When I arrive at the gates of Heaven the Good Lord will ask ‘what did you do in your life?’ I will respond ‘I tried to win football matches.’ He will say: ‘Are you certain that’s all?’ But, well, that’s the story of my life.
You weren’t world-class when Arsenal signed you.
You build a player like you build a house. You start with the foundations. The fundamentals.
Everyone thinks they have the prettiest wife at home.
Ferguson’s out of order. He has lost all sense of reality. He is going out looking for a confrontation, then asking the person he is confronting to apologise. He’s pushed the cork in a bit far this time.
We played a whole season unbeaten but you did not see me every week jumping on the tables. Once it’s over it’s over and you do in the next one as well as you can. Plenty of managers who have won the Champions League will not be considered great managers.
When you give success to stupid people, it makes them more stupid sometimes and not more intelligent.
Spare me the articles about how nice Shawcross is because that was a horrendous tackle. People say we don’t fancy the physical side of it, but this is the result. If you see a player getting injured like that, it’s not acceptable.
Their diet is basically boiled vegetables, fish and rice. No fat, no sugar. You notice when you live there that there are no fat people.
A manager is a guide. He takes a group of people and says, ‘With you I can make us a success; I can show you the way.’
Everybody has a different opinion in this league and nobody is a prophet. I personally don’t know who will win the league. I managed 1,600 games so, if Nani knows, he must be 1,600 times more intelligent than I am.
If I give you a good wine, you will see how it tastes and after you ask where it comes from.
Unfortunately apparently I am to blame because I don’t produce enough English players.
I do not think about the national team too much because footballistically it is not of too much interest.
In England you have a good phrase. It is ’to bring the game into disrepute.
What makes daily life interesting is that we try to transform it to something that is close to art.
For me, motivation is a person who has the capability to recruit the resources he needs to achieve a goal.
I have been accused of not taking seriously the FA Cup on Saturday. I have won four times the FA Cup. Who has won it more? Give me one name.
When you’re dealing with someone who only has a pair of underpants on, if you take his underpants off, he has nothing left – he’s naked. You’re better off trying to find him a pair of trousers to complement him rather than change him.
I am not against being pragmatic, because it is pragmatic to make a good pass, not a bad one. If I have the ball, what do I do with it? Could anybody argue that a bad solution like just kicking it away is pragmatic just because, sometimes, it works by accident?