Carles Puyol Quotes

Companies that support sports developmental programs in our communities should also be applauded.

At 4, I joined a summer rec team called the Sugar Bears.

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

I find young kids. I enjoy coaching and enjoy making them better players.

I think there are a lot of things that soccer does in the communities that transcend the soccer field.

There's apparently soccer leagues that they've set up with young Indian girls.

I grew up on the tennis court with lots of other kids. There were like 40 kids all afternoon and I was one of the youngest ones, so I always had to chase everybody to keep up.

My generation put in a lot more hours playing football after school than kids today. These days, all the football these kids play, they play at their clubs, so the clubs need to work seriously on the basic skills.

My dream is to get the young people off the streets, to make it possible for them to play football in the stadium instead.

I used to go to open gym to play with my friends and teammates, and I'd get there 30 to 45 minutes early so I could play one-on-one against my dad. When I reached ninth grade, I was finally able to beat him.

The main thing for me is to consider sport at an equal level as you would consider mathematics or poetry at school. It's another place where you can send your kids; they can have fun, but you can expect them to have good teachers, and you can expect them to progress.

For somebody like me, who has trained barefoot in a small village in Odisha, I know training without proper facilities can be extremely difficult. Having experienced it all, I would like to give back to my community by creating a running academy for children.

I am dreaming that Italy can return to having lots of important talent. We need to grow our young players.

I'm passionate about making this country and the youth passionate about football.

I would tell most youngsters to play every week if they can.

One of my favorite things to do is teach kids to shoot a basketball. When they finally get it and their eyes light up, it's the greatest feeling.

A lot of kids just want to go play basketball, but they don't know to play and they don't have the skills to play. I think just the skill development right off and then play all you can, but don't sacrifice your skill development by just playing and not working on the specifics of the game.

I perhaps could have been somewhat better. One of the interesting things about playing competitive sports as a child is that you confront your own limitations rather starkly at a certain point.

You get the kids today into the sport, and then they can't get to the "next level." I mean, come on, that's a bunch of junk.

These are the Rad instruments that are dying out in India. So, it's going well and I think now we are increasing the number of kids we have taught and of course we are helping out with other things too. It's based in India now. [The idea is to] perfect it in one place and then we'll expand.

A great hitter isn't born, he's made. He's made out of practice, fault correction, and confidence.

Certain peer pressures encourage little fingers to learn how to hold a football instead of a crayon. I confess to having yielded to these pressures.

Throughout my athletic career, the overall goal was always to be a better athlete than I was at the moment – whether next week, next month or next year. The improvement was the goal. The medal was simply the ultimate reward for achieving that goal.

I want to stay involved in athletics; I want to encourage kids to take part and try to grow the sport.

The [Steve Harvey] foundation started originally about the educational needs of children. But, as I got into it more and more, one of my main objectives became mentoring programs for young African American men because that's our problem in our community - it's the African American men.