinds of people because they are idolized by their peers.”

263. “To play at Real Madrid, it is not enough to just have football quality. You must be mentally strong.”

264. “The best thing that I did was get myself out of an environment that was toxic to me and to my mental health. That was through retiring from football.”

265. “Soccer was the first sport that my parents put me in, and ultimately, all the parents kind of came over to my mom and were, 'We think Channing would be better at football…. We love him, he's really great, but he's kind of hurting our children.' I was just a little wild.”

266. “I always had a philosophy which I got from my father. He used to say, 'Listen. God gave to you the gift to play football. This is your gift from God. If you take care of your health, if you are in good shape all the time, with your gift from God no one will stop you, but you must be prepared.'”

267. “Nobody wants to play bad football in a game; everybody wants to win, and every player wants to show how good he is. But, you know, sometimes you simply have a game where nothing is happening.”

268. “It's football season; anything can happen.”

269. “In life, as in football, you won't go far unless you know where the goalposts are.”

270. “I just love my street football; that's what made me who I am.”

271. “Everybody owned stock in the Capone mob; in a way, he was a public benefactor. I remember one time when he arrived at his box seat in Dyche Stadium for a Northwestern football game on Boy Scout Day, and 8,000 scouts got up in the stands and screamed in cadence, 'Yea, yea, Big Al. Yea, yea, Big Al.'”

272. “Street football is the greatest thing in the world. There is just you and your friends against the rest.”

273. “The most deceptive course in football is straight at the goalposts.”

274. “I'm not claiming that football is the nation's salvation in this area, but it's one of them, one little thing that apparently has captured the imagination of a large sector of our society. But when football can't be a relatively pure outlet, a fun thing, then it hurts itself.”

275. “I left Barcelona because I was brave. Neymar arrived and I played less. These things happen in football.”

276. “For me, good football is not about how many skills you show or how many players you beat. It's about making the right decision every time you have the ball.”

277. “Football is a violent, violent sport, and you have to practice that way in order to get at elite levels on Saturday, in my opinion.”

278. “If I can push myself up to the 2018 World Cup, then I'll go on. After that, I'll close the door and stop playing football.”

279. “I got a lot of the greatest values in life from playing sports, from playing football - teamwork, sportsmanship, my work ethic, resiliency, dedication - I got it all by being on a team.”

280. “Away from football, life is not just football. People do not see it how life goes on for us off the field.”

281. “I grew up playing hockey and some football, and I always think about the first time you walk into the locker room on a new team. The cliques are looking at you funny, and you make one friend, but then they're trying to stab you in the back.”

282. “I played pee-wee football coming up. If I had known the type of chicks they would get when I was in school, I'd probably focused on it a little more.”

283. “I played football in the ninth and 10th grade. I looked a lot like Joe Namath, so I think my looks got me there more than my abilities.”

284. “I ain't got nothing to say. I just wanna play football.”

285. “Literally thousands of lawsuits have been filed against the NFL by retired players, many of whom say that information on brain injury in football was withheld from them.”

286. “I know that it is a huge responsibility to be the captain, the No. 10, but I like it. I like the responsibility, the pressure, and I like playing football.”

287. “Some of my friends said I wouldn't have a future in football, as did some of my family, but I still believed in the potential I had. My mum would tell me I needed to get a proper job, but for me, I didn't want to be anything other than a footballer. That led to some tension and frustration between us.”

288. “I'm a football guy. Baseball, I enjoy it at playoff time.”

289. “I was in the football, rugby, cricket and hockey teams at school; bit of squash. Tennis obviously.”

290. “For years, we have had many coaches in football, but there are no teachers anymore. And you see that in the play itself.”

291. “I wasn't interested in football. It made me different. I wore glasses, had bad hair, a funny name, you name it.”

292. “Football will always be my foremost passion.”

293. “I was a halfback on an American football team in Athens, Greece - the Kississia Colts - where I went to high school, and we took the Cup my senior year. The downside, and somewhat unfortunate piece of information I have to pass on, is there were only two teams in the league because of the limited amount of Americans.”

294. “They teach you some things, but football is instinct sometimes. You just get the ball, and sometimes you dribble past three players and pass it; other times, you can shoot from far away. It's just instinct. If you feel something, just do it. I am free to do that.”

295. “My first love is football. When I get the chance, I play football for fitness.”

296. “When it's good, cinema can be one of the most important things in a person's life. A film can be a catalyst for change. You witness this and it is an incredibly spiritual experience that I'd never lived before; well, maybe only in a football match.”

297. “Like a baseball game, wars are not over till they are over. Wars don't run on a clock like football. No previous generation was so hopelessly unrealistic that this had to be explained to them.”

298. “I was born in the Ottawa General Hospital right after the Gray Cup Football Game in 1939. Six months later, I was backpacked into the Quebec bush. I grew up in and out of the bush, in and out of Ottawa, Sault Ste. Marie and Toronto.”

299. “There's a lot of dancing in football. You can see Victor Cruz doing a little bit of a cha-cha or samba move in the end zone. You can see Terrell Owens getting his popcorn ready. You can see Ochocinco doing the riverdance. But not so much when it comes to ballroom.”

300. “Football is a bit like chess: it's not just the piece being moved that matters; it's also the effect that move has on all the other pieces.”

301. “Football helped me tremendously, and that's why I want the sport to stay because it's so valuable. It's helped me be a better physician today, certainly. I've learned discipline. I've learned focus, teamwork, communication.”

302. “I was born to play football. I may have been taught to play but everybody is born for something and I was born to play football.”

303. “The National Football League is an example to the world, it really is. People follow the lead of the National Football League - that's how powerful it is.”

304. “My private life is perfect. If your private life and your life outside football is good, then it is good on the field for you.”

305. “If Tiger Woods had played football, he would have been a quarterback.”

306. “The first ninety minutes of a football match are the most important.”

307. “I think communication is massive in football and in all sports in general.”

308. “I grew up a huge jock, a lot of basketball and football. We had a pond in my back yard growing up, and we played a lot of hockey, too. I loved to score goals.”

309. “The best football is always about expression of emotion. Always.”

310. “People talk about cold weather and it'd be tough to catch balls. But the greatest catcher of all time, Michael Crabtree, catches everything. It's unbelievable. In the northern snowlands, down to the tropics' sunny scenes, he's catching the football. Where they throw a football, he'll be catching it.”

311. “Thursday night football is here to stay. So we're looking at ways to make it safer. Now they're playing division games, so you limit travel. Now the question is, should you play Sunday night before a Thursday night?”

312. “In football, like in life, there are always millimetres which can change things - the course of a goal or of a life.”

313. “Sometimes in football you deserve to win but lose. Other times you deserve to lose or draw but you win. That is the game, and it's why I've always said you should never try to predict anything in football, especially in Europe.”

314. “Football is a great deal like life in that it teaches that work, sacrifice, perseverance, competitive drive, selflessness and respect for authority is the price that each and every one of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile.”

315. “I'm just a football guy, I don't know nothing about contracts, and all these things, and all this money.”

316. “I'm fully aware that Qatar are striving to become one of the leading sporting nations and they have big plans for football. Winning the honour of hosting the 2022 World Cup is the best possible proof of their intentions.”

317. “Football is a violent sport, and if you don't kind of go to that dark place to be violent and be physical, you're not going to last very long.”

318. “Football is a socialist sport. Financially, some may receive more rewards than others but, from a footballing perspective, for 90 minutes, regardless of whether you are Lionel Messi or the substitute right-back for Argentina, you are all working to the same end.”

319. “I am still the same village girl from Dhing who used to help my father in the paddy field, help mother in household chores, run for hours on the streets of Dhing, play football with my Mon Jai group friends.”

320. “I enjoy talking to my football men and my chemistry classes and I feel sure that they are quite interested in what I have to say.”

321. “I just want to be seen as a kid who loves to play football and to do the best for the team.”

322. “I think there's no question the majority of Philadelphia Eagles teams are labeled tough, hard-nosed, physical football teams. I think a large part of that is the vibe, the energy, and what the city demands.”

323. “Most of the time I meet my trainer at the gym and we do a lot of everything: weights circuit with cardio, football drills, sprinting with weights on the treadmill.”

324. “I love everything about football. You can learn so much from it, from leadership qualities to discipline. This sport involves every kind of emotion.”

325. “I used to play sports, basketball, football.”

326. “When I was a child, it was my dream to be a professional footballer. When I was 14 I visited Milan's San Siro stadium and remember thinking how unbelievable it was. From then onwards I vowed that one day I would be playing there - and I am very proud that I achieved this and also for everything else I have managed to achieve in football.”

327. “Football hasn't got better, it has just evolved, from the ball to the boots to the shirts to the training methods - everything around them.”

328. “I want to be able to savour life while I'm still relatively young and when I'm still relatively healthy enough to do all the things I want to do, like travel, spend more time with my family and grandchildren without the huge pressure that comes with being a football manager.”

329. “Football's a very unforgiving business.”

330. “I play football in training all the time with my male friends, who are also professionals. But playing together in competition? I just don't see it. We have the ability, we have the technique, we have the tactical understanding, but there are physical limitations. You can't get away from that.”

331. “Know that the tattoos are all significant. They're all extremely insignificant. I can't break each one down, but it's 20 years. The first one was 21 years of age from a football teammate.”

332. “For me, any time I'm on the football field, that's my comfort zone.”

333. “And I love shooting football.”

334. “People don't understand the analogy of football and acting, but there's a great deal of it that's the same. You get dressed in the room, and you think you've got it all prepared, and later on in the game you wish you had put on more pads 'cause they're just kicking the hell out of you. God almighty, I've been beat up by the best.”

335. “My kids are Irish; I want them to grow up playing Gaelic football and learning Irish.”

336. “You are responsible to each other because when you win a game of football, you only need eight players to perform well.”

337. “I could sit here and tell you about Walter Smith until the cows come home, about how good a manager, how good a coach and a football man he was.”

338. “I have always been an outstanding football player, I have always had uncanny abilities, great arm strength, an immense ability to play the game from a quarterback standpoint. The problem was that I wasn't given the liberty to do certain things when I was young.”

339. “That smell of freshly cut grass makes me think of Friday night football in high school. The smell of popcorn and cigar smoke reminds me of the stadium. The cutting of the grass reminds me of the August practice.”

340. “In golf, you keep trying to score well when you're ahead. In basketball, they don't quit shooting when they're ahead. In hockey, they don't quit shooting the puck when they're ahead. And in boxing, you don't quit punching when you're ahead. But in football, somehow magically, you're supposed to quit playing when you're ahead.”

341. “From the beginning of my time in football, the common thread has always been teamwork and togetherness. That's what's going to help you achieve your goals in the end.”

342. “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.”

343. “I come from West London. I support a football team there called Queens Park Rangers, whom I'd like to give a shout-out to. I'm a die-hard Rangers fan. I think that I would always hopefully have a strong connection to and live in London, because it's a brilliant city.”

344. “I got to talk with some of the great offensive minds in football. Bruce Arians, Byron Leftwich, Andy Reid, Ben McAdoo, Bill O'Brien, I met all those guys and tried to take something away from each of them. Hue Jackson, people that are known for developing quarterbacks, I got exposed to a lot of stuff I hadn't seen before.”

345. “Football is my sanctuary. It's where I go to escape. It's where I'm most happy.”

346. “Our daily work ethic - that need to always do better and top our last performance - is what makes USWNT football players who we are.”

347. “When you go into a football pitch expecting bad things to happen they usually do.”

348. “In football, anything can happen. You can have an injury, and then you won't play at the highest level anymore. If you don't have a diploma, what then?”

349. “Analysing games on the TV is something that appeals to me, and anything where you watch football and get paid for it is not a bad living!”

