66 Inspirational Football Quotes

Football is more than just a game; it's a source of inspiration, motivation, and life lessons. Whether you're stepping onto the field, cheering from the stands, or watching from home, the spirit of football has a way of igniting passion and determination. In an arena where perseverance and teamwork reign supreme, words of wisdom from legendary players and coaches can leave an indelible mark. In this collection, we've curated 66 of the most inspirational football quotes to inspire players, fans, and anyone who appreciates the beauty of the sport. Get ready to feel motivated and uplifted as you dive into these powerful words.

1. “Once you learn to quit, it becomes a habit.” - Vince Lombardi

2. “[Books are] vital to learning. Half the population don't go to football matches but that doesn't make football any less important.” - John Sutherland

3. “The problem with winter sports is that -- follow me closely here -- they generally take place in winter.” - Dave Barry

4. “If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead.” - Erma Bombeck

5. “Your talent determines what you can do. Your motivation determines how much you are willing to do. Your attitude determines how well you do it.” - Lou Holtz

6. “Würde man Rooney als metrosexuell bezeichnen, würde er sich wohl zuerst verwundert am Quadratschädel kratzen und dann vorsichtshalber zuschlagen.” - Raphael Honigstein

7. “Football: A sport that bears the same relation to education that bullfighting does to agriculture.” - Elbert Hubbard

8. “The ball laughs, radiant, in the air. He brings her down, puts her to sleep, showers her with compliments, dances with her, and seeing such things never before seen his admirers pity their unborn grandchildren who will never see them.” - Eduardo Galeano

9. “And one fine day the goddess of the wind kisses the foot of man, that mistreated, scorned foot, and from that kiss the soccer idol is born. He is born in a straw crib in a tin-roofed shack and he enters the world clinging to a ball.” - Eduardo Galeano

10. “Some people think football [soccer] is a matter of life and death. I don't like that attitude. I can assure them it is much more serious than that.” - Bill Shankly

11. “no doubt, the early traumatic shocks that young hardy brown experienced had a permanent impact on his future development and capacity to deal with the real world.... the years with the mighty mites within the orphanage setting, a term that we seldom see in modern society, provided him with a safe and non-threatening enclave with which to develop. certainly, the competitive, action-oriented game of football, as meshed with positive team experiences, added to the supportive culture.” - jim dent

12. “When it's too hard for them it's just right for us!” - Marv Levy

13. “Anyone who's just driven 90 yards against huge men trying to kill them has earned the right to do Jazz hands. ” - Craig Ferguson

14. “I like football. I find its an exciting strategic game. Its a great way to avoid conversation with your family at Thanksgiving.” - Craig Ferguson

15. “As I get older, the tyranny that football exerts over my life, and therefore over the lives of people around me, is less reasonable and less attractive. Family and friends know, after long years of wearying experience, that the fixture list always has the last word in any arrangement; they understand, or at least accept, that christenings or weddings or any gatherings, which in other families would take unquestioned precedence, can only be plotted after consultation. So football is regarded as a given disability that has to be worked around. If I were wheelchair-bound, nobody close to me would organise anything in a top-floor flat, so why would they plan anything for a winter Saturday afternoon.” - Nick Hornby

16. “I love seeing other channels counterprogram the Super Bowl. PBS: "DAMN RIGHT we're airing a new 'Masterpiece Classic'! Fuck off, sports!” - Tara Ariano

17. “football is like life - it requires perserverance, self-denial, hard work, sacrifice, dedication and respect for authority.” - Vince Lombardi

18. “I used to believe, although I don't now, that growing and growing up are analogous, that both are inevitable and uncontrollable processes. Now it seems to me that growing up is governed by the will, that one can choose to become an adult, but only at given moments. These moments come along fairly infrequently -during crises in relationships, for example, or when one has been given the chance to start afresh somewhere- and one can ignore them or seize them.” - Nick Hornby

