Manager Quotes

"Football is the most important of the less important things in the world."

"You, as a manager, are judged on results and not on the work you do and the performance of the team. Imagine paying a guy a huge amount of money and then judging him not on the things he can control, but on those he can't."

"I have a lot of power. Here, I can decide: training at six in the morning! Training 11 in the night! But my style is not to impose. I would like to convince the players of what they are doing. This takes more time."

"At the start of my two years at Juventus, I had big plans for the club, but it turned out that the Intertoto Cup was the only medal in my desk drawer when finally they told me to pack my bags. We started the first season really well, and Conte was so important for me."

"I have never seen a talent like Ronaldo. He always scores, scores, scores. The first game he played for Milan, Sienna away, I said to him, 'I can't put you on the pitch. You are 100kg.' 'Mister,' he said, 'don't worry, I will score.' I put him in, and he scored twice."

"My impression of Abramovich is that he loves football, his club, and his players. He wants to know everything that is going on and is very passionate. Berlusconi, too, loves his club, but he was a man of the people and conducted his life in public."

"I like to be funny. I can't stay all the time focused, disciplined, controlled. Behaviour like that is impossible. If the players are too nervous before a game, I have to relax them, calm them."

"Firmino is the most decisive player because he comes to play between the lines and opens the spaces to his team-mates."

"The fact that these owners sacked me doesn't mean that our relationship is broken. I still get on well with Florentino, and although I haven't spoken much with Abramovich since I left Chelsea, I have no problem with him."

"For me, the Premier League is full of quality, and the clubs competing at the top are the same who compete at the top of Europe every year."

"That is what a good manager does - you study and think and discuss, and you come up with a model of playing."

"I spent eight years with Berlusconi, and I still have a good relationship with him."

"The formula to beat the press is simple; it's the execution that's tough. If you have the quality to do so, you pass your way through it. And if you don't, you just boot it over the top. And then it becomes a game of winning 'second balls'."

"To find a clear identity for the team - that is not about buying certain players for a lot of money. It is about getting players who want to play the right way."

"Usually, a Brazilian doesn't like to work hard in training, doesn't like to stay focused. I trained a lot of Brazilian players. I had a problem with Ronaldo at Milan. It was not easy to get him fit! Ronaldo was 100kg but was the quickest in the 10 metre test!"

"I'm in favour of innovation, just as long as the game does not suffer for it."

"When I arrived at Juventus as the manager in 1999, Antonio Conte was the captain of the club, an Italy international, and a player who had a lot of influence in the dressing room - and when I needed a leader in the team, he was the obvious choice."

"I think it's actually more difficult to come to a club where everything is going great and everyone is happy. When you take over from a guy who has been sacked because things weren't going well, it's more straightforward."

"Usually, the most intelligent player is a midfielder."

"Momentum? Momentum is the next day's starting pitcher."

"You can't sit on a lead and run a few plays into the line and just kill the clock. You've got to throw the ball over the damn plate and five the other man his chance. That's why baseball is the greatest game of them all."

"The key to winning baseball games is pitching, fundamentals, and three run homers."

"On my tombstone just write, 'The sorest loser that ever lived.'"

"This ain't a football game, we do this every day."

"When you play for one run, that's usually all you get. I have nothing against the bunt in its place, but most of the time, that place is in the bottom of a long-forgotten closet."

"People always make a lot about how I don't carry grudges. That's my religious upbringing. I went nine years without missing Sunday school. Lutheran. I can't live with hatred inside of me. That's what I learned. I ain't scared of dying, either."

"I became an optimist when I discovered that I wasn't going to win any more games by being anything else."

"A winning player is nothing more than a player on a winning team. A losing player is a guy who played on a losing team that year."

"Nobody likes to hear it, because it's dull, but the reason you win or lose is darn near always the same - pitching."

"In baseball, you can't kill the clock. You've got to give the other man his chance. That's why this is the greatest game."