350. “I just wanted to defend football, which is not always easy to do. Those of us who have been in the sport so many years now realise we must protect it and look after it. I was speaking about football, what it means. It is our profession, it has been our lives, and we must take care of it a little.”

351. “Nobody was ever going to tell me that I didn't belong on a football field. And nobody was ever going to tell me that I couldn't be great.”

352. “Sir Alex Ferguson is one of the best managers in football history.”

353. “I've always known football.”

354. “The support of Chiefs fans across the country has been tremendous. They are truly passionate about their football team.”

355. “People think that coaching is about winning football matches - which, of course, it is - but throughout my career it has also been about helping people become better, more able to deal with life and be more successful in their lives, on and off the football pitch.”

356. “Soccer is the main sport in Mexico; it's very important for the Mexican people. It's their passion - it's their religion - and Mexican football was always one of the best in the world.”

357. “Even though professional soccer has become more about business and less about the game itself, I still believe football is a party for the legs that play it and for the eyes that watch it.”

358. “Faith, family and then football. Those are my priorities now.”

359. “I've no problem with Neil Lennon. I'm thrilled for him to be interested in me. He tried to sign me for Bolton but football is football.”

360. “I think football saves many people. It can give you a life of luxury, but people don't see all the effort that goes in behind the scenes. That might mean not seeing your family or missing your mother's birthday; many players are so focused that they miss the birth of their children.”

361. “Some of the great John Wayne hero things that have ever happened in football happened because people play hurt.”

362. “You're not going to see my sense of humor on the football field. That's not a place for me to joke around.”

363. “When I was a kid in Woking, every week you went to the football dance, and every week the top kids would be wearing something different. You were constantly trying to catch up with them - which you could never do because, by the time you'd saved up enough to buy the item, they'd moved on to something else. That's the whole Mod thing, I suppose.”

364. “Lombardi, a certain magic still lingers in the very name. It speaks of duels in the snow and November mud… He remains for many the heart of pro football, pumping hard right now.”

365. “Football is football and talent is talent. But the mindset of your team makes all the difference.”

366. “When we play at the World Cup, any African will back any African team. Because we want to hear the different approach to African football. We want to hear that Africans can do well, and Africans do well.”

367. “In football, you know anything can happen and that everything can change from minute to minute.”

368. “I'm a big sports fan. Football. Cricket.”

369. “I think flag football is a great alternative, and it's a great game in its own right. It's a wonderful alternative. You can develop all of the skills and athleticism and glean the lessons you can from contact football through playing flag.”

370. “My dad's a teacher and a football coach, and he found a job in New Jersey.”

371. “Here in Cameroon, football is our leading political party. It's football alone that that unites us, it's football alone that brings us good things - football is the window into our country - so we don't mess around with it.”

372. “It's football. The game hasn't changed. There's not tons of new concepts every year that go in. Offense is offense; it's our job to move the ball, to score points, and keep our defense off the field.”

373. “I have seen too many of my male friends - no matter whether they're on the football field or inside a church - bash gays and then revel in their machismo or piety.”

374. “Regardless of position, football IQ helps put you in those spots to make plays.”

375. “In terms of the pricing of football tickets, there's no need - given the massive amount of money that's coming in now from television rights, there's no need for them to be greedy. Look after the supporters; make sure they can still afford to go and watch football.”

376. “More than any other major sport, professional or amateur, college football games are decided by the physical incompetence and downright chokery of their players.”

377. “I consider myself lucky because I've had the possibility in life to do the one thing closest to my heart: playing football. I've also been lucky enough to win prestigious trophies like two Champions Leagues and other competitions with Milan.”

378. “Some players are more concentrated on what they will do after their football career and want to make sure their lives are financially settled. I prefer to play in big teams earn a little less money and win trophies.”

379. “I went to college to play football, not to study it.”

380. “I used to spend a lot of time at football training, but that time was later spent in amateur acting classes and my local youth theatre, in plays at school and after-school clubs. That filled the void.”

381. “Admittedly, there will be an awful lot for me to learn, but I want nothing more than to help bring consistent, championship caliber football back to Cleveland.”

382. “Something I like to do a lot is just sit by water when there's a current and just stare into the water. I don't fish, I don't hunt, I don't scuba, I don't spear, don't boat, don't play basketball or football - I excel at staring into space. I'm really good at that.”

383. “I played a lot of football, and I was a goalkeeper, but I didn't really like playing in goal.”

384. “I don't understand American football at all. It looks like all-in wrestling with crash helmets.”

385. “Baseball happens to be a game of cumulative tension but football, basketball and hockey are played with hand grenades and machine guns.”

386. “I was the one who took football off the back pages and put it on to page one.”

387. “Football was really my least favorite sport and the last sport that I ended up picking up as a kid. My dad started me off with baseball, which most kids did at that time. I really enjoyed basketball. That was my favorite sport.”

388. “In football, it's the job of the player to play, the coach to coach, the official to officiate. Each guy is charged with upholding his end, nothing more. In golf, the player, coach and official are rolled into one, and they overlap completely. Golf really is the best microcosm of life - or at least the way life should be.”

389. “Football, like no other sport, creates a sense of unity, equality, and inclusion. All of these are at the heart of my vision for a changing Gabon.”

390. “Money is not everything. My ambition was football itself, not the money I'd make from it. If that brings me and my family a more comfortable lifestyle, then that's fine. But I don't spend my time between games and training sessions thinking about figures.”

391. “I wanted to make the world's greatest football undershirt. But I realized that no team sport had equipment for apparel. Apparel was an afterthought.”

392. “Football is a contact sport. So, on the pitch, it isn't possible to maintain distance like you can in an office job.”

393. “A lot of football success is in the mind. You must believe you are the best and then make sure that you are.”

394. “It's pretty easy for me to say that the most important thing in my life is my relationship with Jesus Christ, followed by my relationship with family. And football's later on down the line.”

395. “If you're a footballer, your club should be able to help you with medical needs, and that's where the women's game gets a lack of respect. It doesn't reflect well on women's football at all.”

396. “It seems like people want to blame me for everything. Whenever any issue arises, I'm said to have been involved even if I've had nothing to do with it. That's why I always focus on what I know, which is playing football, and try to be very careful with what I say because people always try and twist things.”

397. “My whole body is a wreck. I've injured myself so many times with jujitsu, skateboarding, football. I guess I like to live hard.”

398. “If I couldn't play football, I'd want to coach football.”

399. “It's easier to date a football player for sure. Football players have one game a week, and they practice every day, but they're all at home. In basketball, they're on the road all the time.”

400. “If you are on the front foot playing attacking football and you want to score goals, that is what people want to pay money to watch.”

401. “I try not to tune in to politics until it's two or three months before the election. Till then, it's like watching preseason football.”

402. “I've always written. At the age of six or seven, I would get sheets of A4 paper and fold them in half, cut the edges to make a little eight-page booklet, break it up into squares and put in little stick men with little speech bubbles, and I'd have a spy story, a space story and a football story.”

403. “I relate everything to amateur wrestling, including the way I watch basketball and the way I watch football. My brain thinks as an amateur wrestler. That's who I am.”

404. “I was captain of Wales; I've been captain of numerous football clubs.”

405. “I coach defending an awful lot but I don't think too many teams in the Premier League or in the world of football actually coach defending anymore, certainly not the full-backs.”

406. “No other industry appears to reward failure more than football's managerial merry-go-round.”

407. “Football's always been cerebral. The most important thing is thinking fast.”

408. “Going to college offered me the chance to play football for four more years.”

409. “One of the things you learn in football is that you're only as good as your last outing. I don't like to reflect on what we've done in the past. I'm not a very good storyteller, for one thing. I'd disappoint you. When it's time, I'll talk about the good old days. But it's a sign of old age, reveling in the past.”

410. “When I was 19 years old, I quit football completely. For about a month, I stayed at home in a depression. This was in the summer of 2008.”

411. “I got my first football when I was two and played my first proper game before I was five. So nothing else was ever an option!”

412. “I've been through a lot off the field. I think that kind of translates onto the field. Football serves for a lot of life lessons, and so it allows me to stay humble and continue to work.”

413. “In Italy, football is too important. There is more pressure on coaches, teams, directors. Now is not a good moment for football in Italy. The stadiums are not full. There are problems with violence; it's very difficult with the ultras. People don't go to the stadium just to enjoy 90 minutes of football. People go to the stadium to fight, to win.”

414. “The romance of English football is fantastic, but it has lost its identity under the influence of other cultures.”

415. “Football is a party for everyone to enjoy and be part of.”

416. “When I was a kid, I wanted to be a football player. So I achieved my dream.”

417. “I think if you're not strong, in life or in football, not every day is going to be going up and seeing the sunshine.”

418. “I've always believed since I was a kid that God was gonna allow me to play professional football, to use it as a platform to proclaim and live out the name of Jesus. And, you know, that's the most exciting part about my life because God has done things in me to change my character to benefit the kingdom.”

419. “Football has not just been a sport, it's been a vehicle in my life.”

420. “I feel fortunate to be a part of a football community that includes leaders who recognize the power of sport to make a difference and who, like so many of my coaches, are defined not only by their knowledge but by their ability to bring out the best in every member of their teams.”

421. “There's a lot of young talent. I felt strongly that we wanted somebody with a great football mind who'd make it their mission to succeed. And a coach, likewise. Somebody young, energetic, open.”

422. “I became a professional footballer because I love football.”

423. “Bowen is a Welsh name and the family background is more rugby than football, but we're English through and through.”

424. “Football games are on TV, and it doesn't affect stadium attendance at all. It's the same with movies. People who really love movies and like to go out on a Saturday night will go to the movie theater.”

425. “The reason I went to an all-boys Catholic school was because they had the best football team. We won the state championship my junior year. It was super-competitive. We lost in the semifinals my senior year, and it still haunts me.”

426. “Asian players are very eager to work hard, but they don't have the physicality of the Europeans, so they might actually need to work twice as hard. With street football, their skills will improve a lot, and so will their tactical awareness, because by playing within a limited space, you need to be very focused on your game.”

427. “You have different sorts of people in life, so why should it be any different in football?”

428. “The social issues outside of football are not as defined as they were earlier, when integration took place and certain rights were legislated. The Civil Rights movement is over. Individuals can buy homes wherever they want, travel first class wherever they want, eat wherever they want.”

429. “The nicknames - people say they couldn't understand it, but look, I have really enjoyed my time away from 3AW, and I have discovered one thing - that I am more than just a yelling fanatical football follower who makes up nicknames.”

430. “The limits are set by the referees. Those are the ones who are in charge of making sure this is football and not American football.”

431. “Perception is a big thing in football and people need to be more careful about how they choose to perceive young players in the first instance.”

432. “Ive worked outside football. I knew every day what I had. I loved going into football grounds, smelling it, seeing it, hearing it. Thats what grabbed me. Thats what I miss.”

433. “I think the biggest difference between football and a lot of other sports is that being in a transition period doesn't mean that you can't compete and be competitive.”

434. “The 1966 World Cup was the high point of my career. We may have lost the semi-final, but Portuguese football was a big winner.”

435. “Football's been such a part of my life. It's allowed me to meet so many people and do so many things.”

436. “Football is my happiness.”

437. “That's why we love football: it's not about the money or about the hairstyle or the dancing. We want to see beautiful goals, great tackles, fair play, and all this stuff.”

438. “I cannot have a concept of football where everything is based on the opposition. We have to dictate the game, we have to be the ones taking the initiative, and we have to entertain the people coming to watch us.”

439. “I think every American boy should play soccer till the eighth grade. Then they should play football. American football.”

440. “Football officiating is so subjective - much more subjective than any other sport. But the more I watch - and I watch too many matches - the more impressed I am with referees.”

