Top 55 Roy Hodgson Quotes

I like Philip Roth, John Updike, and Richard Yates.

Talk is talk; action on the field is action on the field.

People are entitled to say what they feel sometimes.

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.

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.

I played a lot of tennis when I was young.

Systems win you nothing, and football players win you games.

As far as I’m concerned, if you’re only going to call managers who have won a trophy any good, then basically, you have four or five.

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.

I speak five languages: English, Swedish, French, Italian, and German.

I have been in football a long time.

I try very hard not to look back.

A lot of the players who’ve done so well aren’t necessarily the big names: James Tomkins, Luka Milivojevic to name two.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I don’t own photograph albums – the pictures that are important to me are etched in my mind.

I was so fully involved in football and building a career that I didn’t spend nearly enough time with my son when he was growing up.

Maybe I see things too naively at times.

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.

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.

You’re as old as you feel.

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.

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 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.

I am both proud and excited at the prospect of working as the Liverpool manager.

The important thing is to take each game as it comes.

The last thing you want as a striker is the opposing team putting all 10 players behind the ball.

I don’t know whether you ever get over things that cause you pain.

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.

New faces, maybe perking up the squad and giving you another arrow to your bow – that can be a help.

I’m a football manager, a football coach; I can’t be expected to pontificate on everything.

I don’t think any job is impossible.

Luckily, my age doesn’t ever come into my thoughts.

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.

Brazil is a fantastic football country.

I’ve worked for a long time and hope people have developed enough confidence in me that it will remain even in a period when we’re not winning many games.

I’m always disappointed when we lose, and it’s happened quite a few times.

I don’t like the way I see society going.

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.

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.

Most teams – whether they like it or not against Manchester City – you’re going to find yourself quite often penned in your own half.

I don’t have any regrets.

Getting the balance right in everything is all of football and all of sport.

When you have been lucky enough to move up the ladder, all you see, really, is the slide back down. You don’t see the further steps upwards.

I am not only privileged to work for the FA and England: I have enjoyed working for the FA and England.

It does get hot in England from time to time.

It’s very flattering that those who have assessed my work over the years think that I have the qualities to be an England manager.

I’ve got to that stage in my life where, difficult decisions I don’t have to make, I push them into the future until such time I have to make them.

For goal-scorers and centre-forwards, confidence does play a big part.

I quite liked Dostoyevsky when I was younger.

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.