Soccer Sports Quotes

#1. You don't have to have been a horse to be a jockey.

Arrigo Sacchi

#2. 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

#3. Growing up, I played about every sport imaginable except soccer and hockey. I've always had a passion for basketball. I remember actually playing basketball when I was two or three years old. The time I knew that I could really take my game to the next level.

Dwight Howard

#4. The thing about football - the important thing about football - is that it is not just about football.

Terry Pratchett

#5. 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

#6. There is nothing you can be doing in lacrosse on your own in the fall that would be better for you than going to football or soccer practice every day. You can go bang a ball against a wall all you want, but how do you become a better team player? By playing other team sports.

Dom Starsia

#7. I like physical exercise. I actually like sports in general. I really like snowboarding and playing soccer, too.

Valentino Rossi

#8. I played sports year around: basketball, soccer, softball and I ran track year around, from the time I was, like, six, seven.

Gabrielle Union

#9. Television is making sports universal; for the same reason, big-time soccer is growing more popular in the United States.

George Vecsey

#10. I love sports, and when I was playing soccer, I was always trying to be the leader on the team and the one who takes control.

Gregg Sulkin

#11. Soccer was the first sport that my parents put me in, and ultimately, all the parents kind of came over to my mom and were, 'We think Channing would be better at football ... We love him, he's really great, but he's kind of hurting our children.' I was just a little wild.

Channing Tatum

#12. After I suffered a labral tear in my hip while playing soccer, I realized that many sports-related injuries can be prevented and I dedicated myself to helping young athletes learn more about injury prevention.

Cobi Jones

#13. I've used my experience from playing sports in almost every aspect of my life. Playing soccer is where I found my voice, and playing softball was where I learned precision, and in every game I learned to play as a member of a team - to work not for my own glory, but for a shared goal.

Linda Sanchez

#14. Gymnastics is not at all as popular as, for example, soccer. Gymnastics as a sport isn't promoted very well.

Henrietta Onodi

#15. I never knew that Americans would take up soccer, and it's a gender-free sport in high school there.

Mal Peet

#16. Robot Wars is not a sport. Guys just play with remote controls. Now, if they were wired up and got an electrical shock each time their robot got hammered, then, yes, it would be a sport.

Paolo Di Canio

#17. [At nine years old] I didn't really know what that meant at the time. I thought it might be in a warm summer sport like softball, but I played a variety of sports growing up - basketball, soccer and track. I really didn't care. I just wanted to be an Olympian.

Elana Meyers

#18. I was on the snowboard team at my school, but that was the only sports team I was on. I played soccer growing up in elementary school.

Aaron Paul

#19. Football is all about sentiment; if it weren't then we'd all support Manchester United.

Mark O'Brien

#20. 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

#21. I started playing baseball and soccer. Those were my sports on the streets and in school when I was growing up. I didn't even start playing basketball until I was 14.

Earl Monroe

#22. I literally tried every sport and was miserable. Soccer couldn't hold my attention. I couldn't figure skate. I'm afraid to swim. So I did dance for five years. It came a time where I was getting a little bit bored with it.

Alicia Sacramone

#23. I played all kinds of sports when I was young: tennis, handball, basketball, some soccer. I focused on basketball when I was 16 or 17 and then came to the U.S. when I was 20.

Dirk Nowitzki

#24. Maybe they hate me because I'm too good!

Cristiano Ronaldo

#25. I hate sports. My reaction to the ball is this [kicks soccer ball] Don't kick it back to me. I don't wanna see it again.

Steven Page

#26. The history of soccer is a sad voyage from beauty to duty. When the sport became an industry, the beauty that blossoms from the joy of play got torn out by its very roots.

Eduardo Galeano

#27. I love sports. I've played basketball, baseball, soccer, tennis, track and field growing up.

Michael B. Jordan

#28. ESPN has announced that they are launching a 3-D sports network. Industry analysts say this will absolutely revolutionize the way Americans don't watch soccer.

Jay Leno

#29. If I'm in Maui, I play soccer and tennis and go kite-surfing. I prefer doing a sport as opposed to going to a gym. I'm not big on gyms. When I did 'Rampart,' I lost 30 pounds because I felt it was better for the character. I worked out constantly, maybe twice a day, and minimized caloric intake.

Woody Harrelson

#30. Sports formed me. I was always decently skilled but lacked size, so I had to resort to using my skill versus my power. I strategically play golf because that's all I can do. It's the same on the basketball court. I try to get open and shoot it. Or I use the open space on the soccer field.