441. “Steven Adler and I played football in the street when we were 12. I remember rehearsing in my bedroom with my first band, and some kid climbed over the fence of my backyard and peeked his head in the window to see who was rocking. It was Slash.”

442. “You dream of your first NFL start when you're a little kid, playing football in the backyard, but until you get there, you never know what to expect.”

443. “For me, football is more than a sport, just look at the impact it has on society.”

444. “I play football like chess. You have to think a lot and anticipate what could happen after you make your move.”

445. “Football - a simple game really, yet generally, in the game, we make the simple things seem harder. But it's those simple things that get you to the top.”

446. “It's what I do my entire life when I'm not doing music. If I'm in a hotel room in Sweden, or on a plane to Vancouver, I'm watching football. I'll try to talk about other stuff, too, but football is a lifestyle.”

447. “Football has been good to me. Everyone has their destiny, but you have to make use of the opportunities. I have spent 15 years at the top of my game. It makes me happy. I love the game. I love scoring goals. But I have always taken it seriously. It is not what the game gives you, it is what you give it.”

448. “I actually don't mind a bit of football banter from opposing fans. In fact, I quite like getting hammered by supporters of other clubs. But it's when you get it from your own fans that it's not nice.”

449. “I grew up trying to be like my idols, and one of the main people in my life was my father. He played football, and when your father is telling stories about the game he played… Everybody wants to be like their father.”

450. “I think, when you reach the top level, it is less about the money itself; it is important only because the level of earning shows the importance of the player or the manager. I don't think people want to have the money just to spend it. It is a reflection of your importance in football.”

451. “Among the many things that I loved about playing football was sitting around the locker room with teammates and poking fun at each other with sophomoric slams, each one more ridiculous than the next.”

452. “It's been a privilege to get to watch one of sports greatest athletes prepare and get to play with him; honestly… it's a dream. I remember being in eighth grade saying, 'I'm Tom Brady,' on the asphalt at recess, you know, playing football.”

453. “At 17, I already had responsibility because I took care of my family, but in the football I was young; I wasn't experienced or the captain - I was just in the team.”

454. “Football is a sad game.”

455. “Nixon was a crook, of course, but he was also a rabid football fan - and he knew the game, which still astounds me, but I have always had a soft spot for him because of it.”

456. “Playing football was like being trapped in a rhythm, and my whole career was like that. You have very little time to switch off.”

457. “It's always fun being in the community, reaching out to not only the Kansas City faithful, but also people that really don't know that much about football and seeing the influence it could possibly have on them.”

458. “Football is about motivation, faith.”

459. “Arsenal have the most amazing stadium, they have a style of play, they have a beautiful shirt - in every way I consider Arsenal as the ultimate football club.”

460. “Life doesn't stop with football.”

461. “I do not have a son; if I had a son, I wouldn't necessarily discourage him from playing football, but I don't know that I would encourage him to play, either.”

462. “One of our problems is the culture of Brazil which focuses on men's football. Of course we would like to change that. Maybe one day we will have a strong competitive league instead of our women footballers always having to play abroad.”

463. “I played football and lacrosse in high school. They wanted me to play football at Amherst, which I did not do because my schedule was full enough as it was. But over the course of my student days, I played pretty much every sport out there.”

464. “I want to see how far I can go and how good I can be, whether it's in the classroom or on the football field.”

465. “We all wanted to play football and grew up loving it and were focussed on trying to get to the top. Our brother doesn't play any more but he also helped us a lot. It was always competitive. Lauren was four years younger than our brother and two years younger than me but she always wanted to win.”

466. “There's three parts to football: offense, defense, and special teams. You'd no more ignore special teams than you would offense or defense.”

467. “If I have the worst season in the world, the best season in the world, whatever. If I'm playing football, I'm happy, and no one can take that away from me.”

468. “I've let a lot of things go, and obviously football is one of them. I think the hardest thing to let go is your self-image. That's what I'm working on now.”

469. “I'm totally convinced that the end of my football career is just the beginning of something I haven't even discovered yet.”

470. “The majority of my family is Auburn fans, and I grew up watching Auburn football, and that's always who I've cheered for.”

471. “In England, it's a rare thing to see a player smoking but, all in all, I prefer that to an alcoholic. The relationship with alcohol is a real problem in English football and, in the short term, it's much more harmful to a sportsman. It weakens the body, which becomes more susceptible to injury.”

472. “College football, for me, was sacred. Right away, first time I watched it on TV, there was just something about the passion, the energy that was just different. It always just felt right when I watched it.”

473. “Gradually, football has seen its appeal slip at the most basic levels. Pediatricians are advising parents not to let young children play organized football too early in life.”

474. “You better have an anchor in life. It doesn't matter if you're a Division I head football coach or Joe Schmo from Okemoh. Bad things happen. If you're not anchored, you're going to be washed away.”

475. “Football is a game. So you need to enjoy your football.”

476. “It's disappointing to see how football, the world's No. 1 sport, is not No. 1 when it comes to development. It seems to me that a wealth of practical football knowledge is being squandered.”

477. “When I played pro football, I never set out to hurt anyone deliberately - unless it was, you know, important, like a league game or something.”

478. “My father always told me I like the ball more than I like playing soccer: since I was a young kid, I was always skilled with it, dribbling furniture around the house. That's how I see football - fun and dynamic - and this goes beyond me; it's a characteristic of Brazilian football.”

479. “The intensity of the football and how the people live football in Liverpool - it is not a usual.”

480. “It is hard to compete with other sports. Badminton is a sport which, when compared with football and tennis, still needs promotion.”

481. “My dream was to play football at Notre Dame more than anything.”

482. “If other people think I'm okay looking, that's great, but I don't see it myself. When I look in the mirror, all I see is a bunch of fake teeth and football scars.”

483. “For many of us, football is both a source of frustration and absolute euphoria.”

484. “The draft is one of my favorite events because it is about football. People are focused on how their teams improve. It's a celebration of football. And most importantly, it represents a very important time in the lives of these men who are entering the NFL, and their families.”

485. “It's easier to fine tune in club football, and you have the chance to win the Champions League every year.”

486. “For some reason the football coach of a major college program is seen as one of the leaders of the campus. And some way we have to let our young people know that that leader can look like anyone.”

487. “As a physician, I'm somewhat an advocate of patients. How come, before Mike Webster, no NFL player was told or knew that there was an intrinsic risk of brain damage from playing football?”

488. “There's no point in making predictions. It's not worth speculating because nothing is set in stone and things change all the time in football. Today there are opportunities that no one knows if they will come round again in the future.”

489. “I got Osgood-Schlatter disease in my knees because my bones were growing quicker than my muscles, and it's hard to get out on the training pitch; then, afterwards, you're in agony every single time you play football.”

490. “I believe in work, in connections between the players, I think what makes football great is that it is a team sport. You can win in different ways, by being more of a team, or by having better individual players. It is the team ethic that interests me, always.”

491. “I learned how to take other people's mechanisms of promoting their stuff through me as opposed to promoting my own stuff, as far as getting Snoop DeVilles, SnoopDeGrills, Snoop Doggy Dogg biscuits, Snoop Dogg record label, Snoop Dogg bubble gum, Snoop Youth Football League.”

492. “Without a doubt in my mind, I should be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. You look at my stats without my USFL stats, and I don't know how you can argue with that. Look at my combined yards. I'm not one to make excuses, so I'll play by their rules and not even count the USFL stats.”

493. “I went to public school, elementary through high school. I went to homecoming, to football games, pep rallies, I got detention, I got an F. I've done it all.”

494. “Looking from the outside at English football, at Spanish football, it's more interesting, and they have the champions and the celebrities that they want to see. But with the passion that Italians have for football, the pride that they have, I don't think the game will stay that way.”

495. “I am not a superstar or an ego. I am just the same as I always was: Someone who plays football.”

496. “I love football, I've never really taken an interest in anything else.”

497. “I've got a lot of respect for Norwich City as a football club, there's some really good people there.”

498. “I give all my life to football; I only think about football. This is what is on my mind all the time.”

499. “I have my life. I have my values. And compared with much of society, especially football, that is radical.”

500. “I've always really just liked football, and I've always devoted a lot of time to it. When I was a kid, my friends would call me to go out with them, but I would stay home because I had practice the next day. I like going out, but you have to know when you can and when you can't.”

501. “Totalitarians always want to kill culture. But imagine life without football, Faulkner, or Bob Dylan. It's not life.”

502. “I had a lot of fun playing football and basketball, but deep down, the chess match or cat-and-mouse game between the pitcher and batter in baseball really drew me in. It's a thinking man's game, and for me, nothing can compare to that.”

503. “I still mess around and joke with my family and friends like I did when I was nine or 10. For me, nothing's changed. Sure, I play football, but I try to keep my life off the pitch as simple as possible.”

504. “Football is a simple game. It is not difficult to play football: just pass the ball around.”

505. “I was into basketball, football, karate, boxing.”

506. “If you're giving me tickets to the football game, baseball game or hockey game, I'm taking the tickets to the hockey game. For me, it's by far the most fun sport to go and watch live and be part of. I just don't know why it doesn't translate as well on TV.”

507. “I was on the football team because I wanted to experience the different iconic social classes of high school. So football for me was an attempt to socially integrate in an interesting way. And then I didn't like it anymore and stopped doing it and focused more on drama and science and other forms of art and music.”

508. “Within a day of wearing the insoles, my feet felt more comfortable, and a week later I was able to go for walks, play golf, and play football with my son, which I hadn't for years. The insole is sculpted to the foot and manipulates it into the correct position, preventing damage to the plantar fascia tissue.”

509. “I want to help grow the game in India and encourage young kids to play football.”

510. “Politics is a lot like football. Both involve people working in a team. One week you can be top of the league, the next week, you might slip a place. But I've never for one minute wanted to give up my devotion for my team.”

511. “Rugby is a different game. There is an interruption every two minutes also in American football. Our soccer is a moving game: play, play, play, move, move - you don't interrupt.”

512. “We must look after football and to do what it is necessary to bring to the game the best ethical values and personal behaviour.”

513. “It takes a tremendous amount of skill to be a football player. And some of these guys have enough skills to do other sports. Soccer could be one. Basketball could be another. Things where you need incredible hand-eye coordination are always options. I think a football player would be able to adapt to a lot of sports.”

514. “The thing I like about college football so much is you can affect these guys a lot more when they are 18-22, 23 years old in terms of people and having a chance to be more successful. They are still a value type development, where you have a chance to help them mature a bit and help them be a little more successful in life.”

515. “I want to be a great player. I don't want to play for the money. I don't want to play for fame. I'd just as soon no one knew who I was. I want to play football because it's football.”

516. “As top players, we earn a lot of money, but sometimes we pay a hefty price with our health. I would give away all the money to be healthy again, to be able to do my job. To do what I love: to play football.”

517. “Obviously fashion is a completely different world from football.”

518. “There's always that time in football where people say that when you have the dip, it's how well do you overcome it. And when you do overcome it, you then end up being a much better player and generally your career lasts a lot longer after getting through that period.”

519. “I don't think I will stop learning about football. There are certain parts we will never understand, like what happens in the brain of a player or makes a team fear.”

520. “I passed the 11-plus, but it was decided that I should take the Common Entrance exam to Monmouth School, the nearest independent. I was never entirely comfortable there, as they didn't have girls, and they played rugby instead of football.”

521. “My early memories are full of football talk around the house, of Dad standing on the terraces at Ayresome Park, of the occasional precious new pair of boots.”

522. “You have to remember one thing: Football is entertainment; it's not life or death. Once the game is over, you're already talking about next year and the draft. It's just entertainment.”

523. “Instead of being like the other kids going to soccer or football practice, I was wrestling every day.”

