Association Football Culture - Famous Sayings

Famous Sayings

• "Football without fans is nothing" — Jock Stein.
• "Someone said 'football is a matter of life and death to you' and I said 'Listen, it's more important than that'." — Bill Shankly, 1981, on 'Live from Two', a Granada Television talk show hosted by Shelley Rohde.
• "To say that these men paid their shillings to watch twenty-two hirelings kick a ball is merely to say that a violin is wood and catgut, that Hamlet is so much paper and ink." — J. B. Priestley, The Good Companions, 1928.
• "Football is a simple game; 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans win." — Gary Lineker, 4 July 1990 (after playing for England in a World Cup semi-final against Germany that was lost after a penalty shootout)
• "If God had meant us to play football in the sky, he'd have put grass up there." — Brian Clough, 1991, when manager of Nottingham Forest, bemoaning the style of football known as the 'long ball game'.
• "The ball is round and there are two goals." (Piłka jest okrągła, a bramki są dwie.) — Kazimierz Górski.
• "All I know most surely about morality and obligations, I owe to football." — Albert Camus, French philosopher, novelist and goalkeeper
• "Football is a game of four halves." — Gary Lineker, referring to the home and away legs of cup competitions.
• "The ball is round, the game lasts ninety minutes, and everything else is just theory." — Sepp Herberger, German coach.
• "After the game is before the game" (Nach dem Spiel ist vor dem Spiel.) — Sepp Herberger, German coach.
• "The people go to the stadium because they do not know how the game will end" (Die Leute gehen ins Stadion, weil sie nicht wissen, wie es ausgeht.) — Sepp Herberger, German coach.
• "The first 90 minutes are the most important." — Bobby Robson.
• "It's a funny old game." — Jimmy Greaves.
• "Ein, zu zwei, zu drei – drun! (One, two, three – bang!)" — Hristo Stoichkov, Bulgarian footballer before the 1994 World Cup game between Bulgaria and Germany which Bulgaria surprisingly won.
• "Football. Bloody hell." — Alex Ferguson, just after Manchester United won the 1999 UEFA Champions League final by scoring two goals in the 91st and 93rd minute of the game against FC Bayern Munich to win the match 2–1.
• "Every disadvantage has its advantage" — Johan Cruyff
• "There's no such thing as an ugly goal. Ugly is to not score one." — Dadá Maravilha
• "I do not play football, I score goals." — Dadá Maravilha
• "In football, the worst blindness is only seeing the ball" — Nelson Rodrigues
• 'Small money small football, big money big football' — Ferenc Puskas