Luis Enrique Quotes

You have to win the title with a strong team and a strong defence, but I don't only like to talk about the four defenders and the goalkeeper when you concede goals. It's about the team.

I think if you're not conceding so many goals, it gives you a great platform to win games.

The coach's job is to get the best players and get them to play together.

The head coach is the chemist.

There's two sides to the game, and you have to do the ugly side as well. If you're getting beat, and you're conceding the goals that we're getting beaten by, then it's because you're not defending and shutting people down well enough.

We believe defending is very much a team job, and we can't just rely on a back four and a goalkeeper.

Rafa Benitez was keen on defending - all dropping back together if you lose the ball.

The teams that defend well are as important as those that attack well. If you don't concede goals it is much easier to win but it is all about having balance.

I think it's important that you're vocal during the match, especially at centre-half. You're basically the eyes and ears of the team, and if you don't open your mouth, it's not going to help the team out.

The beginning of everything is our defensive organisation. The clean sheet is always the first objective that we have in the game. Always.

I consider all aspects of being a goalkeeper as fundamental in the development of the side as a whole.

A compact defense has always been the basis of Italy's team.

It's difficult when you play the best teams in the world. You have to be strong as a team and defend and get clean sheets.

I like entertaining football but, at the same time, you can't concede goals. That's a tricky balance to find.

If you have a game where you're under pressure, obviously there are going to be a lot of shots on target, and you're going to make saves, but you can't say you played well in a game where you concede five goals. It's ridiculous.

If someone is going to spend a whole game marking you, then there may be games when I will have to sacrifice myself for the team and take them away and create space for a team-mate.

I hate letting goals in, and some of them have come in a bit of an awkward manner.

What interests Chiellini and I is not conceding goals. We're able to create chances and it makes us happy when we take them.

I think a lot of managers say that it starts from the front and us as defenders know it helps our job when the front two strikers put that pressure on. If they can do that it makes our job a lot easier.

For me, it is very important to control a situation in defence. You can always score goals, but you have to add stability in the defence.

We cannot take responsibility for every goal we concede, we all need to do our part across the field to ensure we win as a team.

At Tottenham, we are just bombing on as wing-backs, but sometimes on the international stage, where there is so much quality, you need to be more careful about the distance between yourself and the right-sided centre-half.

If a team concedes a goal, then the first question is always of the goalkeeper.

I have been captain in the past and I know what it takes to gel a team and get it going.

People talk about tactics, but when you look at it, tactics are just players. You change things so that the team can get the most out of the skills they have to offer, but you don't go any further than that.