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.

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.

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

I don’t think a coach becomes the right coach until he wins a championship.

I am not a dreamer. I am a football romantic.

I think I’ve really stepped outside the box in the way I try to train, eat, hydrate, the cognitive brain games I play on a daily or weekly basis to try to build up some durability within my body, within my brain, to be able to go out there and play at a high level at age 38.

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.

It’s in my blood to be around people while I was training.

Every season is a new challenge to me, and I always set out to improve in terms of games, goals, assists.

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

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.

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

I’m really a normal football manager.

Had I been a great athlete, I’m not sure I would have even gone into coaching. I may have turned out feeling that my life ended when my athletic career ended, as happens so many times with various athletes.

I was being trained because I wanted to be a preacher like my father. I wanted to talk about Moses; I wanted to talk about God… I wanted to talk about the apostles, the disciples and all that.

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

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

One of the most basic factors in sports is that winning becomes a habit, and losing is the same way. When failure starts to feel normal in your life or your work or even your darkest vices, you won’t have to go looking for trouble, because trouble will find you. Count on it.

The worst thing is for a player to come to a club and not be able to play.

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

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!

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.

If I said I would knock out Sonny Liston in 1 minute and 49 seconds of the first round, that would hurt the gate.

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.

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

Training and resting takes up most of my time.

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

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.

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

Louis van Gaal is one of the most successful managers in the world.

I will fight in many weight divisions.

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

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

In college, a loss is pretty devastating. That feeling kind of goes away in an 82-game season. You hate to lose, but you also have a lot more games to make up for it.

The best football is always about expression of emotion. Always.

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

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

Team sports aren’t my thing. I find it easier to pick something up if I can do it at my own speed. And you don’t need a partner to go running, you don’t need a particular place, like in tennis, just a pair of trainers.

When I won the Golden Gloves in 1960, that made me realize I had a chance. And when I won at the Olympics, that sealed it: I was the champ.

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

The army teaches boys to think like men.

I’ve been so blessed to play for the greatest coach at a time when our organization has done incredible things. I’ve played with the best teammates. Playing for Mr. Kraft and what his influence on the team has been.

Panic plays no part in the training of a nurse.

People think hard sparring will get you sharp. And you do get sharp in the gym. But anytime I’ve trained that way, I’ve actually been a little bit flatter in the fight. And the knockout shot hasn’t come. It’s almost because my training has been too hard.

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.

I’m a golfer, and what are the two sports you can do till you drop? Golf and surfing. They’re great for you limber-wise, they’re great for you health-wise, and they put you in sweet locations.

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.

The joy of doing well as a batsman for your country is much more than that little joy of going for a party and enjoying music. It is a completely different high, and I get high by performances. That’s what I enjoy now.

All my life, I’ve been trying to make a hole-in-one. The closest I’ve come is a bogey.

The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses – behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights.

Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended.

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

Whoever the coach is, my job is to talk to him, understand him and be a better player under him and give my best.

The best thing about the Kentucky Derby is that it is only two minutes long. It is the quickest event in sports, except for Sumo-wrestling & Mike Tyson fights. Maybe Drag-racing is quicker, but I have never been attracted to it.

I wasn’t born a natural entrepreneur. I had to be trained.

Shooting the ball is a part of the game. Everybody can shoot in their own way. Not everybody can make. But everybody can shoot.

February is always a bad month for TV sports. Football is gone, basketball is plodding along in the annual midseason doldrums, and baseball is not even mentioned.

Serious sport is war minus the shooting.

In England, football is a big thing to talk about, but Liverpool, it’s a special place. You feel it when you make your first step.

I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‚Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.‘

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