Per Mertesacker Quotes

You can't try a man-to-man if you don't practice it.

I think communication is massive in football and in all sports in general.

I stay in the middle and my team-mates can go to attack.

In football, in any sport, communication is really key. So if you want to be a great teammate, a great team and a great player, then communication is very important.

People watch the points, they watch the highlights. But the defense I think helps the offense.

What you do is build your team around your core. Some teams have one main guy - not many, but some do - and you build around that. If you have a bunch of good players, that's another way to go about it - through depth, teamwork, defense, and fundamentals.

It feels good to go out and execute the game plan, have some fun, have some long sustained drives and convert third downs.

I play a complicated position in an intensely team-oriented game.

In football, it's the ultimate team sport. You have to have good people around you as a quarterback for things to happen.

When a team outgrows individual performance and learns team confidence, excellence becomes a reality.

I hope we can build our offense and go out there and win games.

At first, I didn't know what to expect but I do say that I love our defensive coordinator, Tim Lewis.

You don't know how many times I was in the huddle, asking my teammates to help me call a play.

Your receivers have to catch it, not drop it.

In some ways, I admire the principle of a manager who is determined that his team must play their own game.

Sometimes my passes don't find people, but I do try and create.

All of the usual formations have advantages and disadvantages, but none would work without the magic of the players.

In football, whatever can happen can happen when the team performs well and sometimes when the team does not perform as well.

It's never just about one player. Together, you have to figure out other ways to score and get opportunities.

As a QB, it's a team game, and you're all out there in it.

Tactics are so important because everybody has to know what they have to do on the pitch. The relationships and behaviours off the pitch between team-mates have to be as good as possible.

I think it's very useful when you want to be the team who create. You need to create this superiority at the back when you build up using the goalkeepers.

How are you supposed to communicate on the pitch when you don't off it?

I have had so many team-mates who have been technically better than me.

You can't just score more points than last year without playing defense.