Megan Rapinoe Quotes

I wasn't completely comfortable in the footy culture because I wasn't that comfortable in my own skin, which I am now. I'd fit in better now, but I don't miss the training and the injuries you get playing footy.

It is a violent sport that we choose as men, and that we as parents allow our children to play.

Every time you step on the football field in between those lines you're putting your life, your career, every single ligament in your body in jeopardy.

I'm glad that I just played baseball, because I'm sure I had a much longer baseball career than I would've had a football career. I did miss football, but I didn't miss some of the injuries from football.

If you play in the NFL and start for 10 years, it's not good. It is not good.

There's nothing wrong with ankles. But only if you're playing football in the park.

Our sport is not made for anybody to be able to play it, especially at the NFL level, so there's obviously some risk that we all take knowingly.

It's not about big markets or small markets. It's not about dominant teams or not. It's about the actual competition and how good the games are, how good the series turn out. That's what I think is the most important for fans.

I can get a black eye, a bloody nose. I can have a bad day in the gym. At the end of the day, I don't have a bad payday, and I don't have a bad night under the lights... I get bumps, bruises... but I don't have a bad night.

We just want to see entertaining, exciting games, and we want the officials to do a good job.

Truth is, none of us professional athletes are ever 100 percent healthy. We just decide what we're going to tape up and push through without making it worse.

For my size, I think I played bigger than my size. I tried to play bigger, which is probably why I got as injured as I did.

Growing up wrestling, you get injured, and they expect you back on the mat in a couple weeks unless it's really bad.

No team can play really good in 50 games. During the season, you will not play that well all the time.

We're removal men. It's hard labour. I've come to the conclusion being a forward is probably the worst thing in rugby. Looking at backs, they play kick and laugh, run and clap and we get absolutely flogged.

With injuries, every match varies. The black eyes are accidents. The broken noses are accidents. But the bumps from when we land on the mat, they're hard. I think it looks easier, or the fans don't really understand what's happening, but it does take a toll.

I don't believe in playing hurt, in taking injections to cover the pain.

When it comes to sports I am not particularly interested. Generally speaking, I look upon them as dangerous and tiring activities performed by people with whom I share nothing except the right to trial by jury.

The sad thing about doping is how much it obscures our appreciation of greatness.

There've been a lot more people hurt on astro-turf than grass.

Once you start altering your body's blueprint, things start falling apart. Some players take steroids, and two years later, after they've broken records, suddenly they have back problems, shoulder problems, arm problems. They're out of the game for good.

You're gonna lose some ball games and you're gonna win some ball games and that's about it.

I know that, as captain, you are in a privileged position and must always abide by Fifa's code of fair play, something which I have always done throughout my career.

Only in football is long-term injury the result not of accidents but of the game played properly.

What matters to me more than anything is that when all of this is over, football is the winner.