Football was a wonderful experience for me. It was a means of, oh, I don't know, sustaining for much of my youth. In times of trouble, I've always had football. I always knew I was a football player. And that was a comfort on many occasions.

Football was always a deal we made with ourselves. We adopted it for its brutality, which was embedded in a context that happened to be perfectly suited to television and to gambling, but which we could convince ourselves was only incidental to our enjoyment because it was only incidental to the game itself.

Football was not what I was put on this planet to do.

Football was really my least favorite sport and the last sport that I ended up picking up as a kid. My dad started me off with baseball, which most kids did at that time. I really enjoyed basketball. That was my favorite sport.

Football was what I was good at, and it was what I loved.

Football will always be my foremost passion.

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

Football's a war game without fatal casualties; baseball is a picnic on a huge field, without the food.

Football's about the young players, bringing youth team players through to the first team and hopefully getting the best out of them so they can go on to play for their country.

Football's all about 90 minutes.

Football's all about opinions, all of them different, whether from a top analyst or a man in a bunnet, and some folk are just never going to like you.

Football's an intense game. I love that. It's awesome.

Football's cruel sometimes.

Football's in my blood -- and eventually I want to be the one making decisions.

Football's incomparable to anything else -- perhaps only music has that same power to transform society.

Football's not just about scoring goals -- it's about winning.

Football's not particularly crazy. Once you are in it, you're in the eye of the storm, and it's quite nice.

Football's the big cheese, if you like. It's easy to have a swipe. There's a lot of footballers, and when they fall foul, they become big news.

Football's the biggest game in the world. America's the greatest sporting nation there is. To play some part in putting those two things together: why wouldn't I be excited about that?