Philipp Lahm Quotes

Attacking football is what I want to watch as a manager; it's what I want from my teams. It's easier to be destructive and get people behind the ball than to be constructive and creative.

I love coaches that think more about attacking than defending. As a football fan, I think that's wonderful.

I know my background was defense, but I'm not a defensive coach who wants to win 9-7 every week.

When you play in the Premier League, say you're playing against a lower-end team, they set up to defend all the time, they set up to block you off. But when you play in the Champions League, all the other teams are used to winning every week, so it's more of an open game, it's more attacking, end-to-end.

In football, you don't hold on to the ball just to hold on to the ball. When you have it you need to be dangerous, create opportunities and score goals. And when you don't, you make sure the opposition doesn't.

Football is about scoring, and if you want to do that, you have to go forward.

I always played attacking football.

Positional play is good for training, but in games, to win matches, you need someone who can go past defenders and take chances.

Sometimes it is difficult to play against teams who just drop back and try to defend.

Maybe other managers would see their team score one goal and then prefer to go back and counter-attack, then try to score the second goal. A lot of those managers are the best managers at the moment, but for me, it's very important to continue the way I play.

I'm a coach who admires attacking football. I want my teams to look to win.

United are about attacking football, and everything else has to takes its place behind that.

United's history was built on attacking football, which does not always mean that the team kept clean sheets or did not concede chances.

My philosophy is always to play forward because goal is the reason of football.

I cannot have a concept of football where everything is based on the opposition. We have to dictate the game, we have to be the ones taking the initiative, and we have to entertain the people coming to watch us.

Part of being a Manchester United player under Sir Alex Ferguson, perhaps the most important part of being one of United's attacking players was that when you were in possession, you had to take risks in order to create goal-scoring chances. It was not an option; it was an obligation.

I don't think it's a problem if you play well and don't score, when you are creating chances.

The best place to defend is in the opposition penalty box.

You have to attack to get corners, no? Winning by scoring strategic goals doesn't bother me - it's part of the game.

The way I play will change things, there will be a lot more attacking snooker in the future.

You've got one football and a lot of times, defenses dictate where the ball goes.

Our style of play is increasingly based on possession of the ball. It suits me as a forward. We've got an attacking approach, and that means that I get a lot of chances; otherwise, I would have not been able to score so many goals.

I know that I'm a natural attacking player. I love to attack. I love to play freely; I love to combine and play through balls. That's the nature of my game.

When you play against a Spanish team, especially Madrid, it is quite an open game.

Someone said that my coaching is a combination of Milan's defensive discipline and the Dutch propensity for attacking football, and I think that is a fair description.