Top 265 Best Soccer Quotes & Sayings 2023

Soccer Quotes

“I have many years to get better and better, and that has to be my ambition. The day you think there is no improvements to be made is a sad one for any player.” – Lionel Messi

“Whether it’s a friendly match, or for points, or a final, or any game – I play the same. I’m always trying to be my best, first for my team, for myself, for the fans, and to try and win.” – Lionel Messi

“In football (soccer) as in watchmaking, talent and elegance mean nothing without rigour and precision.” – Lionel Messi

“The day you think there is no improvements to be made is a sad one for any soccer player.” – Lionel Messi

“What I do is play soccer, which is what I like.” – Lionel Messi

“To see the ball, to run after it, makes me the happiest man in the world.” – Diego Maradona

“There are hundreds of Beckhams playing football (referring to soccer) all over the world.” – Diego Maradona

“I have 23 top players and they are all ready to put on the jersey and work on the pitch and that makes you happy and then you have peace of mind.” – Diego Maradona

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

“Without football (soccer), my life is worth nothing.” – Cristiano Ronaldo

“Every season is a new challenge to me, and I always set out to improve in terms of games, goals, assists.” – Cristiano Ronaldo

“I have my flaws too, but I am a professional who doesn’t like to miss or lose.” – Cristiano Ronaldo

“I want to consistently play well and win titles. I’m only at the beginning.” – Cristiano Ronaldo

“In football, I don’t have a lot of friends. The people who I really trust, there are not many… Most of the time, I’m alone.” – Cristiano Ronaldo

“One rule that will work if it is used everywhere, is that when you have a free-kick, the referee puts the mark on the floor to make sure the defenders keep their distance.” – Cristiano Ronaldo

“Talent without working hard is nothing.” – Cristiano Ronaldo

“Winning – that’s the most important to me. It’s as simple as that.” – Cristiano Ronaldo

“I think sometimes the best training is to rest.” – Cristiano Ronaldo

“I’m living a dream I never want to wake up from.” – Cristiano Ronaldo

“Everything is practice.” – Pelé

“If I pass away one day, I am happy because I tried to do my best. My sport allowed me to do so much because it’s the biggest sport in the world.” – Pelé

“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.” – Pelé

“A lot of people, when a guy scores a lot of goals, think, ‘He’s a great player’, because a goal is very important, but a great player is a player who can do everything on the field. He can do assists, encourage his colleagues, give them confidence to go forward. It is someone who, when a team does not do well, becomes one of the leaders.” – Pelé

“I always had a philosophy which I got from my father. He used to say, ‘Listen. God gave to you the gift to play football. This is your gift from God. If you take care of your health, if you are in good shape all the time, with your gift from God no one will stop you, but you must be prepared.” – Pelé

“Enthusiasm is everything. It must be taut and vibrating like a guitar string.” – Pelé

“Lionel Messi is a wonderful player. Very skillful. Highly intelligent. He is not good in the air.” – Pelé

“At 17, I already had responsibility because I took care of my family, but in the football I was young; I wasn’t experienced or the captain – I was just in the team.” – Pelé

“You must respect people and work hard to be in shape. And I used to train very hard. When the others players went to the beach after training, I was there kicking the ball.” – Pelé

“All my life I thank God. My family was very religious.” – Pelé

“Of course, my father was a soccer player. He used to play very good. Then, when I was young, eight or nine years old, ten years old, I just want to be like my father.” – Pelé

“I always think that I would have become an actor if I hadn’t been a soccer player.” – Pelé

“A penalty is a cowardly way to score.” – Pelé

“Sport is something that is very inspirational for young people.” – Pelé

“I have a need to play intensely every day, to fight every match hard.” – Zinedine Zidane

“The door can never be closed for good to any player.” – Zinedine Zidane

“When your own fans whistle and jeer, then you have a big problem.” – Zinedine Zidane

“Football boots are very technical and have lots of specific requirements.” – Zinedine Zidane

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

“Soccer is simple, but it is difficult to play simple.” – Johan Cruyff

“Technique is not being able to juggle a ball 1000 times. Anyone can do that by practicing. Then you can work in the circus. Technique is passing the ball with one touch, with the right speed, at the right foot of your team mate.” – Johan Cruyff

“Choose the best player for every position, and you’ll end up not with a strong XI, but with 11 strong 1’s.” – Johan Cruyff

“I always threw the ball in, because then if I got the ball back, I was the only player unmarked.” – Johan Cruyff

“Players that aren’t true leaders but try to be, always bash other players after a mistake. True leaders on the pitch already assume others will make mistakes.” – Johan Cruyff

“After you’ve won something, you’re no longer 100 percent, but 90 percent. It’s like a bottle of carbonated water where the cap is removed for a short while. Afterwards there’s a little less gas inside.” – Johan Cruyff

“You have got to shoot, otherwise you can’t score.” – Johan Cruyff

“Speed is often confused with insight. When I start running earlier than the others, I appear faster.” – Johan Cruyff

“Football is a game of mistakes. Whoever makes the fewest mistakes wins.” – Johan Cruyff

