Midfielder Quotes

Hell, I'm old enough to have a daughter named Renesmee on one of those U-5 soccer teams where the kids take turns kicking the ball the wrong way, then sitting down midfield to take off their shoes

Along the sideline at midfield was a large stage, decorated with swaths of purple cloth. Purple banners with gold lettering—Latin words?—hung from posts. The movie Gladiator called. Wants its props back.

This, for the benefit of those with only a sketchy grasp of football tactics, was a Dutch invention which necessitated flexibility from all the players on the pitch. Defenders were required to attack, attackers to play in mid-field; it was football’s version of post-modernism, and the intellectuals loved it.

Football coaches meet midfield after a game, but they don't always hug

Ronan is Death because he’s an impenetrable rock in the midfield. Cole is Famine; silent but deadly when he attacks. Xander is War; all he knows is how to wreak havoc.

I’m now old enough to have kids without anyone being scandalized by it. Hell, I’m old enough to have a daughter named Renesmee on one of those U-5 soccer teams where the kids take turns kicking the ball the wrong way, then sitting down midfield to take off their shoes.

The Lawyer went down to the dressing room before a match, only to catch Platini puffing on a cigarette. ‘That worries me,’ Agnelli said to Platini. Instantly, a riposte came back. ‘You only need to worry if he starts smoking,’ said Platini, pointing at Massimo Bonini, the tireless midfield ball-winner in that Juventus team.

Most of this fixation was easy to explain. Brady was a midfield player, a passer, and Arsenal haven’t really had one since he left. It might surprise those who have a rudimentary grasp of the rules of the game to learn that a First Division football team can try to play football without a player who can pass the ball, but it no longer surprises the rest of us: passing went out of fashion just after silk scarves and just before inflatable bananas. Managers, coaches and therefore players now favour alternative methods of moving the ball from one part of the field to another, the chief of which is a sort of wall of muscle strung across the half-way line in order to deflect the ball in the general direction of the forwards. Most, indeed all, football fans regret this. I think I can speak for all of us when I say that we used to like passing, that we felt that on the whole it was a good thing. It was nice to watch, football’s prettiest accessory (a good player could pass to a team-mate we hadn’t seen, or find an angle we wouldn’t have thought of, so there was a pleasing geometry to it), but managers seemed to feel that it was a lot of trouble, and therefore stopped bothering to produce any players who could do it. There are still a couple of passers in England, but then, there are still a number of blacksmiths.

Why do we open up the field?’ Cruyff would explain. ‘Because if we have the ball and we are open, it is more difficult for the opponent to defend.’ Or: ‘People criticised me because I played with three at the back, but those criticisms were really ridiculous: what we did was fill the zones on the field where the game required it. If the opponent played with two up front, which was common then, and my team went out with four defenders, I had one too many, so I moved him forward towards the midfield.

He was back at me like a cat, and he swung a hard chunk of wood from one of the smashed chairs. I caught the first one on the shoulder and I cleverly caught the next one right over the left ear. It broke a big white bell in my head, and he side-stepped, grunting for breath, and let me go down. I landed on my side, and he punted me in the belly like Groza trying for one from the mid-field stripe.

Cade stood midfield, waiting for Zach to take his place at the line of scrimmage. “When’s the last time you threw a football?” Zach asked worriedly. Aside from the few times Cade had tossed one around casually with friends, a long time. “About twelve years.” Zach threw him a panicked look. “I won’t push it,” Cade said. It wasn’t as if his shoulder was entirely unusable; in fact, on a daily basis it didn’t bother him at all. His rotator cuff simply couldn’t withstand the repetitive stress of competitive football. “I just want to see what I can do.” He pointed emphatically. “And if the answer is ‘not much,’ you better not tell a soul. I’ve got a reputation to uphold here.” Zach smiled, loosening up. “All right. I don’t want to stand in the way of you reliving your glory days or whatever.” “Good. But in case this all goes south, my car keys are in the outside pocket of my duffle bag. When you drive me to the emergency room, if I’m too busy mumbling incoherently from the pain, just tell them I’ve got Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance.” Zach’s eyes went wide. “I’m kidding, Zach. Now get moving.

