Analysis Quotes - Page 16

• On Platini's presidential watch... he has to balance all the leagues, all the dreams and needs of hundreds of clubs across his continent.

  Robert Hughes

  Soccer, Football, Dream

  4 Copy quote

• Is this good for English football? In the short run, Chelsea's rise has broken up what was turning into an irritating Arsenal-Manchester United duopoly. But football leagues (look at Scotland, look at Spain) can get along OK with duopolies. A monopoly, however, is a disaster. Everyone else in the Premiership has to operate on some kind of business footing, and the terror stalking Highbury and Old Trafford is that Chelsea will be immune from financial discipline forever.

  Matthew Engel

  Soccer, Football, Running

  5 Copy quote

• Chelsea's players, coaches and agents are now football's wealthiest millionaires. Surely the billions taken from the Russian people by an oligarch in questionable privatisations couldn't be better spent?

  Simon Kuper

  Soccer, Football, Taken

  6 Copy quote

• It is an indication of Chelski's warped finances that even successive titles can be regarded as failure. Spend unprecedented sums and only unprecedented success can be commensurate. Chelski won't get the credit they think they deserve because of the money they've spent. There's £300m worth of difference between a victory and an achievement.

  Pete Gill

  Soccer, Football, Thinking

  4 Copy quote

• But before Derby go, would they mind telling the rest of the Premier League - the league which it has debased with its pathetically-inadequate presence for the past 12 months - where the money has gone? You know, the £30m or so in prize money that every team, even the one at the bottom of the table from August to May, automatically receives by being in the Premier League... So what happened to that money? Or put another way, why was such a meaningless fraction of it spent on recruiting new players? It's one thing not to compete; it's quite another not to even attempt to do so.

  Pete Gill

  Soccer, Football, Team

  4 Copy quote

• Unfortunately, at this moment in time, Robbie Keane can't hit a barn door for us.

  Steve Staunton

  Soccer, Football, Doors

  4 Copy quote

• Professionally, it would be a logical choice, but my personal view is that he is the most insincere man I know in football

  Tony Cascarino

  Soccer, Football, Men

  6 Copy quote

• Poverty is good for nothing, except perhaps for football.

  Jorge Valdano

  Soccer, Football, Poverty

  10 Copy quote

• We need to look at our nannying, mollycoddled, politically correct culture in my view, which stops kids from going out and playing competitive sport. I also think we need to look at the shear fatness of the regulations which control people who want to help kids play sport.

  Boris Johnson

  Soccer, Sports, Football

  24 Copy quote

• Football is a thinly disguised re-enactment of hunting; we played it before we were human.

  Carl Sagan

  Soccer, Football, Hunting

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.471, Ballantine Books

  4 Copy quote

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• As long as the human race is able to concern itself with more than mere survival, soccer will have its place.

  Desmond Morris

  Soccer, Football, Race

  Desmond Morris (1981). “The soccer tribe”, Jonathan Cape

  5 Copy quote

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• Football is the best way to get to know a people and a city.

  Ardal O'Hanlon

  Soccer, Football, Cities

  6 Copy quote

• Football is not, in my view, a sport: it is somewhere between a business racket and a mental illness. I associate it with all the worst aspects of our society - violence, drunkenness, drugs, racism, exploitation, greed and stupidity; and that's just for starters.

  Simon Heffer

  Soccer, Sports, Football

  4 Copy quote

• In a manner akin to the influence of Tiger Woods on the other side of the Atlantic, Thierry Henry has helped kick down a few of the remaining bigoted stereotypes. Through his undisputable class and dignity, Henry has made a deep-seated difference to race relations in this country. Racism will flounder whenever white children grow up with a black man as their hero. That so few comment on Henry's colour is a silent tribute to his impact.

  Pete Gill

  Soccer, Football, Country

  4 Copy quote

• I am happy to be a role model for anybody - whether they are black, white, yellow, pink or purple.

  Paul Ince

  Soccer, Football, Purple

  6 Copy quote

• High national emotions are permissible when a soccer team is playing precisely because they are impermissible at most other times. There aren't, simply, many other places where you can sing your national anthem until you lose your voice without causing a riot. In the context of soccer, flag-waving nationalism - even chauvinistic, anti-foreigner, flag-waving nationalism - is acceptable in Britain.

  Anne Applebaum

  Soccer, Football, Team

  4 Copy quote

• In football, hate can be a beautiful thing; sustaining and nourishing, quite unlike other manifestations of an otherwise destructive emotion.

  Nicky Campbell

  Beautiful, Soccer, Football

  "Mugging up on a long lost devotion to the United of old" by Nicky Campbell, www.theguardian.com. December 20, 2006.

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• Nearly everything possible had been done to spoil the game: the heavy financial interest; the absurd transfer and player-selling system; the lack of any birth or residential qualifications; the absurd publicity given to every feature of it by the press; the monstrous partisanships of the crowds.

  J. B. Priestley

  Soccer, Football, Player

  8 Copy quote

• It is customary for columnists to complain about the excesses of Premiership footballers, whenever - as happens regularly - there is an incident involving some combination of sex, drugs, drink, violence and the constabulary. But modern footballers have a lot of both money and disposable time, a combination that has proved a recipe for personal disaster throughout history. And these incidents take place generally round night clubs rather than football clubs. The average Premiership player who turned up for work drunk would have a career-expectancy measurable in minutes.

  Matthew Engel

  Soccer, Football, Sex

  4 Copy quote

• Avoiding any of the tenets of amateurism, after all, certainly does not make you a good professional. Perhaps it is better to see fearless flair and professional steeliness as two ideas which must always coexist. One half of sport may be about harnessing human talent, but the other half depends on setting it free.

  Edward Smith

  Soccer, Sports, Football

  19 Copy quote

• A combination of acting, lying, begging, and cheating.

  Dave Eggers

  Soccer, Football, Cheating

  "The True Story of American Soccer" by Dave Eggers, www.slate.com. June 9, 2010.

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• All I know of morality I learned from football

  Albert Camus

  Soccer, Football, Morality

  4 Copy quote

• It is steady, reliable, tough. It never yields to panic. It is never defeated one-sidedly. It achieves everything attainable by character and tenacity.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Soccer, Football, Character

  4 Copy quote

• You know I don't think there will ever be a time when the English player is not respected, and feared, across the world of football. The English footballer is very brave and strong and committed and there is always enough high-class players in his team to cause concern in any opponent. It is a national characteristic.

  Johan Cruijff

  Soccer, Football, Strong

  7 Copy quote

• However good an English team is, they will always have an additional advantage. It is that European players know that their English opponents will come at them in the belief they will win, and they can always be guaranteed never to stop fighting. They have a natural aggression that they are born with. If it ever goes, English football will lose its most valuable dimension.

  Johan Cruijff

  Soccer, Football, Team

  5 Copy quote