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.

When I’m out on the football field, I have so much confidence in what I’m doing.

What is Champions League level? I saw a lot of rubbish games at Champions League level.

If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead.

I think my top salary was maybe in 1966. I made $17,000 and 11 of that came from selling other players‘ equipment.

Everyone needs a coach. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a basketball player, a tennis player, a gymnast or a bridge player.

Who in their infinite wisdom decreed that Little League uniforms be white? Certainly not a mother.

Lot of players lose hope because of lack of motivation.

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.

I’m already the face of the UFC, plus the face of boxing, WWE, and Hollywood.

If Tiger Woods had played football, he would have been a quarterback.

You can sometimes play some really good football and not score.

I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles.

Talking to a player helps, but in our sport the majority of learning happens from watching another player. You pick up things like being punctual, being nice to everyone, making sure you give your 100 per cent even in training.

Sports are such a great teacher. I think of everything they’ve taught me: camaraderie, humility, how to resolve differences.

An atheist is a man who watches a Notre Dame – Southern Methodist University game and doesn’t care who wins.

After the 12th class exam results, I got a call from Mohun Bagan. They saw me at Durand Cup when I was playing for City Club of Delhi. I thought they might want me for SAIL Academy. Never ever I thought Mohun Bagan is calling me for Mohun Bagan!

My superhero has always been Tendulkar, and it will be Tendulkar for life. He is someone who has inspired me immensely. Just watching him play for India, I used to dream of winning games for India, because he used to do it single handedly.

As long as I stay in training and play well, I don’t see what objection there can be to what I do off the field.

One reason I don’t want to play in England again is because we don’t have any personalities.

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.

What the ISL has done is create the hype and buzz around football that it very badly needs.

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.

All an agent is going to do is buy things for a player, damage his eligibility, and make the player dependent on them.

We don’t want people to leave the stadium until the game finishes.

When did I know I had talent? I think it started when I first started playing sports, organized sports.

Learning to live for others isn’t something that just comes naturally to anybody. You have to train yourself to do it.

Joe Frazier got hit more than me – and he doesn’t have Parkinson’s.

That’s what you live for as a sportsman. You have to put up a fight.

I think of myself more as a sportsman than I do an artist.

Players who are not from the U.K. have to get used to the winds. I have to adapt my style as a result as well. Often, you are forced to keep things simple.

I’m always hungry to score.

Every night on the court I give my all, and if I’m not giving 100 percent, I criticize myself.

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.

Reading isn’t good for a ballplayer. Not good for his eyes. If my eyes went bad even a little bit I couldn’t hit home runs. So I gave up reading.

ESPN is a great organization to work for.

In Boston, they love their sports celebrities. And it’s great.

Once it gets down to single-digit games, you know the season’s end is approaching, and we’re all pretty physically tired.

I like playing. I wouldn’t be a good coach. I don’t have the patience to be a coach.

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.

For me, training is my meditation, my yoga, hiking, biking all rolled into one. Wake up early in the morning, generally around 4 o’clock, and I’ll do my cardio on an empty stomach. Stretch, have a big breakfast, and then I’ll go train.

Even if soccer is not number one in the United States, they do things very well here. There’s much our country can learn from the U.S.A., because we all know that soccer is not the main game in India. We can still do more things, like provide better facilities for the players so they can perform well.

When I am free to train and free to move, I feel like a gorilla in the jungle. Then, when there are a bunch of media obligations, I feel like I have been captured and am being kept on display.

I am surprised and embarrassed to be a part of the first American generation to leave the country in far worse shape than it was when we first came into it.

Yesterday’s home runs don’t win today’s games.

You can say that 2016 was my finest. It went well for the national team, started by winning the SAFF Cup, we reached the finals of AFC Cup, we reached the semis of ISL. I think it was a fruitful season.

Not a lot of people or pros in this game know how to train correctly. That’s why they don’t have a long career. Their body gets banged up. They get into a rhythm of heavy sparring and heavy work, but through that, they’re limiting movement.

Serious sport is war minus the shooting.

In the ’60s and ’70s and early ’80s, the trainers would grind you, and eventually they would break something – they would break an ankle in ways that it would heal. It was just the way of the business, to ensure that you learned respect for wrestling.

David Beckham has never impressed me.

Engineering training deals with the exact sciences. That sort of exactness makes for truth and conscience. It might be good for the world if more men had that sort of mental start in life even if they did not pursue the profession.

It all went wrong with football, the thing I loved most of all, and from there, my life slowly fell apart.

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

For a privileged minority, Western democracy provides the leisure, the facilities, and the training to seek the truth lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology and class interest, through which the events of current history are presented to us.

There is something special which rides on a game between Liverpool and United.

If you have to stand and fight, you train yourself so that you’re able to do it.

In golf, the player, coach and official are rolled into one, and they overlap completely. Golf really is the best microcosm of life – or at least the way life should be.

A woman of the world is anxious to exhibit her form and shape, whether walking, standing, sitting, or sleeping. Even when represented as a picture, she desires to captivate with the charms of her beauty and, thus, to rob men of their steadfast heart.

I have to admit, I sometimes wonder how much more successful I would have been as a coach had it not been for my spending summers on the golf course. I could have watched more film, that’s for sure. One advantage Joe Paterno had over me was that he didn’t play golf.

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.

In 1962 I was named Minor League Player of the Year. It was my second season in the bigs.