Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, there is no reason either in football or in poetry why the two should not meet in a man's life if he has the weight and cares about the words.
Traveling is definitely something that your average 17-year-old doesn't get to do. One week we're in Japan, one week we're in Australia, one week we're back home going to football games.
Football will always be my foremost passion.
I don't want football to not be played, but I would like the sophistication brought forth to take care of those who need to be taken care of and to take the precaution, at the sacrifice of winning, to take care of people.
When I started playing, there were no teams and no structure, so I had to play with the boys. I get very emotional when I think about the humiliation that I've suffered playing football.
Neutrality is for referees in a football game. You have to take a stand. The really, really good journalists always take a stand with those who have no power, with those who have no rights, and with those who have no voice.
When you're a kid that's all you want to do, go out and play football.
No matter how much money you have or what kind of cocoon you live in, the reality is that you have lost a game of football and let England's fans down. We are bothered.
I think if you want to become a great football player, professional, you must give all the time one hundred percent, you must work hard - to be lucky is a good thing - but if you work hard and you give everything you will have great success.
Football tactics are rapidly becoming as complicated as the chemical formula for splitting the atom.
I was 15, and the years of hard swimming had packed muscle on my frame and made me very strong. Not as strong as a football player, but strong enough to inflict heavy damage.
The car business is a lot like football. In football, you have to win once a week. In the car business, you have to win every day.
In London there was an article about all these girls bending it like Beckham, and in India there's this big wave of girls playing football. Wow! I can't believe a movie's done this!
Football develops, it becomes quicker, players develop as athletes.
To me it was never about what I accomplished on the football field, it was about the way I played the game.
I attribute my entire football career, as far as getting me started, getting me interested, keeping me that way was my father. He went to every game even though he was crippled and wasn't real healthy.
If I can join hands with FIFA and other continental bodies to promote football globally, then I can do more than that to raise African football to new heights.
When I was a child, it was my dream to be a professional footballer. When I was 14 I visited Milan's San Siro stadium and remember thinking how unbelievable it was. From then onwards I vowed that one day I would be playing there - and I am very proud that I achieved this and also for everything else I have managed to achieve in football.
So I know all about the ups and downs of football, I know that one day I will be sacked.
Football's about the young players, bringing youth team players through to the first team and hopefully getting the best out of them so they can go on to play for their country.
Academe, n.: An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. Academy, n.: A modern school where football is taught.
It is veneer, rouge, aestheticism, art museums, new theaters, etc. that make America impotent. The good things are football, kindness, and jazz bands.
If you can miss getting up in the morning and running into a wall, I miss playing football. I'll never be a frustrated athlete.
I need to go play football. I don't care about anything else.
I'm a very traditional person. The tattoos are about my grandmother dying and they tell the story about my mother and father, my brothers and my sister, my kids. It's pretty much a family tree on my arm with my life in football too.
More and more these days what I find myself doing in my stories is making a representation of goodness and a representation of evil and then having those two run at each other full-speed, like a couple of PeeWee football players, to see what happens. Who stays standing? Whose helmet goes flying off?
To me, discipline in football occurs on the field, not off it.
I'm really normal. I play football, go to the beach, drive. We have dogs. I can imagine people calling me a character, but I'm Joe Straight.
I actually like football a great deal.
Football is a game of business. You don't work for free.
In this game called football, we don't know who's going to the playoffs.
The most deceptive course in football is straight at the goalposts.
My brain is - essentially, you take any college football player in the country, because I have had multiple, multiple concussions. I had 10 documented concussions, four post-concussion seizures and so, but, with that said, my brain is no worse than your average college football player's brain, right?
I've got a great life that I really enjoy. But there is something chewing at me inside: that adrenaline rush from football, I miss that.
Watching all the football over the weekend - and having to wait until Monday night to play - gets you ready, gets you firing.
My job is to go out there and play football. My job is to go out there and win football games.