“Football is about having the best offensive play possible. I always like to play offensive football, and nobody will convince me otherwise.” – Johan Cruyff

“Without the ball, you can’t win.” – Johan Cruyff

“To win you have to score one more goal than your opponent.” – Johan Cruyff

“There is only one ball, so you need to have it.” – Johan Cruyff

“Quality without results is pointless. Results without quality is boring.” – Johan Cruyff

“There are very few players who know what to do when they’re not marked. So sometimes you tell a player: that attacker is very good, but don’t mark him.” – Johan Cruyff

“My heroes were always soccer players.” – Ronaldinho

“Football is about joy. It’s about dribbling. I favour every idea that makes the game beautiful. Every good idea has to last.” – Ronaldinho

“For me soccer provides so many emotions, a different feeling every day.” – Ronaldinho

“If you’re playing for five hours you don’t want to score goals all the time and I loved dribbling. I could score a goal, but I preferred to dribble.” – Ronaldinho

“My only concern is playing. Everything else, my family looks after. In our house, everyone has a job, and my job in our house is to play soccer.” – Ronaldinho

“It is not just about the money, it is about what you achieve on the pitch.” – Ronaldinho

“My game is based on improvisation. Often, a forward does not have the time to think too much. You have a second, rarely more, to decide whether to dribble, shoot or pass to the right or left. It is instinct that gives the orders.” – Ronaldinho

“I come from a family where soccer has always been very present. My uncles, my father and my brother were all players.” – Ronaldinho

“Soccer is a magical game.” – David Beckham

“I don’t have time for hobbies. At the end of the day, I treat my job as a hobby. It’s something I love doing” – David Beckham

“I just want people to see me as a hard-working footballer and someone who is passionate about the game.” – David Beckham

“As a footballer, you always want to test yourself against the best.” – David Beckham

“I’m a very stubborn person. I think it has helped me over my career. I’m sure it has hindered me at times as well, but not too many times. I know that if I set my mind to do something, even if people are saying I can’t do it, I will achieve it.” – David Beckham

“We stay as a team. I might be England captain, but that doesn’t mean I get treated differently.” – David Beckham

“I love scoring goals for England and playing for England. That’s one of the reasons I didn’t retire – I love playing for my country.” – David Beckham

“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.” – David Beckham

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

“I love football, I’ve never really taken an interest in anything else.” – Wayne Rooney

“I play the game as honestly as I can. If the referee gives a penalty there is nothing you can do.” – Wayne Rooney

“You just want to keep playing consistently now and keep working hard and I’m sure the goals will come.” – Wayne Rooney

“Football is made up of all kinds of conflict. In a dressing room, between players, between us and the manager, between us and loads of people who don’t seem to matter. It’s constant and harsh sometimes.” – Wayne Rooney

“I love football, football is my life.” – Wayne Rooney

“As you get older you play in more important games and that is when you start thinking about what will happen if you win or lose.” – Wayne Rooney

“I love football so when I finish playing I would like to still be involved in it somehow and a manager would be my first choice.” – Wayne Rooney

“I train as hard as I can every time I train and I do extra training every day and I’ve done that since I was a young boy.” – Wayne Rooney

“Sometimes you have to rest in certain games, but I want to play in every game.” – Wayne Rooney

“There are many ways to grow football-wise. You go slow or are pushed to go faster, otherwise you get left behind. For me, there would be trouble in stopping learning.” – Wayne Rooney

“If you don’t score, and you have chances, you are disappointed.” – Wayne Rooney

“I’ve trained all my life. I’ve always been one who enjoys training so it’s not something that I think I can just stop doing. It might not be as regular but I want to keep training.” – Wayne Rooney

“In football, the hero and legend status is given out far too easily for me.” – Steven Gerrard

“It’s too easy to blame other people in football.” – Steven Gerrard

“I was always determined to make it as a footballer, but if things hadn’t worked out, I’d have maybe followed my dad into the building industry.” – Steven Gerrard

“If you don’t play well, you have a bad game or a nightmare you know that the amount of coverage is worldwide.” – Steven Gerrard

 Inspirational Soccer Quotes

When you buy me you are buying a Ferrari – Zlatan Ibrahimovic

Five days shalt thou labour, as the Bible says. The seventh day is the Lord thy God’s. The sixth day is for football. – John Anthony Burgess Wilson

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

I need a life outside of soccer. So I very much welcome, you know, new love interests and dating and friends and family. – Hope Amelia Solo

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 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. – Roy Maurice Keane

The secret is to believe in your dreams; in your potential that you can be like your star, keep searching, keep believing and don’t lose faith in yourself. – Neymar

It is not just about the money, it is about what you achieve on the pitch. – Ronaldinh

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

I’m living a dream I never want to wake up from. – Cristiano Ronaldo

Enthusiasm is everything. It must be taut and vibrating like a guitar string. – Pele

As a kid, you obviously dream of being a professional footballer. I would watch players like Ronaldo of Brazil and pretend to be him in the playground. But I don’t think about trying to become one of the best in the world or anything like that. I just play football. – Gareth Bale

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

Football is the ballet of the masses. – Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich

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

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

You don’t have to have been a horse to be a jockey. – Arrigo Sacchi

If you’re attacking, you don’t get as tired as when you’re chasing. – Kyle Rote, Jr.

