Lukas Podolski Quotes

If a player sits out a tour, it is not a problem, because it is a chance to look at others.

I always try to perform, and not because you have players on the bench or on the pitch that can play in your position.

It's hard in England. If I didn't score for three games, there was the chance someone would take my place or I would be loaned out.

When you bring one of your top scorers, your top players off the bench, it really gives your team balance.

I never thought I'd be playing 60 games a season for City, I knew I would be playing half of that if I was lucky. I knew at a club with that much power and resources there would always be a flood of players into the team.

Sometimes to rest, even to watch your team-mates from the bench, is not too bad. It is part of the game and you try to be fresh when you come on the pitch.

When I arrived at Chelsea, I had got used to playing 50 games, and suddenly, I was sharing my position with another player.

If the guys on the bench were as good as the guys you have out there, they'd be out there in first place.

In international football you have 10 games a season, with players from different clubs. There's no time for proper coaching; they're just recovering from playing on the Saturday.

I enjoyed the NFL. I respected the players. It was a great opportunity to learn a lot of things, but the challenges were a little different, and it didn't seem that you could control your own destiny, especially in terms of how you could bring players to the team.

Not playing is frustrating; you want to play in every game. But it's the life of a keeper. You'd rather be on the pitch than off.

What happens when you have to use your top guys so much, they're going to hit a wall at some point, and they'll go four or five games where they just don't have the juice to play at the level that you need, and therefore your team suffers a little bit.

We want the best players to be at Barcelona.

It's never nice to sit on the bench. Everybody knows it is not what you want as a professional footballer but it's about responding and coming back.

Honestly, I don't know why we can't transfer the mentality we have in the Champions League to Serie A.

I left Barcelona because I believed it was very difficult to have minutes in the first team, as there are very good players.

I know how quickly things can change in football, and I am only where I am because someone else lost their place.

If you don't go out there and play winning football, they're going to try and find somebody who can.

Naturally this is football, and in big teams it is not easy to play every game.

They say that when it comes to the depth chart, it can change any day and that we dictate how the depth chart goes. If one person has a great day, he might be going with the 'ones.' If a person slips up a little bit, he might be going with the 'twos' and 'threes.'

I started this job in 1995, and I felt the same pressure in my first day, with my first team, Reggiana, in the Second Division, as I feel now. Nothing has changed, but what changes are the number of games, especially for top teams. For this reason, the work has pressure. But only this.

Having fresh players is important.

When you go through a tournament of seven games, there are peaks and valleys. You kind of ride the players that are hot.

It's very difficult to say that a player is irreplaceable because the nature of football means that someone always steps in to take the shirt and provides different elements to your team.

You need to protect the best players in the country. When there is so much cricket, we must work on ways to prolong their careers.