Simon Kuper famous quotes

Whereas fanatic is usually a pejorative word, a Fan is someone who has roots somewhere.
-- Simon Kuper

#Soccer #Roots #Fans

It seems that soccer tournaments create those relationships: people gathered together in pubs and living rooms, a whole country suddenly caring about the same event. A World Cup is the sort of common project that otherwise barely exists in modern societies.
-- Simon Kuper

#Soccer #Country #Caring

Other than sports, only war and catastrophe can create this sort of national unity.
-- Simon Kuper

#Sports #War #Unity

Football is not merely a small business, it's also a bad one. Anyone who spends any time inside football soon discovers that just as oil is part of the oil business, stupidity is part of the football business.
-- Simon Kuper

#Football #Oil #Stupidity

I remember World Cups in 1982 and 1986 when we weren't there and we'd support Belgium or Denmark, .. They had some players who played in Holland and they were a bit like the Dutch.
-- Simon Kuper

#Player #Support #World

Even before 2007, this half of a small island was the richest football country on earth. In 2005-2006 the Premiership's total revenue was about £1.4bn, 40 per cent more than its nearest rival, Italy's Serie A. That was before take-off. Now foreign television channels are sending so much cash that the Premiership is expected to take in nearly £1.8bn this season. Even the team that finishes bottom of the table (Wigan might be a good bet) will get £26.8m from TV. That's more than all of Argentine or Belgian football put together.
-- Simon Kuper

#Soccer #Country #Football

Chelsea's players, coaches and agents are now football's wealthiest millionaires. Surely the billions taken from the Russian people by an oligarch in questionable privatisations couldn't be better spent?
-- Simon Kuper

#Soccer #Football #Taken

You'd never last in South America. Fans take their radios to the stadium so they can think what the commentators think.
-- Simon Kuper

#Thinking #America #Fans

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 was watching the Blackburn game on TV on Sunday when it flashed on the screen that George (Ndah) had scored in the first minute at Birmingham. My first reaction was to ring him up. Then I remembered he was out there playing.

At 15, 16, you think you're going to be captain of England. But I realised it wasn't going to happen for me on a windy November night in Darlington, coming to my peak at the age of 23 but still playing for Mansfield Town.

Here's Brian Flynn. His official height is five feet five and he doesn't look much taller than that

Coy Nature, (which remain'd, though aged grown, A beauteous virgin still, enjoy'd by none, Nor seen unveil'd by anyone), When Harvey's violent passion she did see, Began to tremble and to flee; Took sanctuary, like Daphne, in a tree: There Daphne's Lover stopped, and thought it much The very leaves of her to touch: But Harvey, our Apollo, stopp'd not so; Into the Bark and Root he after her did go!

Do you know that the tendrils of graft and corruption have become mighty interlacing roots so that even men who would like to be honest are tripped and trapped by them?

The more deeply I search for the roots of the global environmental crisis, the more I am convinced that it is an outer manifestation of an inner crisis that is, for lack of a better word, spiritual... what other word describes the collection of values and assumptions that determine our basic understanding of how we fit into the universe?

This submission to the threshold of a cross is at the very root of our following Jesus; it changes the game completely.

At the root of the assault on our liberties is, in fact, an assault on our character--an assault that assumes that we are not good enough to be free, and that aims to make sure that we are no longer strong enough, courageous enough, disciplined enough to be a free people.

Our fans want us to be happy and if that means being married or having a girlfriend, they are okay with that. Of course, in this industry it is a bit harder to have normal relationships, but it is possible.