Soccer quotes
1.3K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside soccer — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"He slipped his hands around my waist and pulled me against him, tossing the ice cream cone over his shoulder. It landed with a splat on the sidewalk. 'So does that mean I have a varsity girlfriend?'"
"I love soccer. That's all I ever watch. I'll watch it all day if I can. But I'm too bloody old to play now."
"Soccer is one of the most unifying activities amongst us."
"Most of the time the concept of globalization ends up sounding unnecessarily abstruse - even the name itself sounds clunky and highfalutin. And people discuss it in a way that makes it seem so impersonal. But globalization really is a concrete, fundamental fact in everybody's lives, and you really see that come to life in soccer stadiums."
"The linesman flagged initially because he thought I was an Oldham player. Fair enough, I did have a replica shirt on - but I also have a big furry head."
"Sven-Göran Eriksson, confronted with arguably Europe's weakest qualifying group, has a problem; it is the same one that afflicted Jacques Santini, the France coach at the time, before Euro 2004. Not that there are no easy matches at international level; rather, there are no hard ones. In qualifying for the 2004 European Championship finals, France faced a group not of death, but of sun-block, comprising Slovenia, Israel, Cyprus and Malta, which they duly won by ten points, averaging 3.6 goals per game. We all know what happened next."
"Sentences I never thought I would write. (1) That John Prescott certainly has a way with the ladies. (2) Give it to Steve McClaren, he seems like the man for the England job. (3) Peter Crouch is the man to replace Rooney."
"Greece won the 2004 European Championship with the oldest trick in the book: man-for-man marking. Why? Because nobody expected it - and by the time they knew what Otto Rehhagel's team were about, it was too late. Great football is like great comedy in that way. It is all in the timing."
"I'd rather play tennis than go to the dentist. I'd rather play soccer than go to the doctor. I'd rather play Hurk than go to work. Hurk? Hurk? What's Hurk? I don't know but it MUST be better than work!"
"All human history moves towards one great goal"
"Britain has bred many great explorers, but they seem to get so little coverage compared to soccer and rugby players."
"It will be a shame if either side lose, and that applies to both sides."
"All the kids in the cast tell me they hated high school, but I had the best time. I guess I was one of the popular kids. I played soccer, I was class president—I even dated the homecoming queen."
"One of the things I want ... all the kids here to remember, is that these [Major League Soccer] stars were not born superstar athletes ... Many of them started out just like many of you-playing on a team at school, or just kicking a ball around on the playground with their friends. But they stuck with it. And I tell this to my girls all the time. I mean, you get to the point when ... things you enjoy ... start getting hard-that's when you know you're getting good, and you have to stick through it."
"There is such a thing as everyday, ordinary, vulgar ecstasy; the ecstasy of anger, the ecstasy of speed at the wheel, the ecstasy of ear-splitting noise, ecstasy in the soccer stadium."
"I started playing baseball and soccer. Those were my sports on the streets and in school when I was growing up. I didn't even start playing basketball until I was 14."
"You not only do you appreciate the sacrifices people have made and the hours they've kept and the soccer games they missed and the birthday parties, but I also had a lot of young people who came in here [to White House], and this probably, you know, echoes with you, in your own experience, you were young when you got here."
"Whatever the police or politicians may tell us, this is a violent and threatening place. Living here is dangerous."
"Football is a thinly disguised re-enactment of hunting; we played it before we were human."
"Growing up as a kid my father was British and a soccer player. His idol was a guy that passed the ball a lot, Stanley Matthews. Our family thought if you could be unselfish your teammates would always like you."
