If someone told me I could play two Asian Cup finals, I wouldn’t have believed it.

So like any football or basketball coach, you always always believe you’re going to win.

Volleyball, I could be pretty good. After a few practices I could be that striker, or whatever they call it.

In all my years of baseball, I have always expected to be traded. I never liked the idea.

It’s a big compliment that so many people want to see me. For them, it’s all about football. That’s what they remember about me.

Pop flies, in a sense, are just a diversion for a second baseman. Grounders are his stock trade.

When I was playing, there were always lots of teams in contention for the league – Arsenal, Manchester City, Liverpool, Leeds. Every week was a big game and a big battle.

Liverpool is a club with a big, big, big history, and all the clubs in the world have a big history if the present is not too successful. If you have never had success, then nobody knows how it is, but in Liverpool, everybody knows how it was.

Shinji Kagawa is one of the best players in the world, and he now plays 20 minutes at Manchester United – on the left wing! My heart breaks. Really, I have tears in my eyes. Central midfield is Shinji’s best role.

The English game is not faster than the German game. Perhaps there are a few more sprints. But there is a different style of football here, partially due to the weather.

I’m just glad I play for Coach Belichick.

You’re not going to see my sense of humor on the football field. That’s not a place for me to joke around.

In an individual sport, yes, you have to win titles. Baseball’s different. But basketball, hockey? One person can control the tempo of a game, can completely alter the momentum of a series. There’s a lot of great individual talent.

Football is a sad game.

The bat is not a toy, it’s a weapon. It gives me everything in life, which helps me to do everything on the field.

On balance, my life has been a constant stream of blessings rather than disappointments and failures and tragedies. I wish I had been re-elected. I think I could have kept our country at peace. I think I could have consolidated what we achieved at Camp David with a treaty between Israel and the Palestinians.

I have never cared especially for outdoor sports and have no desire to excel at tennis, swimming, or golf. I’ll leave those things to the men.

Purposes, plans, and achievements of men may all disappear like yon cloud upon the mountain’s summit; but, like the mountain itself, the things which are of God shall stand fast for ever and ever.

I don’t think there is anything wrong in earning money from the sport you love. If you work hard and get benefits from it, there is no harm. The day you feel that you are not working hard and are only looking at the benefits, that’s where the problem is.

I was totally dominated and revered my father. I admired everything he did. He was a great sports person. He loved me. I was his only boy at that time, before my brother Billy came along.

You want me to own a team and deal with these rich, spoiled stubborn athletes, and try to get them to perform? No thank you.

I don’t know about the 2026 World Cup. But I would love to see Anirudh Thapa sending a cross to Jhingan and I would love to watch it from the stands.

I have long understood that losing always comes with the territory when you wander into the gambling business, just as getting crippled for life is an acceptable risk in the linebacker business. They both are extremely violent sports, and pain is part of the bargain. Buy the ticket, take the ride.

When I was in Portugal I hardly played six-or-seven matches. Although I would train daily to keep my shape. Even then it was really difficult when I came back to get in shape and represent my country.

If a guy hits .300 every year, what does he have to look forward to? I always tried to stay around .190, with three or four RBI. And I tried to get them all in September. That way I always had something to talk about during the winter.

I hope to play until I’m, like, 38 or something, and that’s a lot of years in the game and a lot of travel and a lot of sacrifice on my family’s part.

We were the first generation to have to deal with the modern stardom of football. Some handled it better than others.

I like to get out and get up the court, using my speed and aggressiveness toward the hoop.

An agent won’t help you get drafted higher, won’t make you win more games, and won’t make you faster or stronger.

When you are in good form, you keep hitting the target. You may have the best match but you may still not have the goals. But scoring is most important and it feels so good that I have been knocking them in. It really boosts the morale.

I’m committed to the fight game.

I fully expected that, by the end of the century, we would have achieved substantially more than we actually did.

To share the dressing room of club and country with Bhai was an amazing experience. I learnt a lot from him and other senior players like Renedy Singh.

I make impact plays. I make game-changing plays.

I love football and the intensity of football in Liverpool, this is what is very good for me.

I see myself as the best footballer in the world. If you don’t believe you are the best, then you will never achieve all that you are capable of.

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting.

All I can tell them is pick a good one and sock it. I get back to the dugout and they ask me what it was I hit and I tell them I don’t know except it looked good.

I rate Fabien Barthez and played with two great keepers in Alex Stepney and Harry Gregg.

My job is to play quarterback, and I’m going to do that the best way I know how, because I owe that to my teammates regardless of who is out there on the field with me.

I played a little basketball. Some football in junior high.

I love soccer, love tennis… Roger Federer has been a favourite for a long, long time. The kind of consistency he has shown, 16 Grand Slam titles… The way he handles himself in pressure situations is admirable… He is so calm… In soccer, I’m a huge fan of Barcelona… I like watching Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and David Villa.

My priority is cricket. Everything that I get apart from it is a result of the effort on the field. Everything else follows. I am pretty aware of my priorities, and I don’t really focus on things that are not as important to me as cricket.

Contrary to popular belief, I don’t spend a whole lot of time following soccer. But as I have traveled around the world to better understand global development and health, I’ve learned that soccer is truly universal. No matter where I go, that’s what kids are playing. That’s what people are talking about.

I’m in the game of spinning plates. I’m spinning a boxing plate. I’m spinning a Tae Kwon Do plate. I’m spinning a Jujitsu plate. I’m spinning a freestyle wrestling plate. I’m spinning a karate plate. If I was to put all them down and have one boxing plate spinning, it would be like a load off my shoulders.

You know, I’m trying to chase rings, and that’s all I’m about. So that’s where the conversation stops for me.

I noticed that when I touched the ball on the field, you could hear this shrill noise in the crowd with all the birds screaming like at a Beatles concert.

All the top players in the world play 45-50-60 games. You need that many games, even the strikers need that many games.

Fortunately for a quarterback, you can play for a long time because you don’t get hit very often.

If you watch any good player, they’re using different parts of their body and working with instruments that respond to those movements. They’re moving in many dimensions at once.

I have lived long enough both in years and in accomplishments.

I had been playing for a while, and I asked Louisville Slugger to send me a dozen flame treated bats. But when I got it, I realized they had sent me a box of ashes.

I don’t want to be the next Michael Jordan, I only want to be Kobe Bryant.

WIth football you can have up to 28 guys you consider starters, and if they can pick up the slack when some aren’t playing so well, you don’t have to turn those two game losing streaks into six-game losing streaks.

They’ll forget all the rubbish when I’ve gone, and they’ll remember the football. If only one person thinks I’m the best player in the world, that’s good enough for me.

I’ve thought sometimes about what I like about football, and it’s playing together.

Of course awards matter.

Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it’s much more serious than that.

I’ve taken countless shots in my life, so you know the ones when you’re in rhythm, with a perfect release, and it’s on track, that it’s going in.

To win a national championship, you’ve got to be a little lucky.

The first two games for Churchill, I was so jittery that I didn’t know what to do. I was running more but didn’t know what to do. I’ve no bones accepting the fact that I didn’t know what was happening in the game.