Given its rich history and global appeal, it should come as no surprise that there are dozens, if not hundreds, of brilliantly quotable lines about football. From players to pundits, commenting on soccer, football, the beautiful game – whatever it’s called in your corner of the world – has become almost as much a pastime as playing it.
Italian defender Paolo Malini once claimed that “If I have to make a tackle then I have already made a mistake”; Liverpool manager Bill Shankly once quipped, “Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I don’t like that attitude. I can assure them it is much more serious than that.”
Of course, the world of literature is no stranger to football. Countless authors, from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to Michael Rosen, call themselves fans of the sport, and many more have penned brilliant poetry, articles, and books on the subject. Below, we’ve compiled 11 of the most beautiful passages about the beautiful game.
The best quotes about football
“The thing about football – the important thing about football – is that it is not just about football.”
“What does God look like?' 'Don't ask me. God’s God. He's everywhere. watching what we do, judging whether it's good or bad.' 'Sounds like a soccer referee.'”
“In victory, the players suddenly stopped looking like rich, pampered superstar athletes and became, instead, innocent young men bright with the realisation that they were experiencing a great moment in their lives.”
“I fell in love with football as I was later to fall in love with women: suddenly, inexplicably, uncritically, giving no thought to the pain or disruption it would bring with it.”
“I understand why people play [football] … I even learned how to talk the game. It was the opposite of trash talking—tidy talking, I suppose you'd have to call it. If you did something good, it was brilliant; something less than brilliant was useless; if all of you were useless together, you were rubbish; and if a person did something brilliant that nonetheless became useless, everyone cried, 'Oh, unlucky!'”
- Adam Gopnik, Paris to the Moon
Image credit: Alicia Fernandes/Penguin
“Football has become one of the most profitable businesses in the world, organized not for play but rather to impede it. […] Luckily, on the field you can still see some insolent rascal, who sets aside the script and commits the blunder of dribbling past the entire opposing side, the referee and the crowd in the stands, all for the carnal delight of embracing the forbidden adventure of freedom.”
“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.”
“Then strip, lads, and to it, though sharp be the weather, And if, by mischance, you should happen to fall, There are worse things in life than a tumble on heather. And life itself is a game of football.”
