Ousmane Dembele Quotes

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

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.

Players at the highest level have got high football intelligence, so they can adapt, but at the same time you need a structure and an idea of how you've got to play that system.

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.

When you just work tactically, in pure football sessions, you can see the way they can think football.

I like to control the ball and analyse the game.

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.

Everyone wants to score goals - that's the point of football - but you have to look at the whole situation in detail.

I do not know if we play the most beautiful or attractive football, but we certainly play more intelligently, more functionally and more precisely than anyone else.

When I watch kids play basketball, they don't know how to think the game. They know what it should look like, but they don't know why.

And I think because of the passion of every English player and every English supporter, and every English journalist for the game, most of the game is played with passion, love for football and instinct, but in football you also have to think.

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.

Rather than opera, football is more like ballet or a chess game. You can really see it in a team like Arsenal, especially when Dennis Bergkamp was playing. He seemed to be able to read the game like a chessboard and knew where a player would be several seconds later and put the ball there for him.

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.

If you have a good midfield, you have a good team.

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

English footballers are honest - they will run for 90-odd minutes - but that is not always what you need. Sometimes you need to rein back a bit and try and control the game with your passing.

It is up to me to adapt and to continue to surprise with my positioning, the timing of my runs, the trajectories, when I call for the ball.

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.

I like attacking football, but that's not the only thing the game's about.

I can play as a No. 8, a No. 10, out wide. Wherever I play, I'll be happy, I'm sure.

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.

Here in Italy, football is more like a chess game. You have to think about every move.

Most people think footballers are thick. Some might be, academically, but they can see the game, strategically, tactically, in every way.

This is football, so you need to be clever to understand the moment and win games.