Michael Essien Quotes

I had a tremendous one season playing for Coach Kubiak, and I have nothing but great things to say about him as a person and a coach.

If you say you're a football coach, especially with a dude, they're always all over you.

When we talk my biggest influence, I have to say Van Gaal. He threw me in the deep end.

If you're asking me where my heart and where I'm happy is, I love playing with Tom Brady. I love being coached by Bill Belichick.

In my school, people liked the gym teachers because they were the football or soccer coaches. But look, if they're cool, they get respect.

The book is actually called 'A Mentor Leader, a Different Way to Lead.' It really talks about my experience in the way I tried lead our football team, things that I learned from, basically, the coaches that I played for and my parents about leadership. And it is a little bit different, counter to maybe what society says about great leaders.

Three coaches at Notre Dame made a big difference in my life, not that I played any football when I attended Notre Dame. But Frank Leahy, Ara Parseghian, and Lou Holtz - they all made a difference to me, and I respected them for their attitudes about life and how they handled loss.

Teaching is very important. The nature of your personality isn't that important. Lombardi was very extraverted, very bombastic. Landry very quiet, reserved. Both were great teachers and great coaches.

Dealing with LeBron is like a friendship. Coaching, but he understands that I am the boss, and I am going to call the shots, and he is fine with that.

I get the job with the 49ers, and I'm four years removed from my high school coaching days, and I'm going to be coaching Joe Montana, and I'm going, 'How do I approach this? How am I going to do this?'

Guardiola improved me a lot as a footballer. He taught me a lot of things, and that's why, in every interview I'm asked, I always say the same thing: He is the best manager that I have worked with.

I would love to have a career like Zinedine Zidane. He stopped playing, took some time, realised he liked coaching, and started working in the youth academy. I could follow a similar path.

Every new coach is interesting.

I've developed a lot under Jurgen Klopp. I am very grateful to him, and it is a lot of fun to work with him.

All that I can say is that, from my point of view, our manager Arsene Wenger is an unbelievable man off the pitch and as a manager.

It's not difficult to manage Tevez. We had a good relationship always.

Coaching was always intriguing to me as a kid. Watching 'Monday Night Football' with my dad and hearing him talk through the game management and watching the Tom Landrys and Don Shulas on the sideline was more intriguing to me than watching Troy Aikman or Dan Marino throw the ball.

Klopp is a coach with a lot of charisma.

Jose Mourinho and I get along well. I've lots of respect for him. He gives me a lot of confidence. After a bad game, he dares to say, 'We have played with 10 today,' but that's it. At moments like that, he leaves me alone.

With Luis Enrique, I never expected he would become a coach. He was an intuition player; he didn't speak with me about tactics.

I think Mourinho did not have enough respect for us.

Coach Parcells challenged me a lot in my rookie year, and not just in games. Almost every day in practice, he'd stand right beside me as he called for the field-goal team to take the field.

You get different philosophies in coaching, usually depending on what position the coach himself played.

Three years under Saban changed me. He's the best coach in the world at what he does.

I'm close to Coach Kingsbury. He really helped my game and helped me as a person a lot. He's a genuine good person and, at the same time, a very smart football coach.