He was back at me like a cat, and he swung a hard chunk of wood from one of the smashed chairs. I caught the first one on the shoulder and I cleverly caught the next one right over the left ear. It broke a big white bell in my head, and he side-stepped, grunting for breath, and let me go down. I landed on my side, and he punted me in the belly like Groza trying for one from the mid-field stripe. I had that fractional part of consciousness left which gave me a remote and unimportant view of reality. The world was a television set at the other end of a dark auditorium, with blurred sound and a fringe area picture.

Set up sessions where your defenders see a variety of serves and have to meet them with one-touch clearances with both feet. Set up competitions where each clearance over midfield is worth a point.

Gerard van der Lem, Van Gaal’s right-hand man at Ajax and Barcelona, explains: ‘The main principle was possession of the ball. We trained on this endlessly. In some European Cup and Dutch League games we had seventy per cent ball possession. Seventy per cent! You need a lot of technical skills to do that. We almost always had the ball and we were always trying to find solutions. People think our system was rigid, but it was not. It could not be rigid. We could play with three strikers, or with three in midfield, with or without a shadow spits [striker]; whatever you like. The thing was to understand what consequences these formations have for the team. The players must be tactically very skilful and they have to be thinking spatially in advance. When we won the European Cup, everything fitted. Everything fell like a puzzle. Every player knew the qualities of his fellow players. Each player knew how to play a ball to his fellow players. In defence, they knew exactly how to press. They all knew the distances… Yeah, it was like solving a puzzle.

Jamie Carragher trained with United as a youngster. When he was with us he was a midfielder and a mundane, run-of-the-mill player.

One particular game sticks in my mind: in March 2007 we went to Middlesbrough during a three-month period when we had the Swedish striker, Henrik Larsson, on loan from Helsingborgs. I could not have asked more from him when, under real pressure, he abandoned his attacking position and fell back into midfield just to help dig out the result. When Henrik appeared in the dressing room at the end of the game, all the players and staff stood up and spontaneously broke into applause for the immense effort he had made in his unaccustomed role. At the end of the season we requested an extra Premier League winners’ medal for Henrik, even though he had not played the ten games that at the time were required to obtain the award.

Reinaldo ‘Mostaza’ Merlo, the former River midfielder with the mustard-coloured hair, ordered that the concrete moat around the pitch be ripped out. When it was, the skeleton of the seventh cat buried by Independiente fans in 1967 was discovered. Later that year, Racing won the league,

It would be interesting to place a League Two midfielder in the best team in the world and see how much his game would be raised. Similarly, what would happen if you placed Lionel Messi in a League Two match? We will never know.

Another very striking case is that of Fabrice Ndala Muamba, former Congolese soccer player, midfielder of the Bolton Wanderers. On March 17, 2012, in a match against Tottenham, he collapsed after suffering a cardiac

At that moment the referee blew his whistle, signaling that the game was to begin. The biggest crowd in years had gathered to watch the contest. Hopkinsville won the toss and elected to defend the north goal with the wind at their backs. Frank and Joe waited tensely in their positions as the Hopkinsville booter carefully placed the ball for the kickoff. “Here it comes!” Frank cried. “Joe, it’s headed right for you!” Joe caught the end-over-end kickoff on the ten-yard line. Twisting and dodging, he carried the ball to mid-field. The Bayport stands cheered loudly.

The Americans didn’t know it yet, however, but that win over Colombia was serendipitous in an unexpected way. Yellow cards given to both Lauren Holiday (née Cheney) and Megan Rapinoe meant that Jill Ellis would be forced to change her tactics. The team was about to fix all of its midfield problems. A blessing in disguise was about to save the USA’s World Cup. It was about to unleash Carli Lloyd. Up to that point in the tournament, Lloyd had been asked to play alongside Lauren Holiday in an ill-defined central midfield partnership. Neither one of them was a defensive midfielder, and neither one of them was an attacking midfielder. They were expected to split those duties between them on the fly. That not only led to gaping holes and poor positioning in the midfield, but it restrained Lloyd, who throughout her career was best as a pure attacking player who could push forward without restraint.

Next up was the match with North Korea, where the national team showed off another choreographed goal celebration in a 1–0 win. After Abby Wambach’s first goal, the team lined up and held hands, raising their arms in succession to create a rolling wave—a break dancing–type move. When it reached the last player in the line, the players turned and pointed to the midfield, where Hope Solo and Christie Pearce were doing the dance move known as “the Worm.” “Sometimes Hope doesn’t get involved in our celebrations, and she said before the game that the Worm is the only thing she can do,” Wambach said afterward. “So we just tried to set her up for something.

