This is my first post in a while so I thought I would talk about the less than serious points of the beautiful game. I have one very simple question to answer in this article; what would a footballer do if football didn’t exist?
To put it kindly, footballers would have bugger-all in terms of usage to the modern world if they weren’t professional athletes. So how stupid is the average footballer? Well this article is going to show you just how daft they sometimes can be if we never had football, and the footballers are going to explain why themselves in some rather funny sound-bites.
I’m going to start with Rafael Benitez telling Geoff Shreeves how to win against Chelsea: “Simple, score more goals than them.” Thanks very much for enlightening us to that fact Rafa. Here’s me thinking you need to neutralise the threat of Drogba and mark the wingers out of the game.
David Beckham once described himself as a volatile player. Why? “Well I can play in the centre, on the right or occasionally on the left.” What do these tits do in school really?
An unnamed former Ireland international (as if this guy wasn’t at a disadvantage already) said: “Nobody in football should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein.” Or indeed Albert Wisdom.
Big Ron Atkinson was unhappy with a referee, but he told a reporter who asked for an opinion “I don’t normally comment on referees and that’s not going to change, at least not for that twat.” Good on you Ron, don’t rise to the bait.
Bolton Wanderers captain Kevin Nolan once said “As a footballer you need to take care of your feet, so we have trained chiropractors to help us.” How skilled is that chiropractor?
Former England manager Howard Wilkinson once said “If the opposition scores 2 then I’m a firm believer that we must score 3 in order to win.” No shit Sherlock.
Former Everton stopper Neville Southall told us about the secrets to a winning mentality. He said “If you don’t wake up wanting to win then you might as well not get out of bed at the end of the day.” Clichés, the enemy of the modern footballer…along with Danielle Lloyd of course.
Brazilian legend Ronaldo gave his matter-of-fact assessment on a match; “We lost because we didn’t win.” It should be noted that they also didn’t draw.
Former Sunderland and Newcastle defender Barry Venison told us about his pre-match routine. “I always used to put my right boot on first, and then obviously my right sock.” When do you reckon he put his shin pad on?
Wales and Liverpool legend Ian Rush told us why he didn’t really enjoy his time at Juventus; “It was like living in a foreign country.” Well its sort of a given, otherwise the commute would be a bitch.
Everyone’s favourite sexual deviant Stan Collymore gave us an insight about his then club Leicester City and how he felt; “I faxed a transfer request to the club at the beginning of the week, but let me state that I don’t want to leave Leicester.” Well you better go and bloody withdraw that request sharpish then hadn’t you?
Former England manager Ron Greenwood told us about underperformance within the ranks of the side. “Hoddle hasn’t been the Hoddle we know and neither has Robson.” But why would Robson be Hoddle? Couldn’t he be Waddle instead?
Professional slaphead Ray Wilkins told us about the Millwall’s recent misfortune; “We keep kicking ourselves in the foot.” An art, it has to be said.
The usually intelligent and articulate England stopper David James told us about Italian football clubs. “The stars above Italian clubs’ badges show you how many times they have won the Gazetta.” Someone should tell them they can buy it down the shop!
Finally my favourite comes from Ian Wright. The best thing about this quote is how oblivious Wright is to what he just said. Of recovering alcoholic and England legend Tony Adams, he stated: “It took a lot of bottle for him to own up.” I believe Tony’s exact words were “I fuckin’ love you Ian” before he burped and was sick all over Paul Merson’s betting slips.
That is just a few of what I found. There are plenty swimming about on the internet, just Google them. But the point of the article is this, the amount of coverage most of these guys used to and still get as ‘role-models for today’s youth’ and at the end of the day — to use that horrible cliché which every footballer has used once in his life — they probably couldn’t even ‘dot their own commas’ as former Burnley centre-half Mitchell Thomas would put it. The shelf-stackers at my local Tesco are in fact more qualified than most of the half-witted footballers out there, and if it weren’t for the immense talent of a footballer, they would be signing on, simple as that.
Thanks for reading, hope I brought you a giggle.
Editor: No quotes compilation is complete without a mention of the master baiter, Jose Mourinho, and his bag of quotes.
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