Soccer Quotes And Sayings To Inspire And Amuse

Soccer is the most popular sport in the world and so it’s hardly surprising there are so many fantastic soccer quotes. From the profound, revealing and inspiring to the witty and the downright daft, there are so many to choose from. Here is a selection of our favorites…

Soccer Quotes

The minute’s silence was immaculate. I’ve never heard a minute’s silence like that.
Glenn Hoddle

The average English footballer could not tell the difference between an attractive woman and a corner flag.
Walter Zenga

Every time I went away I was deceiving my mum. I’d tell her I was going to school but I’d be out on the street playing football. I always had a ball on my feet.
Ronaldo

Soccer is simple, but it’s difficult to play simple.
Johan Cryuff

I once cried because I had no shoes to play soccer, but one day, I met a man who had no feet.
Zinedine Zidane

I’ve watched the replay and there is absolutely no doubt: it’s inconclusive.
Garth Crooks

Diego Maradona quote about success and soccer

When people succeed, it is because of hard work. Luck has nothing to do with success.
Diego Maradona

Martin O’Neill, standing, hands on hips, stroking his chin.
Mike Ingham

In football as in watchmaking, talent and elegance mean nothing without rigour and precision.
Lionel Messi

Running is for animals. You need a brain and a ball for football.
Louis Van Gaal

I’m a rock star because I couldn’t be a soccer star.
Rod Stewart

In football, the worst blindness is only seeing the ball.
Nelson Falcão Rodrigues

If that had gone in, it would have been a goal.
David Coleman

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

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

I just hate losing and that gives you an extra determination to work harder.
Wayne Rooney

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.
Pele

It can only happen in football – it’s the Rocky Balbao scenario.
Alvin Martin

As long as no-one scored, it was always going to be close.
Arsene Wenger

We ended the season on a high – apart from the last game, which we lost.
David Beckham

In Europe, it’s different – you eat soccer, you breathe soccer, you drink soccer. Everything is about soccer.
Thomas Dooley

I was always taught as a kid if you do something, do it right. If not, go do something else. For me, soccer was life.
Marcelo Balboa

I’ve been consistent in patches this season.
Theo Walcott

Eduardo Hughes Galeano quote about football

In his life, a man can change wives, political parties or religions but he cannot change his favourite soccer team.
Eduardo Hughes Galeano

Some players need a boot up the backside. Other players need the arm.
Alan Brazil

I don’t believe skill was, or ever will be, the result of coaches. It is a result of a love affair between the child and the ball.
Manfred Schellscheidt

We didn’t underestimate them. They were just a lot better than we thought.
Bobby Robson

He’s one of those footballers whose brains are in his head.
Derek Johnstone

Many people say I’m the best women’s soccer player in the world. I don’t think so. And because of that, someday I just might be.
Mia Hamm

He dribbles a lot and the opposition doesn’t like it. You can see it all over their faces.
Ron Atkinson

The ball is like a woman, she loves to be caressed.
Eric Cantona

It’s getting tickly now – squeaky bum time, I call it.
Sir Alex Ferguson

Everything I know about morality and the obligations of men, I owe it to football.
Albert Camus

Playing against a defensive opposition is just as bad as making love to a tree.
Jorge Valdano

For sportsmen or women who want to be champions, the mind can be as important, if not more important, than any other part of the body.
Gary Neville

Money isn’t the most important thing. It is important, of course. I am not Mahatma Ghandi.
Jurgen Klopp

You have to fight to reach your dream. You have to sacrifice and work hard for it.
Lionel Messi

I am a firm believer that if you score one goal the other team have to score two to win.
Howard Wilkinson

There are a whole lot of teams in the bottom six this season.
Graeme Le Saux

Whatever happens, there are always things you could have done better. You score two goals and you usually feel you could have done better. You score two goals and you usually feel you could have scored a third. That’s perfectionism. That’s what makes you progress in life.
Eric Cantona

Football is the ballet of the masses.
Dmitri Shostakovich

Football’s like a big market place and people go to the market every day to buy their vegetables.
Bobby Robson

Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I’m very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.
Bill Shankly

I never predict anything, and I never will do.
Paul Gascoigne

Soccer isn’t the same as Bach or Buddhism. But it is often more deeply felt than religion, and just as much a part of the community’s fabric, a repository of traditions.
Franklin Foer

Germany are a very difficult team to play. They had eleven internationals out there today.
Steve Lomas

If someone in the crowd spits at you, you have just got to swallow it.
Gary Lineker

We must have had 99 percent of the game. It was the other three percent that cost us the match.
Ruud Gullit

If you just need a first eleven and four others, why did Columbus sail to India to discover America?
Claudio Ranieri

You can’t say my team aren’t winners. They’ve proved that by finishing fourth, third and second in the last three years.
Gerard Houllier

It seems that soccer tournaments create those relationships: people gathered together in pubs and living rooms, a whole country suddenly caring about the same event. A World Cup is the sort of common project that otherwise barely exists in modern societies.
Simon Kuper