Niko Kovac Quotes

You don't dominate any sport when you're over 40.

I think, at 32, you are past your prime as a footballer.

Sometimes guys peak early. They get drafted higher, and they make it to the NFL, and they don't have a lot of growth.

I think there's nothing sadder than a pro athlete who plays past his prime.

Getting past 30 as a sportsman, the end could be just around the corner.

A 30-year-old rock climber is an old man. At 40, one is in the middle of his high-altitude power. At 50, a crosser of deserts is at his best age. But at 60, each of us is out of the game.

I can play until I'm 40. But I won't.

I boxed till my late 30s, so 47, that's impossible really to be at your best and if you aren't at your best you shouldn't be boxing.

Every athlete, I think, would like to play forever. They never want to acknowledge that they've lost a step or they can't quite do what they did before.

I think now what you're seeing is guys that are in the peaks of their careers anywhere from 27 to 35 years old, seems to be when they play their best hockey.

I just never subscribed to the theory that at age 55, you fall off the face of the earth on the Tour. I always felt that was too young of an age for that.

People turn professional and they are not running as fast as they did in college because it is a lot different, but I wanted to make sure that I didn't have that kind of transition and always stayed on top.

Every year it happens. When I'm not putting up big numbers, I start hearing it - that I'm too old, that time finally has caught up with me.

A male athlete's peak, I believe, should be somewhere between 26 and 30.

I don't have any aspirations to play until I'm 50 years old.

I don't want to play till I'm 40.

Some people might say I'm old at 28, but I look at someone like James Milner. He's 32 and playing like he is 25 or something.

When you're playing in the NFL, you can only do this for a short amount of time. Guys retire before they're 30. If you play forever, you play into your 40s - and you're still a young man with a lot of life left to live.

Some fighters had blinding speed and reflexes in their heyday but faded badly with age.

You don't see too many attacking flair players continuing until their mid-30s at a high level.

I was on my way to becoming a Hall of Famer and having my name in the rafters, but three surgeries in 14 months, that is not good. I wasn't the same player.

I can say I am playing some of the best football of my career at 31. So maybe I can play better as I get older.

There's some glory years, where if you play long enough and you've figured the game out, and physically you're still healthy enough, there are some years in there where you can really be productive. And those are fun years.

Being in the league six years, things have kind of slowed down for me.

If you think about who retires during their prime, the number of athletes who do that is very small.