Michael Carter-Williams Quotes

You have to play defense, that's how you win.

The Berlin Defence suited my strategy for the match. I had a defensive strategy - Actually, I had in my pocket some other sharper stuff to fall back on - but first I wanted to try the defensive strategy with Black and it worked so well.

It's good to be good at playing defence, but the best defence is a strong offence.

If you're playing against an aggressive side, you need to play an aggressive game.

The best way to attack is to defend well.

We have to let our defense dictate our offense.

As a defence, we have to strive for that clean sheet while also giving the attacking players the licence to go and create.

Really what we've done is establish a tradition in Carolina of playing defense.

Against our zone, even really good offensive teams take longer than usual to get into their patterns, maybe 30 seconds. So we're locked into playing defense for that long... it's hard to run on offense after you've been hunkering down on D for that long.

There's two sides to the game, and you have to do the ugly side as well. If you're getting beat, and you're conceding the goals that we're getting beaten by, then it's because you're not defending and shutting people down well enough.

I would prefer to play for and against an attacking team, but I am now used to playing against defensive teams.

When we lose the ball, I don't want to win it back directly. I act smarter now, have better anticipation, and also start earlier when somebody tries to lob the ball over me.

At Ajax, they are strict when it comes to using the ball as a defender.

A lot of guys are offensive minded, which is good at some points and times but bad at others - at lots of others. I wish I could say I want everybody to play defense as hard as I do. It's not a reality.

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.

That's how you get better on defense; not just 'oh, man, my guy beat me,' but you have to think about, 'okay, my man beat me, so I either have to pick up the next man, or I'm going to give somebody a foul.

If the opponent can score 10 goals, then we need to change something quickly.

I'm a defender first and foremost, and if I'm playing right centre-half, I am even more of a defender than the wing-backs.

I don't really focus on the guy that's defending me.

If you have a defensive concept, you're going to play defense. If you don't have a defensive concept, and you have an offensive concept, then you're going to play offense.

It's how I've been playing my whole life, guarding the best player on the other team.

I'll continue to take what the defense gives me. That's the way that I've always played.

We're defenseless, I know we play defense, but we're defenseless when we're not looking at the guy who's blocking us or when the guy's come out and cut out our knees from underneath us.

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

Playing an ultra-defensive side is very difficult.