Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Anyone who watches football and watches Tottenham play would have to be an admirer of the way they play football and the way they go about their business.
Why shouldn't Harry Kane take corners? If he happens to be the best striker of a ball in the team and gives you the best delivery, why shouldn't he do it?
I can get by quite well in Italian or German, though if the discussion got to a high level, I'd run out of vocabulary. I'm stronger in French and Swedish.
To be frank, you can't compare the atmosphere and the way people behaved in the Olympic Stadium with the game I watched the day after, the Community Shield.
I think, increasingly, people will define success as staying in the League, being a stable Premier League club that treats its fans to good football every year.
There is a belief that getting any particular job may depend on who has just had five consecutive victories. If that's the way it is, I've got a healthy attitude.
Of course, any work you do as a sporting person, a football coach or any coach, if it is good work, you've got to have something - a championship - to show for it.
Often, in a tournament, the players that get injured or suffer a lack of form are the guys at the cutting edge, the guys who make the difference or score the goals.
I don't sit around wondering, 'Why am I here? Who made the stars?' I prefer to look at the stars and benefit from them rather than concern myself with how they got there.
Everywhere I've managed, I've left a platform for my successor to build on, and this is a great satisfaction for me, even if I don't necessarily get the recognition for it.
Getting that first foot on the rung of the ladder, that's where you find it easier to shrug off those times when your foot slips off, and you have to get yourself going again.
Hugh Grant is about the only actor I've met who has taken any proper interest in football, being a big Fulham supporter. But he'd be far too good-looking to play me in any film.
I suffer during games. We follow the action, kicking every ball, wondering if our centre-backs can stop the cross... In some ways, you enjoy it, but your heart is always thumping.
In an ideal world, the season would end, and the players would have two to three weeks by the beach. You'd have four to five weeks of preparation, and then you'd play the tournament.
All of the top managers I have come across during my career and befriend, they suffer as much with the defeats and when things don't go their way late in life as they did early in life.
There's a great quote from Henry Kissinger, which I became aware of from reading [Joseph] Heller's Good As Gold. He said: 'Every great achievement was a dream before it became a reality.'
In football, however well you think you are doing, however well your life is going, there is always a mugger there lurking in the shadows to bash you over the head when you least expect it.
The reality of football rests on that patch of green between 90 and 95 minutes. Whichever team is going to win has to do it on the field of play and by scoring more goals than the opposition.
If the be-all and end-all of your ability is, 'Have you got a trophy to your name,' I find that hard to understand. It's so naive in terms of what the job of being a football coach is all about.
I don't think there are many people out there - except, perhaps, the odd Twitter troll who knows no better - who believes that racially abusing people or threatening people is the right way to go.
What you've got to do in any coaching job, whether it is moving to Sweden as a young man - where being English gave you a slight advantage - or something else, you've got to win the players' respect.
The one thing we have to remember about Fernando Torres is that he's a human being who has come in for an enormous amount of criticism, not least during the World Cup from people in Spain and around the world.
All you can do when you are given a chance to play for England is to go out against whoever that opponent may be and do it very well. And if you do that, you get yourself in the forefront of the manager's mind.
I wouldn't mind a spotlight also focused on the crowd, because, I think, one of the things that made the Olympic Games for Great Britain was the incredible support within the stadia where the events took place.
I didn't realise I had a speech impediment until I came back to England. I spent the whole of my life working abroad, and no-one mentioned it. I came back to England and suddenly realised I had a speech impediment.
There aren't many English managers, I suppose, who've had the sort of career that I've had, outside the country. With the amount of money that is going around in the Premier League, not many people are tempted to move abroad.
I think I like the artistry of the game. I still get a lot of pleasure watching the good-quality teams play, where the movements of the players are coordinated. It's almost ballet-like, although 'ballet-like' is a bit of an exaggeration.
There is so much interaction in a football match: between you and your team-mates and how you support each other, work for each other, make runs. But I also enjoy the other aspect: the pressing and how people work so hard to recover the ball.
I don't think anything's cruel - if you're so sensitive these days that you see cruelty everywhere, unfortunately every time a comedian comes on television, you're going to accuse him of cruelty, because that's the kind of humour that the English people enjoy.
There might be more meetings and situations where you're required to represent the country in some way that wouldn't necessarily happen to you if you're a club manager, but other than that, I haven't found any differences in my approach between running a club side and a national team.
It wasn't purely Alex Ferguson's experience that made him a good manager, because he did it when he was inexperienced. But if you've got the qualities needed, and then you add experience to it, someone who's been through it, well, that has to be advantageous. There's no doubt about that.
I think any manager who tells you, 'I am very good at keeping my equilibrium. I'm always calm and reasoned, and results don't affect me particularly. I can take the good with the bad, and I can put the wins and the losses in perspective,' you will find a special person. I've never met one.
I have been in football a long time, and Wayne Rooney has been in football a long time. He would regard me as someone who is very false if I ever said to him, 'Your place is guaranteed.' He would not expect it, and I would be very upset anyway if anyone asked me to give them a guarantee of a place.
It's true that if it's always going to be that if you win the World Cup or European Championship, you're a success, and if you don't, you're a failure, then you're bedding yourself for a lack of success because there aren't many coaches who have won those things, and there are thousands who haven't.
I have always promised myself and my wife that when I don't enjoy it anymore, or I can't handle the stress and the pressure that comes with having such a high-profile and top job - or my energy levels starts to fail me, or my enthusiasm starts to be dented - I won't prolong my career longer than I feel I should.
A lot of young coaches who respect the fact I have been doing it a long time, that is often their question: 'Does it get any easier? Can you relax more during the games? Can you take it all a little bit more philosophically and put it more in perspective?' The tragedy is that I have to tell them, 'No. If anything, it gets worse.'
The Premier League is what it is. Some people will see the intensity and quality as a great advantage for your players: it will make them better. Some will see it as a disadvantage because the players play at such a high level and such intensity, it's difficult for them to drum that up, that intensity, with a very short space of rest time.
I assisted Bobby Houghton at Halmstads, and we were both just under 30. We'd say, 'Wouldn't it be great to do this for maybe 10 years, save a little money, then perhaps start a little business together.' Some sort of travel agency. We had no football thoughts beyond that, other than maybe combining it with a bit of sport, getting a few tours going.