19. “Bobby Tom told me he’s not afraid of the Chargers’ defense.” “Bobby Tom’ll tell you he’s not afraid of nuclear war, so I wouldn’t put too much stock in his opinion.” - Susan Elizabeth Phillips

20. “You got one guy going boom, one guy going whack, and one guy not getting in the endzone.” - john madden

21. “wouldn't you like to make sure all those millions you give to Uncle Sam went to schools and hospitals instead of nuclear warheads?'As a matter of fact, he would. Playgrounds for big kids, preschool programs to little ones, and mandatory LASIK surgery for NFL refs.” - Susan Elizabeth Phillips

22. “Les hémorragies cérébrales sont moins fréquentes chez les amateurs et les joueurs de football que chez le reste de la population. Les cerveaux aussi.” - Pierre Desproges

23. “Dialogue in the works of autobiography is quite naturally viewed with some suspicion. How on earth can the writer remember verbatim conversations that happened fifteen, twenty, fifty years ago? But 'Are you playing, Bob?' is one of only four sentences I have ever uttered to any Arsenal player (for the record the others are 'How's the leg, Bob?' to Bob Wilson, recovering from injury the following season; 'Can I have your autograph, please?' to Charlie George, Pat Rice, Alan Ball and Bertie Mee; and, well, 'How's the leg, Brian?' to Brian Marwood outside the Arsenal club shop when I was old enough to know better) and I can therefore vouch for its absolute authenticity.” - Nick Hornby

24. “Pressure is something you feel when you don't know what the hell you're doing.” - Peyton Manning

25. “If teams keep playing us this way, it's going to be like this” - Peyton Manning

26. “In football everything is complicated by the presence of the opposite team.” - Jean-Paul Sartre

27. “He dribbles a lot and the opposition don't like it—you can see it all over their faces.” - Ron Atkinson

28. “[F]or the most part football these days is the opium of the people, not to speak of their crack cocaine. Its icon is the impeccably Tory, slavishly conformist Beckham. The Reds are no longer the Bolsheviks. Nobody serious about political change can shirk the fact that the game has to be abolished. And any political outfit that tried it on would have about as much chance of power as the chief executive of BP has in taking over from Oprah Winfrey.” - Terry Eagleton

29. “Yes, yes, I know all the jokes. What else could I have expected at Highbury? But I went to Chelsea and to Tottenham and to Rangers, and saw the same thing: that the natural state of a football fan is bitter disappointment, no matter what the score.” - Nick Hornby

30. “[T]his readiness to assume the guilt for the threats to our environment is deceptively reassuring: We like to be guilty since, if we are guilty, it all depends on us. We pull the strings of the catastrophe, so we can also save ourselves simply by changing our lives. What is really hard for us (at least in the West) to accept is that we are reduced to the role of a passive observer who sits and watches what our fate will be. To avoid this impotence, we engage in frantic, obsessive activities. We recycle old paper, we buy organic food, we install long-lasting light bulbs—whatever—just so we can be sure that we are doing something. We make our individual contribution like the soccer fan who supports his team in front of a TV screen at home, shouting and jumping from his seat, in the belief that this will somehow influence the game's outcome.” - Slavoj Žižek

31. “Rob Green needed to get the long barrier out, didn't he?” - James Anderson

32. “An atheist is a man who watches a Notre Dame - Southern Methodist University game and doesn't care who wins.” - Dwight D. Eisenhower

33. “What I needed more than anything was a place where unfocused unhappiness could thrive, where I could be still and worry and mope; I had the blues, and when I watched my team I could unwrap them and let them breathe a little.” - Nick Hornby

34. “It never rains in Autzen Stadium!” - Don Essig

35. “Today I will do what other's won't, so tomorrow I will do what others can't.” - Jerry Rice

36. “Anybody who watches three games of football in a row should be declared brain dead. ” - Erma Bombeck

37. “In the sweep of its appeal, its ability to touch every corner of humanity, football is the only game that needed to be invented.” - Bobby Charlton