524. “Charles Haley changed the way the Cowboys played football in the 90s. And the reason why I say that is because he was such a dominant force coming off the edge, where it took two and three to block him.”

525. “Football's a part of me. If I'm not playing, then I'm not me.”

526. “Nobody I ever broke bread with, and I see players all the time, talked about using their head running the football.”

527. “You can play pickup basketball, but you can't really re-create football.”

528. “If you take golf, you have a teacher for the drive, a teacher for the approach play, and a teacher for the putt. That's three specialist coaches for one player. In football, one coach looks after 25 players.”

529. “I never really paid attention to sports, which, coming from the mecca of football in Texas, is kind of odd. I played sports, but I was nerdy. Having a single mother, the pressure was on me to get good grades and a scholarship and go to college.”

530. “I was fighting a war on two fronts. I was fighting the best defenses in professional football and I was fighting the media. At that level you just cannot do that. You just cannot do it. I couldn't stop it, and I didn't try to stop it.”

531. “I've been lucky enough to play for the Spanish national team and Barcelona, two sides who've shown that you can play good, attractive possession football and win major titles.”

532. “The pride and presence of a professional football team is far more important than 30 libraries.”

533. “I know I can play, but people who haven't seen me and look at me on a football pitch think, 'He's tall, and he's there to head the ball.'”

534. “I believe in Coach Louis Wong. He is so much more than just a football coach.”

535. “I didn't play JV because I went straight to varsity and started as a 10th grader - that was back in the day when you could not play varsity as a ninth grader. I went right from playing junior high football to varsity.”

536. “Unfortunately, from my days as national coach were going backwards in terms of we dont see it as an investment, we see it as an expense. We just have too short-term thinking, there just arent enough people with a broader vision as to how we can actually we can make Australia a force in world football.”

537. “Football brings you lots of lovely things, but then you have to realise that it's actually a job.”

538. “I sincerely hope AFC Wimbledon find the right candidate for their football club. The whole point about them not being able to afford me is nothing to do with money, but everything to do with the fact that I'm in the best job in the world. No amount of money is going to tempt me away from that.”

539. “The nice thing is that when people come up to me, it's the football they remember, not all the other rubbish.”

540. “I think college football is a reflection of Middle America. You go into a college football town, and you will find three generations of a family sitting together. It's a rallying point for the university, the community, and the families.”

541. “In England, football is a big thing to talk about, but Liverpool, it's a special place. You feel it when you make your first step.”

542. “In all the years that I've been in football - I went directly from coaching to broadcasting - I never really had a lot of experience watching it.”

543. “If you made me the national commissioner of football, I'd tell you one thing that I would mandate. The second Saturday in September, we're going to have conference day. Everybody from the SEC plays a Big 12 team. Everybody from the Big Ten is going to play the ACC. Everybody from the Big East is going to play the Pac-10.”

544. “Cowdenbeath Football Club have always been at the centre of Cowdenbeath - literally and in every aspect of community life.”

545. “All that I know most surely about morality and obligations I owe to football.”

546. “You can talk about what you see from the outside; it's hard to tell me who I am when you're just looking at me with a football uniform on. That's a totally different person. That's my job, that's it.”

547. “Football doesn't build character. It eliminates the weak ones.”

548. “To be a footballer was just a dream, and I don't believe in dreams. I only deal in what is real. To be honest, I've never thought about what I could get out of football or where it would take me. I just wanted to play. I'm the same now.”

549. “In football, you win as a group, you lose as a group; you divide the credit and the blame.”

550. “But when you lose a family member or something tragic happens, that stays with you forever. You never get over it. Knowing that you have to deal with that for the rest of your life… Football is important, but not as important as you once thought it was.”

551. “Deacon Jones has been the most inspirational person in my football career.”

552. “The work is intense. You have to calculate a great deal very quickly which requires football intelligence and real concentration. Part of my role is to shuttle between the defense and the attacking lines to make sure that the ball circulates well and quickly.”

553. “I worked in Ann Arbor for two years, covering Michigan football and basketball in the early 1990s.”

554. “I'm a championship handball player. I'm a championship softball and baseball player. I used to be an extremely talented center in high school in football. I also dabbled in lacrosse and soccer. I'm really good at billiards, darts, shuffleboard.”

555. “I'm not a football coach; sometimes I'd like to be - you can grab guys by the facemask, you can yell at the refs, nobody cares.”

556. “What I did, you know, being away from my family, letting so many people down. I let myself down, not being out on the football field, being in a prison bed, in a prison bunk, writing letters home, you know. That wasn't my life.”

557. “I played team sport as a kid and loved it. I played basketball and football throughout high school into college in the intramurals and I loved it. There was nothing like a team.”

558. “There are always new challenges in football. You just need to adapt; otherwise, you won't fit in. And if you don't fit in, then you will have to go somewhere else.”

559. “My dad's a football coach, that's what he does.”

560. “Three coaches at Notre Dame made a big difference in my life, not that I played any football when I attended Notre Dame. But Frank Leahy, Ara Parseghian, and Lou Holtz - they all made a difference to me, and I respected them for their attitudes about life and how they handled loss.”

561. “Football spectators appreciate a bit of loyalty, and we're seeing that less and less. There are echelons of football, as in society, where some players are clearly mercenaries. I regret in a way that somehow the local identification, the local bonding between the community and its football team has been commercialised to such an extent.”

562. “I idolised IM Vijayan and Krisanu Dey when I started watching football. After that, it was Bhaichung Bhutia in India and Brazilian Ronaldo abroad.”

563. “I definitely grew up as a small-town… I guess you could call it the 'small-town football player,' according to the stereotype. I wasn't involved in music at all.”

564. “I love football and beer and have a normal girlfriend.”

565. “I didn't play organized football until I was in the seventh grade. Up until that point, I only played at recess and in the backyard.”

566. “Hockey is no longer a big four. It's football, basketball, baseball and soccer. Now, I'm not talking MLS. I'm talking COPA, World Cup, men's, women's, MLS, youth… and there's a lot of reasons for it.”

567. “I have never been to Jamaica and in footballing terms, I feel English because this is where I grew up and played all of my football. That is not to say I don't have immense pride in my Jamaican heritage - I certainly do.”

568. “For me, nothing bad can happen on a football pitch. You could be growing up in chaos, everything could be going crazy around you, but if you have a ball at your feet, you stop thinking. Everything is quiet, peaceful.”

569. “Football, for me, was a place where I got accepted for being a good footballer.”

570. “In football, in any sport, communication is really key. So if you want to be a great teammate, a great team and a great player, then communication is very important.”

571. “The Football Association have always acted more as a referee than a governor. And the FA, aware the Premier League provide players for the England team, have always had too gentle a hand on the tiller. The result is that the Premier League are the tigers in the English football jungle everybody's scared of.”

572. “I'm always bragging, always laughing with my Spain team-mates at Barcelona, saying I'll take 30 per cent possession and two goals - a win is a win. It's football.”

573. “Football can basically bring a lot together, even topics that are otherwise difficult to unite. For this, but football must try to stay out of political positions. Football should continue to be aware of this function; this includes taking an apolitical role.”

574. “American football seems to resemble soccer in that one scores by putting the ball through the opponent's goal; but football, truly is about land. The Settlers want to move the line of scrimmage Westward, the Native Americans want to move it East.”

575. “Football is a chess game to me. If you move your pawn against my bishop, I'll counter that move to beat you. Football is the same way. I study so much film that I know exactly what teams are going to do. I love knowing what a offense is going to run and stuffing that play.”

576. “In knockout football, it's one bad game and you're out.”

577. “Football sometimes goes up and down, and we need to accept the result.”

578. “Where I lived in Glasgow looked like Dresden after the war. It was a bomb site. I don't think I'd ever played football on grass until I moved to Australia.”

579. “The Champions League is always special. I believe every player, every fan, every coach wants this trophy. It is unbelievable, and it is one of the greatest achievements you can have in football.”

580. “I am an athlete for Christ. That's why I play for Him, to give Him glory, to thank Him for giving me the ability to play football.”

581. “It happens in football: you are loved one day and hated the next.”

582. “People just do not realise what a football life can be. Since 1968 I've never had more than a few weeks out of work, when I left Sheffield United and I have not had a Christmas.”

583. “Everton fans don't just come to watch the football. They are there for Everton, the club. They really believe in the history of the club.”

584. “A lot of people believe that I retired from the game of football because of concussions - that is not accurate. I really retired primarily because of a degenerative back condition that I had.”

585. “I don't think there's been anything in the game of football in my lifetime that has changed college football more than redshirting.”

586. “The World Cup focus is football. Team U.S.A. is more than football.”

587. “I knew nothing about football, then someone showed me a film of Petit and I realised how interesting the game could be. He is divine. When I met him I could barely speak, he was so gorgeous. Women will love that show.”

588. “It doesn't mean my footballing ideas are special, different, better than the others. I am not saying it's my football, my ideas, and the other coaches are nothing. It's the way I believe. I'm not special.”

589. “There's never been completion in my football career because I've always been striving for that next thing.”

590. “You're watching your kids playing football, and you're not present. It's like the worst… it's horrible. I despise myself for it. I think it's a particularly male thing. Being present and in the moment with your kids is something a lot of men struggle with.”

591. “The patience that goes with the game, the little things that go along with the game, you have so much more time to think in golf than you do in football - you have to keep your thoughts positive. I'm not sure I've got that mastered.”

592. “The act of riding a bicycle isn't causing brain trauma. Yeah, you could fall, but that's if something goes wrong. Everything could go right in football, and it's still dangerous.”

593. “The power of Liverpool Football Club is the collective. We always do everything together; this is our power.”

594. “I used to play football on the streets, kicking breadfruits or oranges.”

595. “I would say making memories with my teammates and my brothers and all of the relationships that I formed through football. It's a great network, you get to meet a lot of great people, you get to experience a lot of hardships with other people, and fight through things with other people.”

596. “Growing up in South London was what moulded me, really. I grew up in Caford, Lewisham. It just meant a lot of time playing out with my friends… football, obviously. It wasn't always the nicest area, but it was better for it.”

597. “We were really lucky and fortunate in the '70s because we got a group of not only good football players but good people… a group that wanted to be together and wanted to be the best.”

598. “When I heard there were Chubbs around, I had to meet them because we all love football. We're all very athletic.”

599. “The more you and the organization can help take care of personal situations, the smoother the ship runs on the football end.”

600. “My foundation now has some 120 football pitches laid out for children, a lot of them immigrants. We live in a multicultural society.”

601. “Football's a team sport and as long as everyone is doing well, I think it makes things easier individually.”

602. “I was 15, and the years of hard swimming had packed muscle on my frame and made me very strong. Not as strong as a football player, but strong enough to inflict heavy damage.”

603. “I've been lucky to be born in Spain to a good family. But some team-mates reached the same position from a tough background. Football is equal, and it doesn't matter where you come from.”

604. “If I got a football scholarship, I was going to be a football player.”

605. “Football's cruel sometimes.”

606. “I don't feel scared about death, I just feel so frustrated and sad to think I won't see how stories end. My children's story. My wife's. The football. All the stories going on in the world that you're going to miss the end of.”

607. “In football, I have learned to forget the past, think about the present, and the future will come as it may - thinking about it would be a mistake.”

608. “Football today means players stay less now than ever before and you have to accept that. As a manager, a big part of your business is doing far too much business that you don't want to do really.”

609. “I try to get better in every aspect of my life, not just on the football field. I am competitive, and I just want to always get better.”

610. “Both of my sons used to coach high school football. When they started, I'd say things I shouldn't have. So I learned my lesson.”

611. “Football is what, 15 years? I want to invest 100% of my life into the game, so when it's all said and done, I don't want to have regrets.”

