British Football Quotes

Ian Wright: "The referee was booking everyone. I thought he was filling in his lottery numbers."

Chris Turner: "I've told the players we need to win so that I can have the cash to buy some new ones."

George Best: "I spent a lot of my money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered."

Bryan Robson: "If we played like that every week we wouldn't be so inconsistent."

Brian Moore: "Newcastle, of course, unbeaten in their last five wins."

David Acfield: "Strangely, in slow motion replay, the ball seemed to hang in the air for even longer."

Bill Shankly: "'If you are first you are first. If you are second you are nothing."

Gerry Francis: "What I said to them at half time would be unprintable on the radio."

Ian Rush: "I couldn't settle in Italy - it was like living in a foreign country."

Mick Lyons: "If there weren't such a thing as football, we'd all be frustrated footballers."

Bobby Charlton: "It was a fair decision, the penalty, even though it was debatable whether it was inside or outside the box."

Mike Channon: "Believe it or not, goals can change a game."

Tony Gubba: "So often the pendulum continues to swing with the side that has just pulled themselves out of the hole."

Derek Johnstone: "He's one of those footballers whose brains are in his head."

Ron Atkinson: "Well, Clive, it's all about the two M's - movement and positioning."

Berti Vogts: "If I walked on water, my accusers would say it is because I can't swim."

Richard Moller Nielsen: "Love is good for footballers, as long as it is not at half-time."

Mike Gray: "Well Kerry, you're 19 and you're a lot older than a lot of people younger than yourself."

Dean Holdsworth: "The only way we will be going to Europe is if the club splash out and take us all to EuroDisney."

Jim Sherwin: "It was a good match, which could have gone either way and very nearly did."

Sara Thomas: "Am I really trying or am I just that damn good?

Martin Tyler: "Oh, he had an eternity to play that ball, but he took too long over it."

Danny Blanchflower: "Everything in our favor was against us."

Radio 5 Live: "The score is Sunderland nil, Leicester nil, the temperature is nil and the entertainment value is not much above nil."

Javier Clemente: "This is an unusual Scotland side because they have good players."

Brian Moore: "And now we have the formalities over, we'll have the National Anthems."

Peter Jones: "Ian Rush, deadly ten times out of ten, but that wasn't one of them."

Jimmy Greaves: "He hit the post, and after the game people will say, well, he hit the post."

Sara Thomas: "You had a chance until I stepped on the field."

Bill Shankly: "Football's not a matter of life and death ... it's more important than that."

Jimmy Armfield: "I think you and the referee were in a minority of one, Billy."

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

The Guardian Newspaper, London, England; describing a meeting of English soccer superstar David Beckham and Nelson Mandela, the president of South Africa, as an encounter between: "an icon of his generation, adored by millions across the globe, who has brought hope to his nation where there was once despair...and Nelson Mandela."

Sara Thomas: "In soccer there are no time outs, helmets, shoulder pads, commercial breaks, half time extravaganzas so, if that's what you need...go play football you big wuss!

Bill Shankly: We absolutely annihilated England. It was a massacre. We beat them 5-4."

Paolo Diogo, Portuguese soccer player who lost a finger when he caught his wedding ring on a fence while celebrating a goal for his team: "When I jumped down from the fence, I didn't feel anything at all. The first time that I noticed that something was missing from my hand was when it started to hurt. And it hurt tremendously." Note: Team officials were able to find the missing finger but surgeons were unable to reattach it. To make matters worse, the referee cited Diogo for excessive celebration.

David Beckham, talking about his son Brooklyn: "I definitely want him to be christened, But I don't know into what religion yet."