Jose Mourinho Quotes

You have to have something in your head to understand the Barcelona play. You have to adapt as quickly as possible.

I was struck by the ideas of Sarri, when you see them from outside you get a certain idea but when you are inside you understand the intelligence of a coach who has brought new ideas.

When you're a kid you just think about where you are going to be to put yourself in a position for the next scoring chance. But as you develop, you start to do things that may not catch the eye of the normal football watcher, the dropping back, the closing down.

Van Gaal was always very intensive with his tactics. You had to work more with your head than your legs.

I would say Pep Guardiola's No. 1 quality is that he sees the technical and tactical aspect of a game really fast.

It actually took me a year to learn how to play running back - to understand what they were doing defensively and then what our guys were doing every single play.

It strikes me that these days, clubs don't even want players who can truly play any more; they just want athletes, quick guys who don't have a football brain, can just run and run; some of them, Jesus. I can never imagine acting like that.

I would prefer to play for and against an attacking team, but I am now used to playing against defensive teams.

I had a lot of dealings with Bergkamp. I started with the under-17s at Ajax, and he was the assistant coach. Once or twice a week, we had individual one-to-one training sessions. You just watched Bergkamp. When you see him in training, he had skills that a guy just shouldn't be allowed to have.

Beyond studying, though, I think a coach should mainly have knowledge of football: if you do not know what to say to the players then you are not going anywhere.

The big thing is to win, but to look at the long-term, you need one way to play, and the philosophy is not only to put 11 players on the pitch and play football.

Football's always been cerebral. The most important thing is thinking fast.

I had the good luck to have the experience of training with fantastic football players like Cristiano Ronaldo, Ozil, Modric, and I also played for Real Madrid B. That was a fantastic experience because it was my first international experience as a football player and taught me a lot as a football player.

I spent the best part of 20 years trying to stop people like Chris Waddle from playing. Now I'm convinced that good touch and loads of movement are the way forward.

With Luis Enrique, I never expected he would become a coach. He was an intuition player; he didn't speak with me about tactics.

Ibrahimovic is a very intelligent player and there are very few strikers like him in world football.

I know and the manager knows my best position is centre-half but if I can learn two other positions if needed then it's great for me as a player and my development.

As I'm growing up, going into holding midfield, I'm watching Busquets quite a lot for Barcelona. The way he controls the game, his reading of it, technically, defensively - everything about him cuts him out above the rest. I'm really enjoying watching him.

Of course David Moyes is going to come under scrutiny because he's taken over from a legend in Sir Alex Ferguson and they've made their worst start to a season in 24 years. But we mustn't take away credit from what West Brom did. Few teams go to Old Trafford and dominate the ball and carve out chances the way they did.

When I talk about football from a studio standpoint, I try to cut through the minutia and get to the point.

Football has a thing: You have to decide on an action in a moment, and your head has to be fresh for taking that decision in the moment.

I had a good football intelligence. I didn't need 10 games to get used to a position. I could go out and do a job.

I like Southgate as a manager, what he brings. He always wants the ball and adapts to the players.

I've always wanted to work with De Zerbi, and I think he is a genius in his vision of football.

People don't remember that Sid Gillman was my coach. He was an old crotchety guy, but he was the first one to basically say, 'You can't just run around'... I remember, he literally tied my feet up.