612. “Am I ever going to be able to play football again? What's going on with my career? I was just thinking things like that. You've got tears going down your eyes. You've got your trainers right there and my parents right there. I was just thinking, "Is this it?" I didn't know what a knee injury was. I'd never felt pain like that.”

613. “I think as long as I feel good and am able to perform on a high level, I will keep playing because I love football so much. After that, I have many options but haven't set any goals.”

614. “What a great day for football, all we need is some green grass and a ball.”

615. “I played 13 years. I did quite well in professional football. Therefore, I do not need.”

616. “My music has been used in halftime at football games, and it's been used in high fashion shows, and its been used in 'take back the night' rallies.”

617. “I grew up with my cousins, who were as close as brothers, and frankly, I didn't like what girls were expected to do. I liked horseback riding, playing football, going to rodeos. I wanted to be in jeans all the time, and I couldn't figure out why I was supposed to conform to a certain standard, so I didn't.”

618. “It feels more like football when the supporters are there. It gives us extra strength.”

619. “I think self-belief is a massive thing in football. If you don't believe in yourself, not many others will. Work hard and believe in yourself, and I think you'll go as far as your body will take you.”

620. “I like to read the papers. I make my living from football, and I like to know what's going on.”

621. “I didn't get paid enough money really to live properly, sleeping on people's sofas and stuff, but that was the moment when I thought, 'I just wanna play football professionally; whether I get paid 10 euros or 10,000 euros, I just wanna play.'”

622. “You may not win the Super Bowl. Your kids may not go on to be doctors and lawyers and everything may not go perfectly. That doesn't mean it was a bad plan or the wrong thing. It's just like a football season. Everything's not going to go perfect.”

623. “I really enjoy tennis, but football's the game for me.”

624. “In football, you can always maim a person if you wanted to.”

625. “Football is a fickle game - if I do get the jeers and the boos I'm just going to take it as them missing me playing down there because I miss Southampton. I miss the fans and I miss the good times we had down there. Of course I do.”

626. “Wrestling toughest sport. We never take day off. We never have the offseason like the hockey or the football. We work year-round, and we never complain because you fight to be with biggest company in the world and you never ask for the time to rest.”

627. “I want to be great - in everything I do. As far as football, I always looked up to Kellen Moore of Boise State. I thought it was the coolest thing that he was the winningest QB of all time.”

628. “I was a good football player, and I had a chance to play with some great players.”

629. “'At Random' ran on Saturday nights for as long as the conversation was still lively. Sometimes, I'd finish way after midnight, then hop a plane for whatever city I was working a football game that Sunday.”

630. “Usually, if you're going to be a manager, you always want to talk about football and be a connoisseur of the game.”

631. “Football helped me with confidence that I needed. It gave me a sense of independence and earning my own money and my own keep. That's what it served. It gave me the strength to be able to deal with rejection, politics, hard work, and being introduced to pain and embracing what's uncomfortable.”

632. “I am a sporty person who loves to go to the gym, train, play football.”

633. “Playing professional football is something I'll never be able to do.”

634. “I'm going out there, and I'm going to play football how I know to play football.”

635. “The game of football is one of strategy and tactics.”

636. “I just don't know why anyone would ever think that women's football is a step down and that coaching World Cup champions, winners, players that have represented their countries in the Olympics or European championships is a step down from anything.”

637. “Sharks are as tough as those football fans who take their shirts off during games in Chicago in January, only more intelligent.”

638. “We should play free football, defend lively with a passion, and have the best understanding in offence.”

639. “I envied kids who played soccer and football, but that was not my gig.”

640. “Music and football are two industries where black people excel, because talent is undeniable. You can't deny an amazing voice. You can't deny amazing athletic prowess. Physically, it's evident. But in other industries, circumstance is more of a thing.”

641. “I think the main thing about football is confidence.”

642. “My mother loved her children, and she had always pushed me to keep working hard, even when it was football and not books.”

643. “This ain't a football game, we do this every day.”

644. “I missed out on my teenage years. I led a sheltered life. I was practicing scales instead of playing football.”

645. “There is something about being in a remote town where anything other than green fields, trees and Saturday football club is very exciting and thrilling.”

646. “The level of football in England is the top. English football is the leader in the world.”

647. “When one is small, one always looks up at someone. To me, it was my father, Antonio, a former amateur football player. He was a striker of great talent. He has always been a role-model.”

648. “I like a lot of sports. Especially football - it's my favourite sport. My uncle played football in Barcelona for nine years and played for Spain in three World Cups.”

649. “You know the madness of the English football season has kicked in when a fan rings up 606 and says Arsenal will win the title.”

650. “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.”

651. “If the teams with the best players always won, football would be boring.”

652. “I go about the world, hand outstretched, and in the stadiums I plead, 'A pretty move, for the love of God.' And when good football happens, I give thanks for the miracle, and I don't give a damn which team or country performs it.”

653. “My four older brothers were my favorite players. That's why I got into football and sports.”

654. “As a player, you get to the stage where you realise that you are not 25 anymore - and can't play the way you used to. The intelligent players adapt - and Steven Gerrard has the ability to do that. He is an excellent passer of the ball, possesses an intelligent football brain, and has great vision.”

655. “You know, in football - this isn't basketball. One draft pick isn't going to make us a Super Bowl champion. It might be a big start to a Super Bowl championship, but it's always going to be about the team.”

656. “Communication is always important, but it's a separate type of language in football.”

657. “Some people have this impression of me: 'Boy, he's always so serious on the field. Football. Football. Football.'”

658. “I felt like I was better at football than I am in basketball.”

659. “Al Davis has been the biggest influence in my professional football life. I mean, he was a guy that gave me an opportunity, one, to get into professional football in 1967 as an assistant coach, and then at the age of 32, giving me the opportunity to be the head coach.”

660. “When there is a World Cup the world stops, the country stops, everyone is hugging each other, whether old or young, everyone stops just to enjoy the football.”

661. “There's still prejudice and that resistance regarding women, not only on female football but in various activities. Men think that women are a bit fragile to perform some types of activities or don't have the ability and aren't strong enough.”

662. “Football coaches don't have real problems.”

663. “I sometimes get frustrated with how important Dallas Cowboys' football is to people. It's extremely important to me, too, but football is what I do.”

664. “I hate the idea of theatre just being an evening pastime. It should be emotionally and intellectually demanding. I love football. The level of analysis that you listen to on the terraces is astonishing. If people did that in the theatre… but they don't. They expect to sit back and not participate.”

665. “If your man is a sports enthusiast, you may have to resign yourself to his spouting off in a monotone on a prize fight, football game or pennant race.”

666. “Nah, I've always had a great relationship with my two brothers, I have always had their support in my football and in everything. They've been very close to me and we have a great relationship.”

667. “Leadership must be likeable, affable, cordial, and above all emotional. The fashion of authoritarian leadership is gone. Football is about life. You can't be angry all day.”

668. “I always say to my people, 'If you don't sell a Ferrari to a football player, you make a big present to me.' Really. Because they buy to just show off. I don't like.”

669. “I am an honest, God-fearing man who is intensely dedicated to being the best person I can be on and off the football field.”

670. “Derby games are about more than points in the league, or cup victories, they are about bragging rights that extend well beyond an afternoon of football.”

671. “With good coaching, proper motivation and the right club structure with organic growth, you can achieve an awful lot in football.”

672. “The football field, I'd definitely say that's my safe place.”

673. “In football, I need full concentration even though I really enjoy it.”

674. “You play football, rugby, tennis. You do not play boxing. When a sportsperson is in a game, when it gets too much, you quit. But in boxing you can't quit. You have to be taken out.”

675. “Football is such a team sport, so no one individual does it. No one coach or no one assistant coach or no one player, it's a great team sport, so I don't get carried away with a bunch of accolades.”

676. “In football, I'm not so old. At 52, maybe I have 20 years in front of me to coach. But I feel myself as… you might say an 'old fox.' Nothing scares me; nothing worries me too much. It looks like nothing new can happen for me.”

677. “Van Gaal has a good vision of football, but it is not mine. He wants to gel winning teams and has a militaristic way of working with his tactics. I want individuals to think for themselves.”

678. “Football has this ability to unite and create something more than just a spectacle as a sport.”

679. “Football is played on the field.”

680. “I started playing football in a school back in Sao Vicente when I was five years old, going towards six. Those were my first steps, among those kids, and then I kept going.”

681. “In England I played everything - swimming, athletics, football, rugby, badminton, cricket - all of that stuff. I was in the first teams for all the sports at Brighton, played on the wing in rugby, and ran 100m, 200m, 400m, and did long jump and even the javelin at one point. In the States I did a bit of track, but mainly I was there for the boxing.”

682. “My younger brother was a big Stoke fan, and I was sucked into it. I was kind of waking up every morning and looking at Gordon Banks' face! We had all these small football cards - literally hundreds of them - and swapping them was the currency back then.”

683. “Football is at least as 'gay' as rugby, Greco-Roman wrestling and the film '300.'”

684. “I will always defend 1960s football.”

685. “Football is a violent game. We are violent men.”

686. “Playing football with my mates everyday on the streets, or when I'm at home constantly doing keepy ups, I think I've always been obsessed with football.”

687. “There is always room for losers in the football business. They are the mother's milk of gambling, and why not? Somebody has to do it, or there won't be any winners.”

688. “My only concern is playing. Everything else, my family looks after. In our house, everyone has a job, and my job in our house is to play football.”

689. “We have to cut out some of our mistakes, but the main thing in English football is controlling the second ball. Without that, you cannot survive.”

690. “Trust in the great American ingenuity. We can derive more intelligent, more brain-friendly ways we can play football.”

691. “When you go into a game, and there's something that was drawn up the way it was supposed to be drawn up, and you missed the throw or the catch, as a receiver, it's something where you feel bad about that. You can always regret just missing it, but as a football player, you have to move on to the next play.”

692. “Modern football is increasingly dominated by the coaches - their narcissism to put themselves above the team and their players.”

693. “Playing football in San Francisco was almost a transcendental experience.”

694. “We're in a leadership position in sports. People look up to the National Football League.”

695. “I play a lot of sports. I played football for 12 years, I like tennis, I surf, I snowboard, and I ski. I always like to do an activity.”

696. “If you ask me how did I do at United, I will say it was my best year ever, given the circumstances I was working under. We played football that was quite alright. But it's not football that is appreciated in England.”

697. “I played in football games where you walk off the field and the scoreboard didn't end up the way you wanted. But you knew that you really did give it all. And the other team was too strong.”

698. “I grew up in Texas, obviously a huge football state.”

699. “In Germany, the football association is the best.”

700. “If you get into a fight, don't take your helmet off. We're looking for smart football players, not dumb ones.”

701. “You can take off a football jersey, but you can never take off your faith. That goes with you everywhere.”

702. “Football is an important part of my life, but not everything.”

703. “I revere football. I love the game. You don't have to wonder if I will miss it. I will absolutely miss it.”

704. “Look at a football field. It looks like a big movie screen. This is theatre. Football combines the strategy of chess. It's part ballet. It's part battleground, part playground. We clarify, amplify and glorify the game with our footage, the narration and that music, and in the end create an inspirational piece of footage.”

705. “Football is big business - you can't get away from it. But you have to separate that side from the playing.”

706. “I don't train for football; I train more for a lifestyle.”

707. “When you spend a lot of money on one player, you want him to prove himself, but the way football works, one day you can be good, the next you can be bad, and the next after that, you can be very bad. I have come to Manchester City to work very hard and to help my friends make Manchester City great.”

708. “Football is to unite, not separate.”

709. “The day I leave Paris is the day I go down a level or quit football.”

710. “I don't see myself as Johnny Football.”

