Ole Gunnar Solskjaer Quotes

A compact defense has always been the basis of Italy's team.

For me, it is very important to control a situation in defence. You can always score goals, but you have to add stability in the defence.

Most of the clubs who have had success against Barcelona have relied on a highly organised and disciplined defence.

We believe defending is very much a team job, and we can't just rely on a back four and a goalkeeper.

Rafa Benitez was keen on defending - all dropping back together if you lose the ball.

I think if you're not conceding so many goals, it gives you a great platform to win games.

The beginning of everything is our defensive organisation. The clean sheet is always the first objective that we have in the game. Always.

I'm a defender, and my first job is to make the team secure at the back; that's my primary responsibility.

You put a lot of pressure on your defenders to be able to hold the fort when you go forward.

The Italians are very strong defensively. They showed in Euro 2000 how good defensively they are.

It's always a danger when you've got a great quarterback that throws the ball well, that scrambles well. You may push him into his asset. You may force him to do what he does best. So you've got to be able to throw curveballs and stop the pass as much as stop the run.

What Liverpool do really well is they try to get you inside but then close you down.

Defending is easy. You just have to want to defend. It's not like defending is hard. It's just, like, more of an attitude.

I've always liked taking the ball out of defence and I will carry on doing that but at the end of the day I'm a defender, and that's what I want to be known as - a defender, getting in the blocks and the headers that people don't recognise I do, the dirty stuff that every defender should do and should be good at.

I like consistency in defenders.

At the end of the day, I'm a good defensive football coach.

As a defender, we take pride in getting clean sheets.

I'm a defender first and foremost - blocks, headers, vital tackles, or even just the communication side of it, which is massive but doesn't really get recognised.

Liverpool are a team that is essentially very defensive; caution is at the heart of their game.

Tactically, Italians are very strong. They are a lot into tactics: how to defend, when you lose the ball, where will you be?

This is football, so you need to be clever to understand the moment and win games.

Anyone who wants to be a centre-half would have to say that John Terry is a role model. Every centre-half in the game would agree with that. It is the way he leads the team and the way he reads the game.

The most dangerous area is the centre, which has to be either attacked or defended in football, and it's the same in chess.

In Italy it is far more difficult than in Spain, where teams are not that attentive in defence.

I think you have to go deep into the bag of tricks, so to speak, to try and slow down the quarterback.