Ivan Rakitic Quotes

People think catching a football one-handed is a technique, but it's more a reaction. Because you really don't think about it when you're doing it. You just do it. I couldn't sit there and try to teach someone how to catch a one-handed football.

When I throw a softball, there's no time to think about the motion of my arm. I just look at the first baseman's glove and react.

It's not like I mean to throw no-look passes. I think it kind of happens out of instinct. As I do it, I'm like, 'Dang, I didn't even mean to do that.'

You surprise yourself on some balls off the bat. You don't think you have a chance to catch it. And then your natural ability just takes over.

You know what's funny? There's times when you catch a ball and really didn't even see that ball. You're like, 'That couldn't have been all me.'

Obviously it happens very fast on the field during the game; if anything, it's more of a feel. You feel when the pocket is collapsing around you. You feel when someone is close to you. It is a split-second decision.

You'll begin to act when you can forget your technique - when it is so securely inside you that you need not call upon it consciously.

I go by instinct - I don't worry about experience.

I was always fast; I was always racing guys that were older than me and beating them, so I always had speed. I was able to make good cuts at a young age, on the side of the house with my dad, going through different plays, working on cuts and stuff like that.

This game, it seems when you play it the best, is when you're not really thinking a lot and just reacting and keeping it at its simplest point - just see it and hit it.

My game is based on improvisation. Often, a forward does not have the time to think too much. You have a second, rarely more, to decide whether to dribble, shoot or pass to the right or left. It is instinct that gives the orders.

I would still like to get more athletic and have players that can really cover what's going on in the game.

There's not a pill or an injection that's going to give me, going to give any player the hand-eye coordination to hit a baseball.

But through experience I learned to control my body and locate the ball.

I'm constantly surprised by... an orange will roll off a table, and I'll catch it before I knew it was falling. Something happens there. We could write it off and say, 'Subconsciously I knew that was happening,' but there's so many things every day - I'm amazed by how little we know.

On crosses, sometimes I make my move one or two seconds before the ball is coming because I'm trying to guess that the ball is coming there. It's intuition. So I run. Sometimes the ball comes...sometimes not. But that intuition is working.

A lot of people think track, you just run, that's all you do. No. There's a lot of technical aspects to it as well. A sprinter is not just going to get out of the blocks and start running. You do that, you're going to get embarrassed every time.

Instincts are learned on the football field through experience. It's vital in sports because things happen so rapidly that you have to rely on your instincts at times to make quick decisions.

Hand-eye coordination and reflexes is something I work on more than anything.

I do tennis ball drills mostly for bouncers, for my muscle memory as well.

You cannot train saving with your feet, but sometimes it is instinct. Sometimes it is quicker to go with the feet; going with the hands is sometimes more difficult. Even when I was young, I would go with my feet, it's something good for me.

I am in a closed state where I'm just reacting and moving based on my instincts, knowledge, technique and years of experience.

It is very easy to make athletes, and it is very difficult to make rugby players with that rugby instinct. I would like to think I have got a bit of rugby instinct and have become more of a rugby athlete along the way.

It's in that moment - when millions of fans are holding their breath as the football hurtles towards me at 80 mph, and all I have is within 0.42 seconds to react - that I need to feel mentally and physically prepared.

The less thinking you do, the better you play.