711. “I want to make sure I have something I can lean on after football.”

712. “My feelings towards Manchester City will never change; I'm eternally grateful to them as a football club. They took me as a 19-year-old boy from Shrewsbury Town, took somewhat of a punt on me, and I've had some fantastic times.”

713. “I can very well imagine that a partnership with Oliver Bierhoff would be very prolific, especially for the future of German football.”

714. “I might have a different understanding of the term 'football star.' If I shoot a few balls after training, it's perfectly normal that I collect them afterwards.”

715. “Maldini was a key figure in world football. I have always had great admiration for him as a player and as a human being. I faced him in many derbies - he was tough but always very loyal.”

716. “I'm absolutely aware of the great effort Juventus Football Club has made to bring me here.”

717. “I thought, 'If I ever get a new football building, I want a slide.' Now I go down it every day.”

718. “There are many ways to see football and interpret it.”

719. “We talk about women in football like we are not entitled to the same opportunity and the same access.”

720. “I think when you've got the dog, you're just born with it, really. The way I was raised in football, you had to have that dog in you a little bit and I go into the games knowing every game's a war and you got to be up for it. I think that's something I have.”

721. “Football is an emotional game.”

722. “Women's football will always be different from men's football, but that doesn't mean you cannot still appreciate it. OK, so it might be a bit slower than the men's game, but then League Two football is slower than the Champions League, and it doesn't stop people turning out to see their local teams.”

723. “Until the moment I stop playing football, I want to win more titles.”

724. “The emotion to handle the pressure is one of the biggest challenges in football - it's the top challenge.”

725. “Football is a more beautiful game in high definition.”

726. “The only thing I ever wanted to be was a professional football player.”

727. “I would say I had anger-management issues, to be honest with you. But it was only on the football field.”

728. “Football management is such a pressurised thing - horseracing is a release. I'm also learning to play the piano - I'm quite determined - it's another release from the pressure of my job.”

729. “My dad showed me a football and would throw it up and have my dog - a German Shepherd - chase me around when I went after the ball. I caught it because I was scared of that dog. The next year, my dad talked to the commissioner of a local league and convinced him to let me play as a first grader with third graders.”

730. “Scholes was playing tiki-taka football when nobody in England knew what it was. He was another of those players, like Denis Law or Bobby Moore, who at 15 probably looked as if he wouldn't make it.”

731. “It's football. You take weird hits. That's what you prepare for in the offseason so your body can take all those weird hits and you can get right back up.”

732. “Far too much emphasis on what is deemed the 'wrong' style of football. That's what annoys me. Your style depends on who you're playing and what group of players you have at your disposal.”

733. “Every day I pull into that parking spot that says 'Head Football Coach,' I get out of my car and pinch myself sometimes, just to make sure it's real, sort of like, 'Is this really happening?'”

734. “I've got five grandkids. They play baseball, they play football, they play basketball. I go to all the games. You always have that urge to say something when you're watching them. But I've learned to keep it to myself. I've blurted out some things and embarrassed myself.”

735. “Everything I am I owe to Sterling Sharpe. He made me a better football player, a better father, and a better man. He was, and always will be, my hero.”

736. “Dusty Rhodes was a great athlete. Actually, he was a baseball player as well. He played football but he played baseball. That was his number one sport. He wasn't always heavyset like he is. But Dusty Rhodes, The American Dream he just gets charisma.”

737. “Football was my sport. I was fast. I was a free safety.”

738. “If a football player has a bad game, he's allowed to do that because he plays once or twice a week. With fighting, it's once every few months.”

739. “To be honest I wasn't very good at football. I loved cricket and when I started making some big scores for my boys' team, I dreamed of becoming the next Border.”

740. “Every league has its own culture, its own identity, and its own type of football. It's very physical in England, but technical skill comes to the fore in Spain, where everybody wants to play beautiful football. The standards are very high in Germany, too; the teams are physically strong, very disciplined, and very well organised.”

741. “The whole London football scene is now financially more powerful and ambitious than ever before. That reflects the city's economic might and its multiculturalism. Now West Ham have a new , and Spurs and Chelsea will follow. And the London clubs have widened their areas of support.”

742. “I talked to a few schools about playing football, but I had already pretty much made my mind up. I fell in love with baseball at a young age, and I knew that that's what I wanted to do.”

743. “For the longest time, I thought I was a boy. I really did. I wore boys' clothes, played tag football.”

744. “Well 'Monday Night Football,' I think the players kind of like it because they like the attention, and it's a lot of attention. But on the other hand, it's a disruption of the routine we used to have to play on Monday night. If you're a player, you sit around all day waiting for a game. It's different than when you play at noon.”

745. “Football should never be a worry. It should be exciting. When a child plays football outside, he doesn't need to worry. Professionals should be the same.”

746. “I am passionate about football. My support for Celtic FC has got me through some hard times in my life. I still play regularly, too.”

747. “I think it's also important for people to really see that your identity doesn't come just from what you do but who you are. My relationship with Jesus Christ is the most important thing to me. Because of that, I don't have to change whether I am one of the most popular guys in football.”

748. “Football, that's just athletics. But in the business world - doing everything - people are competing. So you need good work ethics, and I think it helped me to develop good work ethics, being in a small town.”

749. “When I was drafted by the Colts, Indianapolis was a basketball and a car racing town, but it didn't take long for the Colts to convert the city and state of Indiana into football evangelists.”

750. “Football is like a rollercoaster and if you keep dwelling on what's happened in the past you're never going to move.”

751. “You simply can't judge a team's football from the country it comes from.”

752. “As a retired football coach, I know a good bit about teamwork and winning.”

753. “For me, the amazing thing was entering into this amazing world of 'Sesame Street.' We'd be in the kids' room, and there was a door into the soundstage that said '1-2-3 Open Sesame.' I remember pushing that door open and going into this incredible magical world of make-believe. In one episode, I was playing football with Joe Namath.”

754. “I don't really think about things too much, but people are going to form impressions about you if you play football, aren't they? And if they think you're the funny guy or the boy that likes a laugh, well that ain't so bad.”

755. “I started out real young as a tight end, but I was never getting the football. I knew when I played basketball, I loved to have control of the ball. When I played baseball, I was a pitcher. I always wanted to be the guy throwing the passes and making a difference, I guess.”

756. “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.”

757. “Dehumanizing sounds so extreme, but when you're fighting for a football at the bottom of the pile, it is kind of dehumanizing.”

758. “Whenever I think of baseball, the first name that comes to mind is Babe Ruth. What the Babe was to baseball, Shula is to football coaching. There are certain figures in sports who are larger than the games they play or coach, and Don Shula is one of those.”

759. “I want to own an NFL franchise. I understand the business of football.”

760. “For me, the defender I respect the most is Giorgio Chiellini. He's one of the best defenders in the world. I really like the way he plays football on the pitch, the way he defends. He lives for the game. He transmits a sense of tranquillity to his team-mates. I have always admired his way to play.”

761. “The good thing is I don't put the ball in my right hand and I'm predominantly left-handed when I'm running the ball. I just have to take care of the football and even if I have two hands that are 100 percent, I still can't turn the ball over. It's just something I have to mentally prepare for, and I think I'm strong enough to do that.”

762. “I was missing out on public school and going to the football games, prom or homecomings. But I've been to three World Championships… so I think it's like a win-win.”

763. “I love playing football every day. I love working hard, I love training, I love the games; I love the challenge. As long as that still applies, I don't see any reason to call time on something that makes me so happy.”

764. “Whoever likes football always likes to see the best player on the pitch.”

765. “The biggest leap between the NFL and college football is the speed. That's something you hear often. But I think there's more to it than just the speed of the players - there's also the speed with which you have to process information around you.”

766. “There's one thing about me: I do love the game of football.”

767. “I liked football a lot, too, but basketball clearly is my first love.”

768. “My plan always was to play college football, hope to get a few snaps in and then go on to medical school. As I went further in my career and got to my junior year, I realized as I looked around, 'I got a shot here, and I might as well go after it.'”

769. “It's in me, since I was a child. I've always wanted to win every game. Not only in football, but in other things.”

770. “I need to continue reading books, and I like to learn about different people in the world, different people with success in and outside of football.”

771. “Every time a football player goes to ply his trade, he's got to play from the ground up - from the soles of his feet right up to his head. Every inch of him has to play.”

772. “Belief is the most important thing in football. Not quality, running, or being strong but belief, faith, and fight.”

773. “I always wanted to become a good role model for kids as a professional football player. Unfortunately, I didn't attain that through football, but I was smart enough to realize that professional wrestling provided another opportunity for that.”

774. “I attribute my entire football career, as far as getting me started, getting me interested, keeping me that way was my father. He went to every game even though he was crippled and wasn't real healthy.”

775. “I really actually started when I was 10 years old, but before that, I loved to play with Father because he played as an ex-player. I just enjoyed it, so I started at 10 years old with Father to be a proper football player.”

776. “Do I think God is going to win football games? Oh no. I never prayed to God to help us win a game. I would pray for the safety of the players. I would pray that they would do their best. I think God will answer that.”

777. “In football, the only game I know is the 90-minutes game. It's not mind games; I don't try to do that.”

778. “People have no idea how hard football is, absolutely no idea. It's all about pace. You can say, 'Yeah, you've got speed of thought' - but you've got to have a little bit of a zip.”

779. “When I won the world championship, in 1972, the United States had an image of, you know, a football country, a baseball country, but nobody thought of it as an intellectual country.”

780. “When you know how to read football, it is easier for some players.”

781. “I like the guys that like football. And the guys that like football, they all like me back. And the ones that don't like me? They're the ones that know that I know that they don't like football. They tend to avoid me.”

782. “I like football. It's fun winning the ball from someone. It's fun shooting at goal. It's fun hitting a ball over 60 metres that arrives. It's like in golf: if you hit a ball, and it flies and flies and flies, you enjoy it.”

783. “Baseball is what we were, and football is what we have become.”

784. “I never mind people who can't stand football. It's the ones who say 'I quite like it' that get me. Because for me it's all-encompassing.”

785. “I think I like to do a lot of things to, you know, turn off the 'football head.' I think that's really important so you don't get burned out or whatever, so you can relax completely in your mind. Because it's not easy to be a footballer; it's a lot of pressure.”

786. “I think what really matters is the support you get in football regardless of the uniform you wear. Some girls feel good playing in long shorts, while some of them feel good playing in tighter shorts. I'm not against it. It's obvious that women have to explore that female side of things, and I don't think that's a mistake.”

787. “I was going from Furman to the University of Georgia. I transferred to play football.”

788. “Many people agree with me that many things are not clear in football these days and it is not something people who watch football deserve. The situation will be the same while football is run by people who do not understand football.”

789. “One of the things about football is, it's a relationship business.”

790. “I've always really just liked football, and I've always devoted a lot of time to it. When I was a kid, my friends would call me to go out with them, but I would stay home because I had practice the next day.”

791. “When I was a kid, we played outside until we couldn't see and had to go in. I rode my bicycle and played tag football, kick the can, and hide-and-go-seek.”

792. “Senegal is a great football country.”

793. “I love coaches that think more about attacking than defending. As a football fan, I think that's wonderful.”

794. “I am smarter because I stayed in school, and I am a better football player.”

795. “It's not that India, China and the United States need football, but football needs these three countries. Because it will be even bigger.”

796. “There are few secrets in football. So execute.”

797. “Jarvis taught me a lot. I came in here as a young rookie, and he was Jarvis Landry. Just on and off the field, everything, he's always there for me. A great person, a great player, a great leader. He was a big part of me being who I am in football.”

798. “My biggest competitor was my mum. I used to try to beat her at Chinese chequers, chess, carrom, volleyball, badminton, football, wrestling.”

