I can remember certain Manchester United defeats the way most people remember family bereavements or great political events. The four-nil drubbing by Barcelona, the failure to score against West Ham, the New Year's Day calamity at home to Spurs, the mauling by Middlesborough.
What happened in the United changing room has happened to me 50 times in my career. I have kicked bottles of mineral water, bags and shoes but I never hit a player. It's a question of technique, and the Scots must have a better technique.
I end up writing something every day, since I develop six or seven things at the same time - soccer columns, this and that.
Most of us are in this more than just for playing soccer. We're in it for the bigger goal - to move it along for the next generation.
I must have been a failed football coach in a previous incarnation.
I played all kinds of sports when I was young: tennis, handball, basketball, some soccer. I focused on basketball when I was 16 or 17 and then came to the U. S. when I was 20.
After I suffered a labral tear in my hip while playing soccer, I realized that many sports-related injuries can be prevented and I dedicated myself to helping young athletes learn more about injury prevention.
You don't look for jobs. You don't phone up 10 clubs and say, Here I am. You are offered the job. I was in Benfica many years ago. I was leaving the training ground and I had a car after me. It went on for 10 minutes. Anyhow, he stopped and I stopped and he said, I'm from the Italian embassy. Ah yes, and what do you want? I want your phone number because Roma wants you as a manager next season. Three months later I was sitting on the bench in Roma. I don't think the rest of working society works like football.
Faith-healing is peculiar enough at the best of times, but applying it to football merits a special league of barking. Why would God bother to perform a miracle that enabled Sol Campbell to yell Oh holy Jesus, now I can win the ball in the air. It's been five years since I could defend from corners, brothers and sisters, it's a miracle.
I'm attracted to soccer's capacity for beauty. When well played, the game is a dance with a ball.
It was a dream start, a perfect start for us. We had to start qualification away from home in Portugal, the group favourites - and I still think they are the group favourites. It was a historic result to win against a big team in Europe, so I am very happy for my country and for my people. They were all looking to the national team. This victory is for them and we will try to do the best that we can until the end of qualification.
It wasn't going to be our day on the night.
Soccer is a continuous game, rugby is a continuous game, but for the physical elements that are involved in playing a football game and the number of plays that you play, I don't know that it was ever intended to be a continuous game.
The Spaniards have been reduced to aiming aimless balls into the box.
To play Holland, you have to play the Dutch.
Anything from 1-0 to 2-0 would be a nice result
The dark aftermath of the frontier, of the vast promise of possibility this country first offered, is an inflated sense of American entitlement today. We want what we want, and we want it now. Easy credit. Fast food. A straight shot down the interstate from point A to point B. The endless highway is crowded with the kinds of cars large enough to take a mountain pass in high snow. Instead they are used to take children from soccer practice to Pizza Hut. In the process they burn fuel like there's no tomorrow. Tomorrow's coming.
Soccer matches in Europe have riot police. Metal is just people sloshing around drunk and sloppy and having fun, and there's nothing wrong with that. It is a great outlet for aggression.
If this can be termed the century of the common man, then soccer, of all sports, is surely his game. . . . In a world haunted by the hydrogen and napalm bomb, the football field is a place where sanity and hope are still left unmolested.
It's not often you find yourself writing about a game that you haven't seen one kick of. But it's not often that the favourites lose 5-0 in one of their most important matches of the season. But all things considered - the difference between expectations of success and margin of victory, the fact of Strachan's debut, the injury to Chris Sutton, the joy it will bring Rangers fans, and the potential financial loss of going out of Europe completely in the first week in August - it is hard to remember the last defeat this bad for any team.