You could be right,” Rupert says, “but we scored a goal from midfield, and I’m not going to let you tell me I was offside the whole time.

He was a decent midfielder, but to him, the goal was like a pretty girl. He couldn’t get anywhere near it without freezing up and doing something stupid.

Alvarenga next invented games with the animals. He used a dried puffer fish as a soccer ball and tossed it midship, which became “midfield.” Because it was covered in spines the birds could not puncture the balloonlike fish, but due to their hunger they struck it again and again, flipping the “ball” from one end of the “field” to the other. To stir up action Alvarenga tossed chunks of fish and bird entrails across the deck, then watched as the captive birds attacked and chased the puffer fish. He named one bird Cristiano Ronaldo, another Rolando and put Maradona and Messi on the same team. Alvarenga spent entire afternoons as both fan and announcer, immersed in this world of bird football. His favorite matches were Mexico vs. Brazil. In this world, Mexico always won.

Hell, I’m old enough to have a daughter named Renesmee on one of those U-5 soccer teams where the kids take turns kicking the ball the wrong way, then sitting down midfield to take off their shoes.

FROM THE SNAP of the ball to the snap of the first bone is closer to four seconds than to five. One Mississippi: The quarterback of the Washington Redskins, Joe Theismann, turns and hands the ball to running back John Riggins. He watches Riggins run two steps forward, turn, and flip the ball back to him. It’s what most people know as a “flea-flicker,” but the Redskins call it a “throw back special.” Two Mississippi: Theismann searches for a receiver but instead sees Harry Carson coming straight at him. It’s a running down—the start of the second quarter, first and 10 at midfield, with the score tied 7–7—and the New York Giants’ linebacker has been so completely suckered by the fake that

He also taught his players how to mark an opponent, teaching them to focus on a rival’s weaknesses – while accentuating what you were good at, to fight the battles you could win, in other words. It was a revelation for Pep, who lacked the physique to beat a tall, powerful, central midfielder in the air – so he learnt, under Cruyff, to avoid jumping with his rival, but to wait instead. Cruyff ’s theory was: ‘Why fight? Keep your distance, anticipate where he’ll head the ball and wait for the bounce. You’ll be in control while he’s jumping around.

He was given one more chance, invited back for a third day. The coach moved him into central midfield where, suddenly, Pep was a magnet for the ball, directing the forward play and dictating tempo. He’d done enough. Barcelona decided they wanted him to join them.

the ball goes to the other central defender and this one makes a vertical pass – not to the midfielders, who have their back turned to the ball, but to those moving between lines, Andrés Iniesta or Lionel Messi, or even directly to the striker. Then they play the second ball with short lay-offs, either to the wingers who have cut inside or the midfielders, who now have the game in front of them.

Thirdly – and crucial for Pep’s position as the midfielder in front of the back four – he had to dispatch the ball to the wingers to make the pitch bigger, wider, to create spaces all over the pitch.

Gentlemen, this is tiquitaca and it is shit. We’re not interested in this type of possession. It’s totally meaningless. It’s about passing for the sake of it. We need our central midfielder and our defenders to move out with an offensive mentality and break the opposition lines in order to push the whole team high up. The U needs to go.’ The

He’d apply his three basic rules, none of which related to what people know as tiki-taka: they were, rather, intense attack, quick pressure when the ball is lost and having one more player in the midfield than your opponents.

Superiority in midfield, as predicted by Pep, was the key to the game.

At Crusty House, in a four-hundred-metre race, it was always possible to determine who could run better than everyone else. And pretty often in football, you could say that one pass was better than another. But it was actually less common that you might imagine. And mainly in straightforward situations offering very few openings. In Biehl's classes it was obvious when an answer was correct. With Karin Äre things were a little less clear-cut but, on the whole, there was never any serious doubt as to who sang true enough to be in the choir. One has to be left with the impression that this things about assessing the merit of a person's singing on answers or football was something straightforward, something strictly regulated. But in all of these instances an answer did, already, exist. That you had to score, or remember a particular date or sing true or run a distance under a certain time. There was a clearly defined quadrangle of knowledge -- like a chessboard, like a football pitch. So it was pretty easy to see what was correct and what was wrong, when one thing was better or worse than another. But if it became just a little bit more complicated, as at the opening of an attack, or in midfield, then you could no longer be sure what the answer would be. As with August's drawing. You would think, in that case, that it would have to be almost impossible -- after all, it was his. How could an answer already exist as to how it should be?