799. “At the end of the day, I'm a footballer who has played at some of the biggest football clubs in the world and played with some of the best players in the world.”

800. “I am a sports enthusiast, and if given an opportunity, I want to be a sportsman, even today. I want to promote the sport that is indigenous to India. Kabaddi is a matter of national pride. Why can't cricket, hockey, football and kabaddi be given equal platforms and co-exist? I believe that can happen.”

801. “My father fought for me to play football. He never had to make me shinpads, but it was a lot of money to send to me to a soccer school. And to provide boots and things.”

802. “I think the National Football League needs a new union. The heavyweights of this union are not heavyweights enough.”

803. “Because a football game is just sixty minutes, but I'm training six, seven hours in every day. So, going for sixty minutes becomes easy. More importantly, I think that your muscles mature and can move in all different directions.”

804. “I've followed Notre Dame football since 1946, when I listened on the radio and Johnny Lujack tackled Doc Blanchard in the open field to preserve a 0-0 tie.”

805. “I have no life - other than I love football.”

806. “I am a happy man. I am no longer out on the pitch but I still live in the football world.”

807. “I was never too much into school. I liked lunchtimes and breaks, but nah, I hated sitting at a desk. I was always looking out of the window, looking at my watch, thinking about when I could play football.”

808. “The negative side of football. The negative side of our society. People sometimes go to football and bring to it the negative aspects of our society.”

809. “We need the quarterbacks. It's a passing league and a quarterback-driven league. We need the Peyton Mannings in football uniforms out there playing - the Tom Bradys, the Drew Breeses, the Philip Riverses - we need those guys instead of them standing on the sideline.”

810. “Bavaro's probably as tough of a - physically and mentally as tough a football player as I've ever coached. So, I would put him in the rare category there.”

811. “You know, I never looked down the road and said, 'Hey look, one day, the Hall of Fame.' It's always about playing each and every game 100 percent and I thank my teammates for getting me into the Hall because football is a team sport, not an individual sport.”

812. “I grew up with two brothers with whom I played a rough game of football. If I could take that, I could take anything.”

813. “Football is a worldwide business consortium and to satisfy that best you need to find the best players.”

814. “St James' Park was always, in the course of my career, a great place to play football, for the wildness of the crowd and the no-holds-barred football that both my team, Manchester United, and Newcastle would play.”

815. “As a young girl, football is where I met the people who, to this day, are my best friends. It is also where I began to learn about the important relationship between hard work, teamwork, and fun.”

816. “I play football; I do what I like.”

817. “When you take a year off from football, you come back for all the enjoyable moments. When you're not playing, you miss out on all the highs, but you also miss these disappointments. But I would rather be in the arena to be excited or be disappointed than not have a chance at all. That's football. That's why everybody plays it.”

818. “I tried to look around to see what I wanted to do. Football was something I knew the most about.”

819. “The decisions related to recruitment are all taken by football experts. My involvement is signing off the money.”

820. “No one knows anything about economics. It's the great lie of the economists. By contrast in football people might have contrasting opinions, each of which has some validity. But the economists always speak in conditionals - what a mess.”

821. “At many a moment on many a day, I am convinced that pro football must be a game for madmen, and I must be one of them.”

822. “I can hit the whiskers on a cat with a football from a distance of forty yards.”

823. “One of the great things about being a professional football player is visiting countries and seeing cultures you might never see.”

824. “Faith, family, and football is how I prioritize my life. And they all go together, but they go in that order.”

825. “England really is the birthplace, the heart and soul of football. If Barcelona had Liverpool's fans, or Arsenal's, or United's, we'd have won 20 Champions Leagues, hahaha!”

826. “It's fantastic for Arsenal, and for English football as well. You've got an English club with a lot of young English talent committing themselves to a club.”

827. “A lot of people see somebody who has one hand and not two, and they think it doesn't make sense. It's like, 'He has one hand, so how can he play football?' What if I say, 'You have two hands. How can you play football?'”

828. “Torrey Smith was a guy who played a lot of football for a lot of different teams.”

829. “I don't want to find out what celebrity X, who is a Browns fan, thinks of the zone blitz scheme. I don't think that's the sort of thing that I would even ask many people when they come on the show; it's very obtuse, even if they are an expert on football.”

830. “I never said I want to be the football guy. But when that opportunity started to become real, I said, 'Okay, let's see where this goes.'”

831. “I don't think I could ever describe myself as unlucky because people would look at me, playing football for a living, and say: 'Are you winding me up?'”

832. “If your quarterback wants a deflated football, your soccer-style kicker is going to want it kind of full. If your quarterback wants it really full, your straight-on kicker is going to want less air in it. It's a regulation football; let them use it however they want to. You use your own ball.”

833. “It is helpful to think of people as having two fundamental motivations: the desire to see ourselves as honest, good people, and the desire to gain the benefits that come from cheating - on our taxes or on the football field.”

834. “One thing that annoys me in football is when people get carried away by results after four or five weeks of a new season.”

835. “The support of organizations including the NY Jets, Canon USA, USA Football, and Outback Steakhouse is a great example of how corporate America can make an impact in bettering the communities where employees work and live.”

836. “Any football game, you can be hit one way or another. It's not the safest sport that we play; it's a beautifully violent game, and that's what, in part, I love about it.”

837. “I played in the 2015 World Cup. I scored in two games; we got to the semi-finals and eventually ended up getting the bronze medal. That was a big turning point in my career, personally, and for English women's football, too.”

838. “Liverpool play offensive football, which gives me more chances to score. It's up to me to take advantage of that.”

839. “I do realize that God has given me so many blessings in my life. I mean, not only with football, but with the family that He's blessed me with and the opportunity He's given me to grow up in a home that embraces God.”

840. “If you dont invest in grassroots and if you dont invest in youth football, then its inevitable that youll pay the price somewhere down the track.”

841. “My first assistant-coaching job in football was at William & Mary in 1961. The pay wasn't much, so to get $300 more per year, I agreed to coach the golf team. I didn't even know how to keep score, and really, my main job was not to wreck the van on the way to tournaments.”

842. “The joy and love that I get from playing football are unbelievable. It is such a feeling that I want to give everything that I have got. I just enjoy it, I am living a life that I never even dreamt of.”

843. “I think that when people join clubs as simple as a sorority or a fraternity, a football team, a baseball team, it's just - you want to be in a group. You want to be around people, you want to be with people.”

844. “I got a job as a football development manager which meant I could coach the students and work with the sports sciences department, all the people in university sector.”

845. “For me to be able to play football was a gift.”

846. “God ain't got nothing to do with winning a damn football game.”

847. “I developed a mechanism so that whatever mistakes I made, I would bounce straight back. Whatever was happening off the pitch, I could put it to one side and maintain my form. Call it mental resilience or a strong mind, but that is what we mean when we talk about experience in a football team.”

848. “As a quarterback, your job is to move the football and win games, to be a leader on the field.”

849. “My generation put in a lot more hours playing football after school than kids today. These days, all the football these kids play, they play at their clubs, so the clubs need to work seriously on the basic skills.”

850. “Positive thinking is the key to success in business, education, pro football, anything that you can mention. I go out there thinking that I'm going to complete every pass.”

851. “I can have everything I love at the same time. I can have my family, I can have my friends, and I can have my quiet life, which I also like. I can have my football, and I can have everything together, and I don't need to give up one to be better than what I am.”

852. “The closest I've come to knowing myself is in losing myself. That's why I loved football before I loved music. I could lose myself in it.”

853. “I remember not wanting to play football because I didn't want to get my hair wet.”

854. “I think it's very important that you don't start thinking about your life after football when you are 33 or 34. There are many more amazing things in this world, and it's important to think about these things before you retire.”

855. “Soccer is a continuous game, rugby is a continuous game, but for the physical elements that are involved in playing a football game and the number of plays that you play, I don't know that it was ever intended to be a continuous game.”

856. “Our goal was to win, to win a Super Bowl, but also to win in the right way, to be role models to our community, to represent Indianapolis, the state of Indiana and the National Football League.”

857. “The Copa del Rey is a different competition. It is football in its purest form and is different from the continuity of the league.”

858. “We were the first generation to have to deal with the modern stardom of football. Some handled it better than others.”

859. “I enjoy teaching football.”

860. “Fighting football, not serenity football - that is what I like.”

861. “Kyiv were the first team I had ever come up against who systematically pressed the ball. That was my football epiphany. I understood that there was a different way of playing.”

862. “Fran Kirby, Pernille Harder, Beth England, Magda Eriksson, Millie Bright, Maren Mjelde - do you want me to keep going? These are world class players. Women's football is not a step down from anything.”

863. “Some people don't understand that football is universal. It doesn't have a race or nationality. It's one group of people.”

864. “Most people think of January 1st as the start of a new year. To people who espouse to Catholicism and Christianity, they might correlate that with the birth of Christ. Us in football, the start of spring practice and the first day of summer training camp are what you look at as the New Year with fireworks going off, it's your birthday.”

865. “I was a wrestler. I played football, lacrosse. After high school, I got into jujitsu. I boxed my whole adult life.”

866. “When I got out of coaching, I had taught a class at the University of California, an extension class on football for fans. I was looking for tools. I was showing them films. I was going to write a textbook. Trip Hawkins came to me about making it a game for computers.”

867. “We try to play football; don't forget it, right. My teams always in my career try to play football. I cannot control the other circumstances.”

868. “I think it's helped me that I've always been very grounded, very down to earth. Lots of my friends are people I've known from school, and when I'm away from football, they're the ones who I knock about with.”

869. “Criticism is normal in football.”

870. “I'm proud to say I've done something for the good of football. I don't compare myself to anyone.”

871. “At 17, I went to Stanford University to study engineering. My time was occupied with the required reading and the extracurricular duties of managing the baseball and football teams and earning my way.”

872. “I ended up doing a job that I absolutely love. I grew up a college football junkie.”

873. “February is always a bad month for TV sports. Football is gone, basketball is plodding along in the annual midseason doldrums, and baseball is not even mentioned.”

874. “Writing is not my thing; playing football is my thing.”

875. “Football helped me build confidence on and off the field and taught me to grow through moments of success and disappointment.”

876. “A school without football is in danger of deteriorating into a medieval study hall.”

877. “I remember my late father, who was the biggest football fan I have ever known, used to stress when I was younger that, win or lose, you always have to compete with honor.”

878. “I concentrate on training. I go to the gym. I want to put the football first, not the social media or what's going on around the camp.”

879. “I was an athlete growing up. I was a wrestler, I played football, so I can take a fall. I actually wanted to be a stuntman when I was kid, so I would practice falling down the stairs. It's just something I like to do.”

880. “I don't know what my future holds. I'm gonna love playing football for as long as I can, but there's a lot of other things that I would love to accomplish.”

881. “It's football. Sometimes it's unfair.”

882. “I'm not a Packers fan. I just like football. I do respect those guys. You respect great football. I'm a Cowboys fan, or I was a Cowboys fan. You just respect great football.”

883. “To me it was never about what I accomplished on the football field, it was about the way I played the game.”

884. “It's really football, tennis, and golf that I watch other than hockey.”

885. “The year we went to our first Super Bowl in 1992, we were the youngest team in football. We played in the Super Bowl against a team that had a wealth of playoff experience and Super Bowl experience, and we dominated that football game.”

886. “Nothing can prepare you fully for how harsh football fans can be, but it makes you more robust, able to deal with a lot of what is thrown at you in life.”

887. “Once upon a time I owned a football club. It was one I grew up supporting, one my father had played for and one, as its owner, I had huge enthusiasm and great ambitions for.”

888. “You know that wherever you go, not everyone will speak your language. But go and experience the local culture and try to pick up as much as you can. I certainly think going forward - away from football because football is just a small part of your life - you will grow as a person.”