Zach Johnson

#31. When I got injured, I think I was starting to sense that there was more to the world than just sports. This dream of playing professional soccer probably wasn't the best track for me.

Eric Swalwell

#32. He dribbles a lot and the opposition don't like it - you can see it all over their faces

Ron Atkinson

#33. Soccer is the most widely played sport in the U.S.

Rabih Alameddine

#34. The fiesta of soccer, a feast for the legs that play and the eyes that watch, is much more than a big business run by overlords from Switzerland. The most popular sport in the world wants to serve the people who embrace it.

Eduardo Galeano

#35. I would not say he (David Ginola) is the best left-winger in the Premiership, but there are none better.

Ron Atkinson

#36. I tried all kinds of sports when I was a kid, like soccer and tennis and golf, and, in fact, started skating to be able to play hockey.

Patrick Chan

#37. I didn't win prom king. By that point, I'd quit sports except for soccer, so I was really just a theater guy. I totally lost to the captain of the football team.

Patrick Wilson

#38. Since I was a kid, I've wanted to do sports for a living. In the beginning, I played a lot of soccer, but in the end I chose tennis. I love sports in general ... But tennis is my passion.

Rafael Nadal

#39. International soccer has been a big part of my love for the sport. I love the Men's National Team. I can say that they're my favorite sports team.

Drew Carey

#40. Soccer and ping-pong are my two favorite sports to play.

Judah Friedlander

#41. You look at boxing being an international, world-famous sport, right up there next with soccer, and there's only two fighters the people want to see fight. Two little fellows, Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather.

Emanuel Steward

#42. When I was a kid, I was always an athlete. I played a lot of sports. I played football, basketball, baseball and soccer.

Scott Caan

#43. I've spent the last fifteen years of my life railing against the game of soccer, an exercise that has been lauded as "the sport of the future" since 1977. Thankfully, that future dystopia has never come.

Chuck Klosterman

#44. Fitness has always been one of the top priorities in my life because that's the way I grew up, with soccer being the sport of choice.

Ziggy Marley

#45. Soccer and cricket were my main sports growing up. I had trials as a soccer player with a few clubs interested, Crystal Palace being one, but it was cricket which became my chosen profession.

Ian Botham

#46. I think if you're writing about cricket, you're obviously writing about power, because cricket is such a loaded sport, much more so than soccer.

Joseph O'Neill

#47. When I was younger, I used to bite my nails so bad. I used to play sports; I played, like, every sport. I would be playing soccer, and I'd be in the middle of the field just zoned out, biting my nails, and I'd, like, miss the ball going past me.

Kendall Jenner

#48. 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

#49. If you're a dope like me, you get every sports channel you can get. I'm watching, you know, Netherlands soccer.

Michael Keaton

#50. Some boys accepted me, some didn't. And my family had comments made to them. Brazil is still a very macho society, and sports are mainly for boys, so people would say to them: 'What is this girl doing? Why is she always out there in the soccer games with the boys?'

Marta

#51. I learned a long time ago that there is something worse than missing the goal, and that's not pulling the trigger.

Mia Hamm

#52. I know many sports fans that don't enjoy soccer. The argument is that there's no action, not enough of it.

Rabih Alameddine

#53. 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.

Pele

#54. I get asked this a lot: Why has soccer not succeeded? My answer is, soccer has succeeded. It is already the fastest growing youth participation sport in the U.S. It has already succeeded at the youth level, no question.

Lamar Hunt

#55. I never felt the same passion for the game in the States and there were a lot of headaches, a lot of obstacles to overcome - it didn't just run itself for the love of the game because soccer is not the No. 1 sport as it is in Europe.

Hope Solo

#56. I have a 16 year-old son, so I'm now a soccer mom. I stand on the sidelines and I hear the things parents are saying, so I want them to understand what it is their kids are feeling in any sports environment.

Brandi Chastain

#57. I grew up in a town with a great wrestling tradition. Then I was a team sport queen in high school; I played softball, volleyball, and soccer. Oh, and I also did ski racing.

Aimee Mullins

#58. It is a game before a product, a sport before a market, a show before a business.

Michel Patini

#59. Quite frankly, I can't get enough of soccer. I tell my jingoistic friends in the United States there's a reason why it is the world's No. 1 sport. The rest of the planet can't be wrong.

Billy Beane

#60. I've never met anybody who says they don't like the World Cup. If you're a soccer fan or not, everybody loves watching it, and I think it could be the same for other sports.

