Johan Cruyff

“In the Premier League, the money is a problem, but I don't really know how to control it.”

“This is the great crisis in football now. It's not just Rangers; it's a lot of clubs. Big clubs always create more debt despite the huge income they have. It's almost an achievement, isn't it? They make so much money, and yet, still, their debts rise and rise and rise. How does that happen? It's absurd.”

“The most important part are the fans, that people going home are happy. It's their time off, and you should give them something to enjoy.”

“Football should never be a worry. It should be exciting. When a child plays football outside, he doesn't need to worry. Professionals should be the same.”

“My foundation now has some 120 football pitches laid out for children, a lot of them immigrants. We live in a multicultural society.”

“When I was playing in the Ajax youth teams - when I was, say, 14, 15 - you started to get all those international youth tournaments. All those English teams came. Well, the English were much further than we were.”

“If you take golf, you have a teacher for the drive, a teacher for the approach play, and a teacher for the putt. That's three specialist coaches for one player. In football, one coach looks after 25 players.”

“I wanted to get my coaching badges after retiring, and I asked to take the exam, but they told me I needed to study for four years. I told them they were crazy. Who is going to study for four years? How is someone going to teach me technical things when I know more than they do?”

“It's like everything in football - and life. You need to look, you need to think, you need to move, you need to find space, you need to help others. It's very simple in the end.”

“I look at Messi, and he makes me laugh. A beautiful footballer who is still like a kid. A world superstar, but still a kid. Innocent, you know. He just plays.”

“When I don't have control of the ball, what do I do? I press to get it back. It's a way of defending. But more important is that I like to have the ball. That's why I believe in individual coaching sessions to prepare players properly.”

“I always use the basic quality of people to achieve what I want to achieve. That's a different way of thinking. I always love that they do things. And when it goes wrong, well, try to correct it in one way or another.”

“If you look at other countries, you see they have different values: defend more, pass the ball out more, winning is holy. In England, you could say that sport itself is holy. They say, 'Look, guys, it's about more than just winning.'”

“I'm not religious. In Spain all 22 players make the sign of the cross before they enter the pitch. If it works all matches must therefore end in a draw.”

“Coincidence is logical.”

“I don't want to be a thief of my own wallet.”

“The disabled people that do sport, they don't think about what they don't have but try to get better with what they do have. That is the same for me.”

“Ajax is a multicultural club, and we have found that many talented immigrant players quit when they reach puberty. So we wanted to tackle this problem with someone from the same background who had come through it. And that was Edgar Davids. During one of our fights, I pointed that out to him. But it had nothing to do with his skin colour.”

“Speed is often confused with insight. When I start running earlier than the others, I appear faster.”

“Without the ball, you can't win.”