Alfredo di Stéfano is maybe the greatest player I have ever seen. I watched him in a match when Manchester United played against Real in the semi-final of the European Cup in Madrid the year before the accident. In those days, there was no substitutes' bench; if you weren't playing, you were in the stand. I felt like I was looking down on what looked like a Subbuteo table—I was that high up—but I couldn't take my eyes off this midfield player and I thought, Who on earth is that? He ran the whole show and had the ball almost all the time. I used to dream of that, and I used to hate it when anyone else got it. They beat us 3-1 and he dictated the whole game. I'd never seen anything like it before—someone who influenced the entire match. Everything went through him. The goalkeeper gave it to him, the full backs were giving it to him, the midfield players were linking up with him and the forwards were looking for him. And there was Gento playing alongside and Di Stefano just timed his passes perfectly for him. Gento ran so fast you couldn't get him offside. And I was just sitting there, watching, thinking it was the best thing I had ever seen. But I had been forewarned a bit by Matt Busby, the manager at the time, because he had been across and seen them play a match in Nice before the semi—in those days it wasn't easy to do that—and, when he came back, we asked him what they were like, but he didn't want to tell us. And I understood why he didn't when I saw them. I think he knew that, if he had said they were the best players he'd ever seen, it would have been all over for us before we'd started. And this was when Di Stefano was thirty. What must he have been like in his youth?

Harris had taken a phone call from a Dutch journalist friend who told him that Bergkamp was unhappy at Inter Milan and wanted to try his luck in England. As Bergkamp had always been a Spurs fan because of his boyhood hero worship of Glenn Hoddle, he wanted to know if Spurs would be interested. Informed of Bergkamp’s availability, Alan Sugar passed on the enquiry to Francis. Seeing Bergkamp as more of a midfield playmaker than the out-and-out striker he was looking for, Francis turned him down.

We all strayed, in that depressingly mature and adult way, in three different directions. It was the sort of drift that only death or grave illness can interrupt

The highest transfer fee paid by any club is the reported £89.7 million to Juventus for a French midfielder in July 2016. A42. This amount was paid by Manchester United for the services of ex-player Paul Pogba.

Once you know what you have to work on, stick with it until you become unbeatable. Being good in a certain area, and then developing that skill(s) above all others, is a very smart move.

Philosopher, mathematician and midfield enigma Paul Scholes had the ability to make a quick short pass or, if the situation allowed it, to surprise with a 60-yarder that no player or awestruck spectator could have seen coming. Scholes would run through his problem-solving cycle in a matter of seconds: see, scope, surprise.

How good is your head movement? Do you know where everyone stands if the ball comes to you? Scholes and Lampard never look surprised when they receive the ball because they have already scoped several courses of action, and by the time they release it, several more. That is why they can surprise everyone with their service to their strikers – flicked-through passes, early crosses, deft one-twos. Whether you are a midfield magician or a catalytic C, pulling rabbits out of hats should not be beyond you.

Paul Scholes, one of Manchester United’s greatest midfielders, was described by Zinedine Zidane, himself no slouch, as the ‘complete footballer’. Despite some unforgettable goals, Scholes the fiery Red is remembered for his completeness: protecting his defence, providing ideas and cover for his fellow midfielders, and producing opportunities for his wingers and strikers. Even when, unnoticed, he did pop up to score with a spectacular shot, he blushed profusely when bathed in adulation for it. Recognition positively embarrassed Scholes. He preferred quietly to contribute 90 minutes of blood, sweat and opportunities for others. Harry S. Truman had it right: ‘It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.

Smart players that communicate well talk about what’s best for the ball. They feed their teammates a concise stream of information that helps those teammates solve their soccer problems. They are like chess-masters moving the pieces to orchestrate the attack, directing the ball from one teammate to the next. That’s what smart players do. What most players do is see the teammate who has the ball and then scream, “JENNY! JENNY! JENNY!” And there’s poor Jenny at midfield, trying her best to evade two determined opponents and the only help she’s offered is ten teammates shouting her name from ten different directions. Listen – Jenny already knows her name. What Jenny needs is some useful information that will help her out of her current unpleasant predicament. Jenny needs a teammate saying something like, “Drop it to Danielle.” That’s the kind of information she can actually use. Instead she gets, “JENNY! JENNY! JENNY!