Landon Donovan

#61. Soccer forces life to move on. There's always a new match. A new season. There's always a dream that everything can get better. It's a game of wonders.

Fredrik Backman

#62. Football is the poetry of a motion.

Pubudu Lasal Dissanayake

#63. For reasons that baffle me still, my high school sports coaches put me in the first division of the rugby, cricket, and soccer teams.

Hamish Bowles

#64. I am excited to bring my deep knowledge, passion and expertise of soccer in this country to The New York Cosmos. They truly represent where this sport is headed on a national and international level, and I want to make history with them.

Cobi Jones

#65. The aura of soccer is very different from other sports.

Dave Checketts

#66. AFC Leopards were as thrilling a side as ever took the pitch and they dominated East African football in the eighties. That Kenyan players were an excitable bunch was attested to in one memorable Leopards match, with the opposing goalkeeper being handcuffed and dragged away to jail by police.

David Bennun

#67. The technocracy of professional sport has managed to impose a soccer of lightning speed and brute strength: a soccer that negates joy, kills fantasy and outlaws daring.

Eduardo Galeano

#68. The guys who play it [soccer] are kinda dumb. Why don't they just kick the crap out of the guy in front of the net? Then they could score all they want.

Tite Kubo

#69. I think it is important for all those young out there, who someday hope to play real football, where you throw it and kick it and run with it and put it in your hands, a distinction should be made that football is democratic, capitalism, whereas soccer is a European socialist sport.

Jack Kemp

#70. Like most ghetto kids I knew it was important to be 'somebody' so I became a good soccer player, because excelling at a sport seemed to make you special.

Vidal Sassoon

#71. Before kids can play like a pro, they must enjoy playing the game like a kid.

Steve Locker

#72. The growth of women's soccer and women's sports all around the world has been slow.

Abby Wambach

#73. Everyone has to remember, I've always said that soccer is my number-one sport.

Chad Ochocinco

#74. It was what made him good at team sports: soccer, basketball, politics. Miller

James S.A. Corey

#75. Sport has the power to inspire and unite people. In Africa, soccer enjoys great popularity and has a particular place in the hearts of people.

Nelson Mandela

#76. The more people who come from abroad who played soccer and are brought up playing it and watching it, then come over to America and bring what they know and what they play, that's how the sport will grow.

Claudio Reyna

#77. I think women's soccer is so important. Soccer is the biggest sport for little girls. It's so important for us to give these girls a dream and something they can aspire to be.

Lauren Holiday

#78. Whereas fanatic is usually a pejorative word, a Fan is someone who has roots somewhere.

Simon Kuper

#79. Soccer is a great game, and the rich variety of styles and passions that come with being truly global makes the World Cup a nonpareil event in the universe of competitive sport.

Serge Schmemann

#80. I like playing all sports, from football to soccer, and I love playing baseball.

Ryan Guzman

#81. I can't divorce myself from my childhood. I try to write as much fiction as I possibly can, but there are so many things that are touchstones of my childhood like being on the swim team and playing soccer and the particularities of sports season and environments that make their way into my books.

Jeff Kinney

#82. The Germans only have one player under 22, and he's 23!

Kevin Keegan

#83. ESPN, is having the ability to foretell future outcomes in sports.

Anthony Liccione

#84. Homophobia is rampant in soccer, probably more so than in any other sport. I'm not sure why.

Rabih Alameddine

#85. I'm not a sports guy. However it's interesting to be in a place where people have a sporting fever. One time I was in Italy during one of the European soccer cups, and it's interesting because it's so electrifying.

Ian MacKaye

#86. I was an athlete growing up. I did a lot of sports: soccer, basketball, so I was always so used to hardcore training, a lot of running. I got to a point where I felt like I just wanted to get toned; I didn't need to shed pounds, so now I do Pilates.

Jacquelyn Jablonski

#87. I think we have our sports within our own culture that are huge with baseball, football, basketball, and hockey. Those are the sports in America that we grow up with and soccer isn't really there yet.

Claudio Reyna

#88. I'm a runner from sports. I've been a runner, but I wasn't a cross-country runner or anything like that. I played a lot of soccer growing up.

Scott Bakula

#89. I grew up on North American sports teams as well as English soccer clubs.

Ian Astbury

#90. 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

#91. I'm not a huge soccer fan, but I follow the sport. I played in high school, a little bit in college, played on various club teams most of my life, and all three of my sons are competitive soccer players and far better than I ever was.

Hampton Sides