38. “The eccentric passion of Shankly was underlined for me by my England team-mate Roger Hunt's version of the classic tale of the Liverpool manager's pre-game talk before playing Manchester United. The story has probably been told a thousand times in and out of football, and each time you hear it there are different details, but when Roger told it the occasion was still fresh in his mind and I've always believed it to be the definitive account. It was later on the same day, as Roger and I travelled together to report for England duty, after we had played our bruising match at Anfield. Ian St John had scored the winner, then squared up to Denis Law, with Nobby finally sealing the mood of the afternoon by giving the Kop the 'V' sign. After settling down in our railway carriage, Roger said, 'You may have lost today, but you would have been pleased with yourself before the game. Shanks mentioned you in the team talk. When he says anything positive about the opposition, normally he never singles out players.' According to Roger, Shankly burst into the dressing room in his usual aggressive style and said, 'We're playing Manchester United this afternoon, and really it's an insult that we have to let them on to our field because we are superior to them in every department, but they are in the league so I suppose we have to play them. In goal Dunne is hopeless- he never knows where he is going. At right back Brennan is a straw- any wind will blow him over. Foulkes the centre half kicks the ball anywhere. On the left Tony Dunne is fast but he only has one foot. Crerand couldn't beat a tortoise. It's true David Herd has got a fantastic shot, but if Ronnie Yeats can point him in the right direction he's likely to score for us. So there you are, Manchester United, useless...'Apparently it was at this point the Liverpool winger Ian Callaghan, who was never known to whisper a single word on such occasions, asked, 'What about Best, Law and Charlton, boss?'Shankly paused, narrowed his eyes, and said, 'What are you saying to me, Callaghan? I hope you're not saying we cannot play three men.” - Bobby Charlton

39. “As you travel around medieval England you will come across a sport described by some contemporaries as 'abominable ... more common, undignified and worthless than any other game, rarely ending but with some loss, accident or disadvantage to the players themselves'. This is football.” - Ian Mortimer

40. “Things that aren't important, that have nothing to do with winning and losing, don't have to be a rule.” - Peter Richmond

41. “You get hit the hardest when trying to run or hide from a problem. Like the defense on a football field, putting all focus on evading only one defender is asking to be blindsided.” - Criss Jami

42. “Neither my sexuality or my efforts or lack of effort on the football field make up the whole sum of me.” - Sean Kennedy

43. “The same boys who got detention in elementary school for beating the crap out of people are now rewarded for it. They call it football.” - Laurie Halse Anderson

44. “If you have not seen it, FOOTBALL is a game in which men shove one another back and forth for no reason. They do not choose how, when, or whom they shove. All that has been decided for them in advance. All they need to do is follow the orders given to them before the game, showing them where to run and how to violently deploy the meat of their bodies against the meat that is running at them. They are doing this in order to please one angry old man on the sidelines. This old man is called the "coach" or "yelling surrogate dad who will never be happy.” - John Hodgman

45. “Football is all very well as a game for rough girls, but is hardly suitable for delicate boys.” - Oscar Wilde

46. “There definitely needs to be water on the sidelines for these players, but I also had some Gatorade just in case they were allergic to the water or vice versa.” - john madden

47. “I lost count of the number of referees who came to me both at Derby and Forest and said, 'I'd just like to express my thanks. I love matches involving your team. We never have any trouble with them.” - Brian Clough

48. “You're the only one that can put pressure on yourself... No one else can put pressure on you. It's self-inflicted. For me, I just want to go out and play football.” - Maurice Jones-Drew

49. “Success comes in a lot of ways, but it doesn't come with money and it doesn't come with fame. It comes from having a meaning in your life, doing what you love and being passionateabout what you do. That's having a life of success. When you have the ability to do what you love, love what you do and have the ability to impact people. That's having a life of success. That's what having a life of meaning is.” - Tim Tebow

