Soccer Quotes | 40+ Inspirational Quotes from the Greatest Soccer Stars

Get inspired to get out on the pitch or cheer for your favorite team with our huge list of soccer quotes!

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“Soccer isn’t the same as Bach or Buddhism. But it is often more deeply felt than religion, and just as much a part of the community’s fabric, a repository of traditions.”
Franklin Foer, How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization

“I am not a perfectionist, but I like to feel that things are done well. More important than that, I feel an endless need to learn, to improve, to evolve, not only to please the coach and the fans, but also to feel satisfied with myself. It is my conviction that here are no limits to learning, and that it can never stop, no matter what our age.”
Cristiano Ronaldo

“Everything I know about morality and the obligations of men, I owe it to football (soccer).”
Albert Camus

“Football is the ballet of the masses.”
Dmitri Shostakovich

“Many people say I’m the best women’s soccer player in the world. I don’t think so. And because of that, someday I just might be.”
Mia Hamm

“A penalty is a cowardly way to score.”
Pelé, Pele: The Autobiography

“Soccer is simple, but it is difficult to play simple.”
Johan Cruyff

“The rules of soccer are very simple, basically it is this: if it moves, kick it. If it doesn’t move, kick it until it does.”
Phil Woosnam

“Every single day I wake up and commit to myself to becoming a better player.”
Mia Hamm

“It seems that soccer tournaments create those relationships: people gathered together in pubs and living rooms, a whole country suddenly caring about the same event. A World Cup is the sort of common project that otherwise barely exists in modern societies.”
Simon Kuper, Soccernomics

“If TV were only an invention to broadcast soccer, it would be justified.”
Roberto Fontanarrosa

“All good athletes make mistakes; the great ones learn to make that mistake only once.”
Raul Lopez

“Always work hard, never give up, and fight until the end because it’s never really over until the whistle blows.”
Alex Morgan

“I worked on my weaknesses and made them my strengths.”
Sydney Leroux

“This is my charge to everybody, Do what you can. Do what you have to do—step outside of yourself. Be more. Be better. Be bigger than you’ve ever been before.”

Megan Rapinoe

“One thing you can guarantee as a football fan, maybe the only thing you can guarantee, is that sooner or later someone else is going to have a go at you and your team.”
Ian Slatter, Danny Mann Super Fan

“Not a single player is as good as the sum of a team.”
Alfredo Di Stefano

“Discipline over ability wins every time.”
David Lyons, Alex: The Man Behind The Legend

“Something deep in my character allows me to take the hits, and get on with trying to win.”
Lionel Messi

“I learned a long time ago that there is something worse than missing the goal, and that’s not pulling the trigger.”
Mia Hamm, Go For the Goal: A Champion’s Guide To Winning In Soccer And Life

“The first 90 minutes are the most important.”
Bobby Robson

“[…] insist upon remembering. Because we know that the lessons of yesterday’s loss become the fuel for tomorrow’s win.”
Abby Wambach, WOLFPACK: How to Come Together, Unleash Our Power, and Change the Game

“Football is an art players paint with their feet.”
Maswood Alam Khan

“If you’re in the penalty area and don’t know what to do with the ball, put it in the net and we’ll discuss the options later.”
Bob Paisley

“Before kids can play like a pro, they must enjoy playing the game like a kid.”
Steve Locker

“Life is like soccer, you need goals”
Anonymous

“What is a club in any case? Not the buildings or the directors or the people who are paid to represent it. It’s not the television contracts, get-out clauses, marketing departments or executive boxes. It’s the noise, the passion, the feeling of belonging, the pride in your city. It’s a small boy clambering up stadium steps for the very first time, gripping his father’s hand, gawping at that hallowed stretch of turf beneath him and, without being able to do a thing about it, falling in love.”
Bobby Robson, Newcastle: My Kind of Toon

“I love football, and you love football, and arguing about it is just a waste of time.”
Ian Slatter, Danny Mann Super Fan

“You can overcome anything, if and only if you love something enough.”
Lionel Messi

“Substitution is a true test of strength. The real performance of a player is seen not only during playing time but also and more especially when the player is substituted.”
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

“Men spend their time in following a ball or a hare; it is the pleasure even of kings.”
Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“The more difficult the victory, the greater the happiness in winning.”
Pele, Pelé: The Autobiography

“I don’t have time for hobbies. At the end of the day, I treat my job as a hobby. It’s something I love doing.”
David Beckham

“In his life, a man can change wives, political parties or religions, but he cannot change his favourite soccer team.”
Eduardo Galeano

“As a goalkeeper you need to be good at organizing the people in front of you and motivating them. You need to see what’s going on and react to the threats. Just like a good manager in business.”
Peter Shilton

“You have to fight to reach your dream. You have to sacrifice and work hard for it.”
Lionel Messi

“The ball is round, the game lasts ninety minutes, and everything else is just theory.”
Josef ‘Sepp’ Herberger

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“I learned all about life with a ball at my feet”
Ronaldinho

“Football is the poetry of a motion.”
Pubudu Lasal Dissanayake

“I think there are a lot of things that soccer does in the communities that transcend the soccer field.”
Brandi Chastain

“Keep working even when no one is watching.”
Alex Morgan

“Critics of soccer contend that the game inherently culminates in death and destruction. They argue that the game gives life to tribal identities which should be disappearing in a world where a European Union and globalization are happily shredding such ancient sentiments. Another similar widely spread thesis that holds that the root cause of violence can be found in the pace of the game itself. Because goals come so irregularly, fans spend far too much time sublimating their emotions, anticipating but never releasing. When those emotions swell and become uncontainable, the fans erupt into dark, Dionysian fits of ecstatic violence.”
Franklin Foer, How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization