Soccer Is My Life Quotes

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.

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.

I loathed the game, and since I could see no pleasure or usefulness in it, it was very difficult for me to show courage at it. Football, it seemed to me, is not really played for the pleasure of kicking a ball about, but is a species of fighting.

Without football, my life is worth nothing.

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.

If a team intimidate you physically and you let them, they've won.

The rules of soccer are very simple: if it moves, kick it. If it doesn't move, kick it until it does.

The rules of soccer are very simple, basically it is this: if it moves, kick it. If it doesn't move, kick it until it does.

He's one of those footballers whose brains are in his head.

Pele called me the greatest footballer in the world. That is the ultimate salute to my life.

The goal was scored a little bit by the hand of God, another bit by the head of Maradona.

The person that said winning isn't everything, never won anything.

In football everything is complicated by the presence of the opposite team.

At a football club, there's a holy trinity - the players, the manager and the supporters. Directors don't come into it. They are only there to sign the checks.

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.

In Latin America the border between soccer and politics is vague. There is a long list of governments that have fallen or been overthrown after the defeat of the national team.

Failure happens all the time. It happens every day in practice. What makes you better is how you react to it.

Some people tell me that we professional players are soccer slaves. Well, if this is slavery, give me a life sentence.

Football's a difficult business and aren't they prima donnas. But it's a wonderful game.

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.

When I go to the press conference before the game, in my mind the game has already started...

Every single day I wake up and commit to myself to becoming a better player.

Soccer is simple, but it is difficult to play simple.

Italians can't win the game against you, but you can lose the game against the Italians.

I am a member of a team, and I rely on the team, I defer to it and sacrifice for it, because the team, not the individual, is the ultimate champion.

The team, not the individual, is the ultimate champion.

I'm here to score a lot of goals. It's my specialty, that's what I've been brought here to do, and I want to score plenty ; like I did with Barcelona. And here, there's every reason to think I can do it.

You can have the top stars to bring the attention, you can have the best stadium, you can have the best facilities, you can have the most beautiful project in terms of marketing and all this kind of thing. But if you don't win... All the work these people are doing is forgotten.

Every kid around the world who plays soccer wants to be Pele. I have a great responsibility to show them not just how to be like a soccer player, but how to be like a man.

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

In 1969 I gave up women and alcohol - it was the worst 20 minutes of my life.