 Soccer Quotes And Sayings

Soccer isn’t very social. Plus, if you don’t like someone on the other team, you can do something about it.

Mia Hamm

I’m attracted to soccer’s capacity for beauty. When well played, the game is a dance with a ball.

Eduardo Galeano

If God had wanted man to play soccer, he wouldn’t have given us arms.

Mike Ditka

Everything I know about morality and the obligations of men, I owe it to football (soccer)

Albert Camus

Football (soccer) is the ballet of the masses.

Dmitri Shostakovich

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

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

Football (soccer) is the poetry of motion.

Pubudu Lasal Dissanayake

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

Eduardo Galeano

International football (soccer) is the continuation of war by other means.

Eric Arthur Blair

In football (soccer), the worst blindness is only seeing the ball.

Nelson Falcao Rodrigues

Five days shalt thou labour, as the Bible says. The seventh day is the Lord thy God’s. The sixth day is for football.

John Anthony Burgess Wilson

Football (soccer) is a simple game; 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans win.

Gary Lineker

Soccer is like a poem, you write it with your soul and heart, but you say it with your feet.

Chris Castillo

Concerning football (soccer) playing, I protest to you it may rather be called a friendly kind of fighting, rather than recreation

Anonymous

Soccer is not about justice. It’s a drama, and criminally wrong decisions against you are part and parcel of that.

Pete Davies

The goalkeeper is the jewel in the crown and getting at him should be almost impossible. It’s the biggest sin in football (soccer) to make him do any work.

George Graham

Soccer is a game in which everyone does a lot of running around. Twenty-one guys stand around and one guy does a tap dance with the ball.

Jim Murray

If this can be termed the century of the common man, then soccer, of all sports, is surely his game. In a world haunted by the hydrogen and napalm bomb, the football field is a place where sanity and hope are still left unmolested.

Stanley Rous

(In soccer) 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

The golden rule of soccer: Pass unto others as you would have them pass unto you.

Bob Burns

Soccer doesn’t build character, it reveals it.

Brad Valentine

(In soccer) It’s the attitude of the players, not their skills, that is the biggest factor in determining whether you win or lose.

Harry Sinden

I don’t believe there is such a thing as a ‘born’ soccer player. Perhaps you are born with certain skills and talents, but quite frankly it seems impossible to me that one is actually born to be an ace soccer player.

Pele

(In soccer) Players taught to watch the man with the ball leaves them totally unprepared for the next move, which is always dictated by a player without the ball.

Tommy Docherty

Football is a simple game based on the giving and taking of passes, of controlling the ball and of making yourself available to receive a pass. It is terribly simple.

Bill Shankly

 Funny Soccer Quotes

“In football, the worst blindness is only seeing the ball.”

– Nelson Falcão Rodrigues

“I’m attracted to soccer’s capacity for beauty. When well played, the game is a dance with a ball.”

– Eduardo Galeano

“If you eat caviar every day it’s difficult to return to sausages.”

– Arsene Wenger

“A football team is like a beautiful woman. When you do not tell her, she forgets she is beautiful.”

– Arsène Wenger

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

– Thomas Dooley

“What Carew does with a football, I can do with an orange.”

– Zlatan Ibrahimovic

“Well Kerry, you’re 19 and you’re a lot older than a lot of people younger than yourself.”

– Mike Gray.

“I’m as happy as I can be, but I’ve been happier.”

– Ugo Ehiogu

“The beauty of Cup football is that Jack always has a chance of beating Goliath.”

– Terry Butcher.

“Football’s not like an electric light – you can’t just flick the button and change from slow to quick.”

– John Greig

 Short Soccer Quotes

“ I worked on my weaknesses and made them my strengths. ”

– Sydney Leroux

“ Soccer doesn’t build character, it reveals it. ”

– Brad Valentine

“ I hope all you young girls see yourself up there… we were just like you. ”

– Mia Hamm

“ I don’t like to play rough, but I will if I have to.”

– Mia Hamm

“ The trouble with referees is that they know the rules, but they do not know the game. ”

– William “Bill” Shankly

“Good players never want to sit on the bench as substitutes”

– Marc Overmars

“Dream big, because dreams do happen.”

– Alex Morgan

“Soccer isn’t soccer without passion.”

– Unknown

“You only stop learning when you quit.”

– Ruud Gullit

Football’s not just about scoring goals – it’s about winning.”

– Alan Shearer

Soccer Quotes For Girls And Boys

“ I hope all you young girls see yourself up there… we were just like you. ”

– Mia Hamm

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

– Sir Robert “Bobby” Charlton

“ The trouble with referees is that they know the rules, but they do not know the game. ”

– William “Bill” Shankly

“ There’s room for boys’ and girls’ football in the world – that’s what I believe ”

– David Beckham

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

– Sir Robert “Bobby” Charlton

“ The trouble with referees is that they know the rules, but they do not know the game. ”

– William “Bill” SShankl

“ There’s room for boys’ and girls’ football in the world – that’s what I believe ”

– David Beckham