You can do as many sprints as you want but there's nothing like playing in a 90-minute soccer game. There's no better way to gain your fitness, in my opinion, than playing in consistent games.
No matter what activity or practice we are pursuing, there isn't anything that isn't made easier through constant familiarity and training (I think you can apply this to soccer as well)
Today was about execution, period. Every single player, all of us in the dressing room right now, we’re embarrassed because that’s not the way we want to play soccer.
I'm a big soccer fanatic, and although I support a team called Tottenham Hotspur in London - I love that team, I wear their symbol around my neck on a chain - I've always had a soft spot for this little club.
People follow me on social media, and they can tell I have varied interests. I think in the U.K. people perhaps know me for some other stuff because of my involvement with soccer and support of Tottenham.
You not only do you appreciate the sacrifices people have made and the hours they've kept and the soccer games they missed and the birthday parties, but I also had a lot of young people who came in here [to White House], and this probably, you know, echoes with you, in your own experience, you were young when you got here.
I am delighted to have you play football. I believe in rough, manly sports. But I do not believe in them if they degenerate into the sole end of any one's existence. I don't want you to sacrifice standing well in your studies to any over-athleticism; and I need not tell you that character counts for a great deal more than either intellect or body in winning success in life. Athletic proficiency is a mighty good servant, and like so many other good servants, a mighty bad master.
My brother says that I was writing songs about fate while he was off playing soccer. Now I tell him he's 33 and being a professional while I'm playing soccer with my friends. Ha!
Speed is what makes the Premiership exciting. The millions who would have watched Manchester United and Chelsea would have seen a non-stop game in which the pace was electric even though the first half was a non-event. You could see a better technical game in Spain but for sheer frenetic movement there is nothing that comes close... Pace is more critical in the Premiership than in any other major league and if you don't have pace, you have to compensate with power or ability in the air and since Shevchenko has no power and is not particularly good in the air, he is in trouble.
Growing up as a kid my father was British and a soccer player. His idol was a guy that passed the ball a lot, Stanley Matthews. Our family thought if you could be unselfish your teammates would always like you.