50. “Is it or is it not a matter of importance that a young man starts out in life with an ability to shut his jaw hard and say "I will," or "I will not," and mean it?” - John William Heisman

51. “You watch pro ball and those guys spend so much time with their hands on each other's rear ends, you'd think they were feeling for diamonds or something.” - Catherine Gilbert Murdock

52. “Ce que je sais de la morale, c'est au football que je le dois.(I know of morality, it is football that I owe.)” - Albert Camus

53. “Where else but America could football flourish, America with its millions of fertile acres of corn, soy, and wheat, its lakes of dairy, its year-round gushers of fruits and vegetables, and such meats, that extraordinary pipline of beef, poultry, seafood, and pork, feedlot gorged, vitamin enriched, and hypodermically immunized, humming factories of high-velocity protein production, all of which culminate after several generations of epic nutrition in this strain of industrial-sized humans? Only America could produce such giants.” - Ben Fountain

54. “In keeping with the Laws of the Prophet Bubba and the Code of the UIL, as set forth in the Book of First Downs, as the sun sets on Friday nights the rites of the Texas state religion are celebrated: high school, smash-mouth football. ‘And lo, the children of Jim Bob do take to the roads in caravans and they do go up unto the stadium by tribes, the Indians of Groveton, the Panthers of Lufkin, the Mustangs of Overton, and the very Wildcats of Palestine, and who shall withstand the traffic jams thereof?’ Thus is it written, and so it is and shall be.” - Markham Shaw Pyle

55. “Football allows the intellectual part of my brain to evolve, but it allows the emotional part to remain unchanged. It has a liberal cerebellum and a reactionary heart. And this is all I want from everything, all the time, always.” - Chuck Klosterman

56. “In life as in football, you must keep pressing on till the final whistle.” - Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

57. “Football is not merely a small business, it's also a bad one. Anyone who spends any time inside football soon discovers that just as oil is part of the oil business, stupidity is part of the football business.” - Simon Kuper

58. “You know I'll never say no, and Nate's so dedicated, I think he loves our alpha more than me.""I resent that," Nate grumbled. "I might love football more than you, but definitely not Lucas's ugly mug.” - Nalini Singh

59. “Why isn’t it fun to watch a videotape of last night’s football game even when we don’t know who won? Because the fact that the game has already been played precludes the possibility that our cheering will somehow penetrate the television, travel through the cable system, find its way to the stadium, and influence the trajectory of the ball as it hurtles toward the goalposts!” - Daniel Gilbert

60. “I wanted to beat the heck out of the JV guys for that, except I wouldn't know what to do in a fistfight without a manual.” - Carrie Harris

61. “You can take Lucas to watch football when he’s older,’ she once told me. Ah, the rheumy-eyed grandpa on the terraces inducting the lad into the mysteries of soccer: how to loathe people wearing different coloured shirts, how to feign injury, how to blow your snot on to the pitch – See, son, you press hard on one nostril to close it, and explode the green stuff out of the other. How to be vain and overpaid and have your best years behind you before you’ve even understood what life’s about. Oh yes, I look forward to taking Lucas to the football.” - Julian Barnes

62. “I'm a minicamp body in 102-degree heat getting screamed at by the only other man my size: a middle-aged receivers coach they call Bow Wow.” - Christopher Harris

63. “I learned a long time ago that there is something worse than missing the goal, and that's not pulling the trigger.” - Mia Hamm

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

65. “Will we ever see his like again? It is doubtful. But at least for a brief moment in time we were lucky to have him as one of our own: an English lionheart who was the terror of the continent, who earned the love and respect of everyone who had the privilege to see him in action and above all was a thoroughly decent hero of whom we can be proud. Rest in peace 'Big Dunc'. Your feats will echo in eternity.” - James Leighton

66. “The Greatest” is a bite-your-tongue-book. Ultimately a tragic tale it is also immensely uplifting and easily the best footballer biography I have ever read.” - Mike Parry