889. “My first assistant-coaching job in football was at William & Mary in 1961.”

890. “I played a little football when I was really young, but I didn't start until my junior year. My cousin, who was a big influence in my athletic career over time, said you should go out for receiver. I said let's give it a shot. I went out and played a little and caught a couple balls over a couple dudes heads.”

891. “When Klopp speaks about his football being heavy metal, I understand completely. It is so aggressive. For the fans, it is really good.”

892. “Maybe Australian football and me need a bit of a trial separation, just for both of us to feel good about ourselves.”

893. “Communication is key in any relationship - especially in a team sport, and football is the ultimate team sport.”

894. “I'm retiring as a football player from the University of Tennessee who played for the Colts and the Broncos and was very lucky to have played for all of them.”

895. “At Bayern, I was used to coming out of my box to try and clear up dangerous situations. The World Cup was just another platform, so it gave other people the chance to see me who don't watch German football.”

896. “Every time I score the passion comes out and I try to relay that back to the fans and to the players and the staff how grateful I am to be playing for such a good football club. The fans have taken well to me. I am part of the furniture at Everton, but I don't take it for granted.”

897. “In each profession, you need to feel passion for that in order to give it your best performance. Football is my passion.”

898. “In baseball, you have to remain calm, cool, and collected. In football, you can let out a little anger sometimes. It was a fun game, and I liked it, but I knew in my heart I was going to play baseball.”

899. “I want to be remembered as a great footballer and a great player. When our football days are over, that's all we are - people.”

900. “Breaking down barriers, succeeding away from home, living in another country, another culture, different football, makes you much stronger.”

901. “The book is actually called 'A Mentor Leader, a Different Way to Lead.' It really talks about my experience in the way I tried lead our football team, things that I learned from, basically, the coaches that I played for and my parents about leadership. And it is a little bit different, counter to maybe what society says about great leaders.”

902. “At home I have a copy of the April 21, 1986, issue of 'Sports Illustrated.' I'm on the cover with the blurb, 'Can Lou Do It?' I'd just arrived at Notre Dame, and with spring football underway, I was the focal point of that week's coverage.”

903. “I speak a lot about my parents and the people that have kind of brought me up in football and not just in football, but in life as well.”

904. “It's good for Brazilian football to have idols, stars, big stars coming back to Brazilian clubs. The tournaments become much better, more interesting. Ze Roberto, Juninho Pernambucano, Ronaldinho Gaucho, and other players who have returned to Brazil strengthen the league and improve the tournaments.”

905. “My memories from childhood always involve a football.”

906. “So many kids want to be football players, and to still feel like I'm living the dream at 37 is amazing.”

907. “I play football like I dance.”

908. “Being a woman is of special interest only to aspiring male transsexuals. To actual women, it is simply a good excuse not to play football.”

909. “Football is violence and cold weather and sex and college rye.”

910. “Football is a game designed to keep coal miners off the streets.”

911. “Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, there is no reason either in football or in poetry why the two should not meet in a man's life if he has the weight and cares about the words.”

912. “It is veneer, rouge, aestheticism, art museums, new theaters, etc. that make America impotent. The good things are football, kindness, and jazz bands.”

913. “If football taught me anything about business, it is that you win the game one play at a time.”

914. “There is a growing feeling that perhaps Texas is really another country, a place where the skies, the disasters, the diamonds, the politicians, the women, the fortunes, the football players and the murders are all bigger than anywhere else.”

915. “Football is like life and I know life.”

916. “He played football too long without a helmet.”

917. “I don't have a lot to share with other men. My heart sinks when I get into a taxi and someone starts talking to me about football.”

918. “Tiger is the greatest thing that's happened to the tour in a long time. He has brought incredible attention to golf at a time of year when football and the World Series always take precedence. Everything I've heard about him seems to be true.”

919. “I've always slightly worried the kids who play football around my house. They know I'm an actor, but felt sorry for me because they'd never seen anything I've done.”

920. “WIth football you can have up to 28 guys you consider starters, and if they can pick up the slack when some aren't playing so well, you don't have to turn those two game losing streaks into six-game losing streaks.”

921. “The football season is like pain. You forget how terrible it is until it seizes you again.”

922. “Football is a game of skill, we kicked them a bit and they kicked us a bit.”

923. “Some of the money going to the rookies can now be spent on people who have proved their worth. After all, the average playing life of a pro football player is about eight years and it is only fitting that the veterans get something for their efforts.”

924. “By the way, you won't put that thing in about me wanting to have sex on a football pitch, will you?”

925. “I'm really normal. I play football, go to the beach, drive. We have dogs. I can imagine people calling me a character, but I'm Joe Straight.”

926. “I'm closer to being happy. I'm doing things that make me happy. In football I loved to practice and I loved to play, but I hated to be in meetings, hated to talk to the media, hated to have cameras in my face, hated to sign autographs. I hated to do all those things.”

927. “If I stayed a football player, my career would have been over 20 years ago. As it is, my knees are shot. I found I got the same good feeling in acting that I had in sports, but I found I could have a more profound impact on people.”

928. “How can I go on with this? Please God, let me win a football pool.”

929. “Nine in the box… that's a football term.”

930. “One of my beliefs is that there are certain institutions within a community which stand for the spirit and heart of that community, there's the church, the local football team, the local pub and the theatre.”

931. “If I liken the Pacific War to a football match, I can say to you that the first half is over, we have kicked off after the interval, and we are going to carry the ball into enemy territory for a smashing victory.”

932. “But we're not supposed to talk anything besides football.”

933. “There are so many things about playing football that seem to me uniquely American. Anybody can succeed, anybody can play, but you've got to work hard to do it.”

934. “The fans know their football, you can't kid them.”

935. “I was meant to be a composer and will be I'm sure. Don't ask me to try to forget this unpleasant thing and go play football - please.”

936. “I grew up watching Monday Night Football with Howard Cosell and the other guys with my dad.”

937. “Football is what keeps me going, what makes me prosper, and what will keep me straight.”

938. “Here I was, this good guy that played football; I was gonna go play in college but I had a bad senior year. But I played guitar in assemblies whenever I could.”

939. “I was very poor. As a child my dream was to have a leather football.”

940. “Opera is credible drama now, and it costs less than going to a football match. What have you got to lose?”

941. “I feel like football players are overworked and underpaid compared to any other sports.”

942. “I don't have to play football.”

943. “God blessed me to play football.”

944. “These kids are the future of the National Football League. They're the next generation that will be playing high school football, NCAA football, and some even to the pros.”

945. “I haven't seen a new football play since I was in high school. You have just so many holes in a line and you have eleven men playing, and there's only so many ways you can go through those holes, and those ways have been used for forty, fifty years.”

946. “The only football players in my time were fellows who really loved to play football. They were not in it for the money. There wasn't much money there. They would have played football for nothing.”

947. “I wish I could go to the school where my close friends go, but I obviously can't. The good thing is, they're really good about inviting me to all the football games and all that stuff. So I end up having an adopted team spirit for a school I don't go to.”

948. “In football, like in life, you must learn to play within the rules of the game.”

949. “You know, it's a different deal - throwing a football as opposed to throwing a baseball.”

950. “I'm more akin to football than I think anything else because that's what I played in high school.”

951. “I sail, scuba dive, play football, basketball.”

952. “I also watched a lot of football and sports. I haven't had much time to watch too much TV lately.”

953. “Football's in my blood - and eventually I want to be the one making decisions.”

954. “The way I was brought up by my parents and guided through my football life by the influences of various managers means that in some ways I am black and white.”

955. “I will do whatever it takes to win a football match.”

956. “We are Liverpool Football Club and the expectations are so high.”

957. “I think it all goes down to who plays the better football on the night.”

958. “I think we've got a lot players in the squad who are more suited to European football at the moment.”

959. “Pop knew absolutely nothing about pro football.”

960. “We sat around on a hotel balcony with a bottle of wine and tried to figure out how you would go about blowing up a planet. That's the kind of conversations science fiction writers have when they get together. We don't talk about football or anything like that.”

961. “That's what we really mean by being feared on the football field. And not actually the player that fears him, it's the offensive coordinator that fears him or the running backs coach.”

962. “I don't watch that much football… I really like to play it.”

963. “Football, basketball, and the Olympic sports all have their problems with banned substances.”

964. “Four years of football are calculated to breed in the average man more of the ingredients of success in life than almost any academic course he takes.”

965. “Football is a game played with arms, legs and shoulders but mostly from the neck up.”

966. “Generalities don't count and won't help you in football.”

967. “Fear can be conquered. I became a better person and a better football player when I learned that lesson.”

968. “I want to see a player on the football field. I want to see what kind of teammate they are, what kind of leadership qualities they have. I want to see how aggressive they are, how much fun they have playing the game.”

969. “I love to play games. I really like football, and I also like to ride horses.”

970. “We've got our football where no one wears anything and the guys are in little shorts and they beat the crap out of each other, and they can catch it and they can kick it, and it's the only place it's played in the world.”

971. “I come from a football family which has really helped.”

972. “We were younger. And it's basically like looking at football classics. You see things that you did, you see things that you could've done better and you think about all the good relationships that you had with the cast.”

973. “You know, a football coach is nothing more than a teacher. You teach them the same subject, and you have a group of new guys every year.”

974. “Don't matter what they throw at us. Only angry people win football games.”

975. “Liverpool without European football is like a banquet without wine.”

976. “It was a very exciting time for me to play professional football, finally.”

977. “I also tell them that your education can take you way farther than a football, baseball, track, or basketball will - that's just the bottom line.”

978. “I have been a fan all my life, but now I have been out of football for over 10 years, and out of baseball for a little over six years and I don't go to games.”

979. “I was always active - I went from baseball to football. I didn't have time to work out.”

980. “Whenever I wasn't watching the planes, I was playing community baseball, football, or something like that.”

981. “I don't know much about football but everyone seems to say that it is all about possession.”

982. “Football is not part of that lifestyle anymore.”

983. “People get hurt all the time in the game of football, it's part of what we do.”

984. “Taking them out of the picture, so to speak, what football really is, the savagery, the core root of football, it doesn't change. It really puts the real in football.”

985. “Whether I played marbles, whether I played football or slam anything else, I wanted to excel.”

986. “Nobody is that thick-skinned that it doesn't hurt you. Still, you always know what happens in football. I have got used to criticism, I suppose, having been high profile with England and Man U.”

987. “I don't like American football. I think it's boring and ridiculous and predictable. But baseball is very beautiful. It's played on a diamond.”

988. “My father was an all-American football player.”

989. “But I just want to be known for my football.”

990. “Then you get into it, especially if you start talking about football, fighting and Muhammad Ali. Then the ladies get very bored and start delivering ultimatums.”

991. “I never dreamed about being an actor, because that was out of reach. Coming from a small town that was big in farming, and also big in clothing factories, you don't dream about being a professional football player or an actor.”

992. “I know I can catch the football. That's the least of my worries.”

993. “We're sympathetic, but once you step on the field, football's football.”

994. “When I finish playing football, I would like to work with kids and sleep!”

995. “With the club now in administration and concern about where the money for land sale has gone, I know there are huge commercial difficulties to be resolved, but I hope that football will once again become the most important issue.”

996. “Because I was small, I was getting the hell kicked out of me playing football.”

997. “But if kids take up things like hockey and football they will go back to it.”

998. “I think the best place to work in football is England.”

999. “When you just work tactically, in pure football sessions, you can see the way they can think football.”

1000. “So if one day the result becomes 3-3, for me it doesn't change my mind, because it's football, it's normal. What is not normal is that we haven't been scoring enough goals playing such good football as we've been playing in the last few weeks.”