Alexis Sanchez Quotes

Sometimes in midfield, it's nice because you do get a little bit more of the ball, and maybe out wide you rely on people to get you the ball.

To score goals, you need to receive the ball in advantageous positions.

I spend the entire 90 minutes looking for space on the pitch. I'm always between the opposition's two holding midfielders and thinking, 'The defence is here, so I get the ball and I go there to where the space is.'

I often felt as a player in a 4-4-2, you end up being outnumbered in midfield and chasing the ball, so as a manager I liked wingbacks to push forward; it gives the midfield player on the ball three or four options.

Playing in midfield is a different ball game. You have to be on the half-turn all the time, have a different picture in your head of what is behind you and in front of you. Playing at right-back is different again.

I don't want Kylian to play like Neymar and keep the ball. Kylian is incredibly dangerous in the final move, and I want him to stay that way.

I like to control the ball and analyse the game.

In the midfield, I'm not the most comfortable playing with my back to the goal, and in the midfield you find that ball a lot.

I have to open the game from my position. It's really important to play with the ball.

The most important thing is to help the team to come in front of the goal with one-two passes, I drop down, or I give them space, because for defenders, it's always difficult to have a false nine because they don't have a direct player against them, so they don't know exactly what to do.

When you have a lot of ball possession, you have a lot of ball possession to create chances, not to play the ball around and not score.

I am not ashamed to admit that in the games against Barcelona I spent a lot of the time just hoping he would take up positions as far away from me as possible. Elusive is the word that immediately springs to mind when I think about Messi's style of play. You think you have an eye on him and then - blink - he has gone, only to reappear somewhere else in space, with the ball.

I always threw the ball in, because then if I got the ball back, I was the only player unmarked.

If you have a top winger, you are going to win a lot of games.

While it's great for a quarterback to have athletic ability, his goal is to get the ball out of his hand, orchestrate the offense and not allow his ability to stand in the way of the offense running efficiently.

Use your assets in the right areas. Commit to outside speed. Don't always go into the junk pile in the middle of the ice when there are eight guys there.

I like to create chances, to shoot when I play farther forward, but I also like playing deeper, as you have more time on the ball.

In my time at Milan, the club played with a 4-3-1-2 formation, and I was the player behind the two strikers. At Real, I play behind three. There is a greater defensive obligation, but I try to work around the area.

As a striker, people look at the goals you score. But for me, my game is more than just about goals, it is how you link with other players.

Whether I play five or 10 metres forward or back does not change my way of playing, to be on the ball a lot.

I try to be this kind of player: the type who does something whenever he gets the ball. Sometimes in the past, I've gone through games where I've not touched the ball for 20 or 30 minutes.

What features in a midfielder am I after? Players who have the mindset to win every game - then we can start to talk about the technical quality.

When you get lots of players up front, sometimes a counter-attack can take you by surprise and lead to a chance for the opposition.

I always tend to think my goals are beautiful goals. That is what I want to score - beautiful goals - and create beautiful chances.

That's the intelligence of football: to see when to be compact, when to counter-attack, or, if you see that you're in the opposite half, you try and win the ball.