My uncle played rugby, and my dad played football, and they used to argue which game was the roughest – and everybody agreed rugby was. It’s a great team sport, and to be successful, every person has to play in the same level.

If I hit a man, his head is gonna go into the bleachers.

At 17, I went to Stanford University to study engineering. My time was occupied with the required reading and the extracurricular duties of managing the baseball and football teams and earning my way.

When I started Virgin from a basement in west London, there was no great plan or strategy. I didn’t set out to build a business empire… For me, building a business is all about doing something to be proud of, bringing talented people together and creating something that’s going to make a real difference to other people’s lives.

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

Great discoveries and improvements invariably involve the cooperation of many minds. I may be given credit for having blazed the trail, but when I look at the subsequent developments I feel the credit is due to others rather than to myself.

We came up with TDE. As competitive as rap is, and as much as we’re trying to exceed the standards we set for ourselves, we take their wins as our wins, too.

Without football, my life is worth nothing.

Winning the title in England is the biggest challenge of them all.

The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.

I’ve got incredible support from my wife and family and people around me. I’ve got great people around me who handle anything on the outside, business-wise, who help free me up to create in my job.

In my heart, I am always a Raider.

Your teammates give you the confidence. They give me the confidence all year, all postseason.

I can’t play soccer, and I’m not a great swimmer. I won’t drown, but you won’t see me doing laps in a pool.

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

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 am a professional sportswriter, among other things, and I take the games seriously. It is only one of my many powerful addictions, and I don’t mind admitting any of them.

I failed to make the chess team because of my height.

As a professional athlete a lot is going to be said about you – but I just try to move forward and try to achieve my goals.

It obviously bothers people when Real Madrid win. It makes them jealous. There isn’t a level playing field.

I idolised IM Vijayan and Krisanu Dey when I started watching football. After that, it was Bhaichung Bhutia in India and Brazilian Ronaldo abroad.

If you’re going to change things, you have to be with the people who hold the levers.

I look at athletes in all sports and try to picture what kind of football player they’d be, what position they’d play and so on.

How do you catch a knuckleball? You wait until it stops rolling, then go pick it up.

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.

Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don’t interfere as long as the policy you’ve decided upon is being carried out.

How you played in yesterday’s game is all that counts.

We should not underestimate ourselves, because if lots of individuals go together then we can accomplish almost anything.

Like a baseball game, wars are not over till they are over. Wars don’t run on a clock like football. No previous generation was so hopelessly unrealistic that this had to be explained to them.

I’m proud to be an actor. See, as an actor, you live longer. Football players, the brain and all that stuff, ooh-eee, that’s not good.

I played football for a team called the East Dragons on the east side of town. We only had six regular season games. And six games I played tail back and I had 18 touchdowns in six games. That’s when I knew I had some athletic ability.

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.

It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed.

We all know what flopping is when we see it. The stuff that you see is where guys aren’t really getting hit at all and are just flailing around like a fish out of water.

Ordinarily, players fine-tune their match-fitness during the pre-season.

I’m always hungry to score.

On the field, aggression can sometimes be a positive emotion. It boosts performance and can lift your game. But over the years, I have learnt that restrained aggression is a better animal. That way, you will conserve your energy and won’t spend yourself quickly.

We allow no geniuses around our Studio.

Without sounding biased, 70 days of football is not enough. Even if Messi plays 70 days he cannot be in the national team. You need to play around the year to be in contention for the national team.

There have been so many great players that I’ve played with, that I’ve played against over the years.

The Paralympic Games is about transforming our perception of the world.

A lifetime contract for a coach means if you’re ahead in the third quarter and moving the ball, they can’t fire you.

You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.

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.

All that I know most surely about morality and obligations I owe to football.

Hackathons are these things where just all of the Facebook engineers get together and stay up all night building things. And, I mean, usually at these hackathons, I code too, just alongside everyone.

When a team takes ownership of its problems, the problem gets solved. It is true on the battlefield, it is true in business, and it is true in life.

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

Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.

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.

As a part of the NFL, things change every year.

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

I don’t think anyone ever plans to change line-ups, but it’s something that comes with being in bands. I was in a band once and there were always problems – members come and go – and some of the world’s biggest bands have changed line-ups loads!

If the team keeps changing then everything has to keep changing.

I hope the fans have enjoyed listening as much as I’ve enjoyed doing the games. I don’t ever go to the park where I don’t have a good day. I don’t like losing. But I don’t think I ever go to the park where I have a bad day. I don’t think once.

People have to understand one thing: at the age of 18, I arrived at a dream club like Manchester United. It was a dream come true. But, even at that moment, I was thinking about playing in England for some years and then going to play in Spain. Even at that time I was thinking that way, and I always gave 100% everything.

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.

Players today moan about the number of games, but when you’re young, you can’t play enough.

My first assistant-coaching job in football was at William & Mary in 1961. The pay wasn’t much, so to get $300 more per year, I agreed to coach the golf team. I didn’t even know how to keep score, and really, my main job was not to wreck the van on the way to tournaments.

Cage Warriors is a brilliant organisation. They’re doing great things for European MMA, and they’re giving the platform for guys like me who came through. They’re vital. I’m forever grateful for the opportunities I got.

I have a different vision of leadership. A leadership is someone who brings people together.