Edgar Davids Quotes

In Korea, if a player doesn't play well, you would never criticise him, but in European countries fans criticise their own teams; sometimes they boo them off the pitch.

I don't want my fans to shout any insults at my opponent.

If a player is trying to intimidate a skilled player on your team, what do we want? We want our skilled players playing, so we shouldn't be doing that.

As athletes, most of the time we deal with fans cussing at us, saying how much we suck.

When a man returned from the field and we'd look at the work, we'd criticize each other very genuinely and never offensively. And we would avoid all tricks, angle shots were just horrible to us.

I'm not going to take it easy on the guy when he catches the football and not try and hit him because he's a friend of mine. It doesn't happen.

Football has changed, and so has the relationship between the players on the pitch. Where once some players would try everything to distract opponents, now it's harder. There are TV cameras everywhere, which have much higher quality images than before. There are lip readers in studios working out what you are saying to each other.

What I love about England is that the fans have great respect for the players on and off the pitch.

Coaches respect each other, and it's a tough business.

I've had some nice messages after games from players who I haven't spoken to before. I won't name people and drop them in it, but I've had messages from opposition strikers and defenders saying that they respect and love the way I play, telling me to keep doing it and not to change the way I am.

What I don't like to see is a lot of chirping and guys just talking crap to each other. If you got something wrong with a guy, go see him.

I don't have any problem with tackles or duels, but I react when I notice that someone is only trying to kick me out of the game. But I never have the intention to hurt anyone. Everything is forgotten again a minute later.

I don't like to talk about players from other teams, just like I wouldn't like it if the opposition coach talked about my team. It's a question of respect.

Never fight with or disrespect your partner in front of other people.

My philosophy is to respect the opposition off the field and play it as tough as possible on it.

The trash-talking, I think I would like to take that back. I really didn't want to get known as that, but that was just the way I was, the way I grew up back in Oakland, Calif., back on the playgrounds.

I respect my competition.

There are some athletes who don't like me.

I don't think it's a good M.O. to disrespect your opponents, and maybe that's why the teams that disrespected me and my team lost to us.

In the fight, we are fighters, but after, we have respect for each other.

You can't always expect us to trash our opponents.

I don't complain if I get a hard tackle.

We respect all our opponents.

I never wanted anybody to think that I deliberately hurt opponents. The vast majority of players are the same.

I make sure when I direct that it's a very joy-based set that hopefully is filled with a lot of respect.