Roy Hodgson Quotes

Everywhere I’ve managed, I’ve left a platform for my successor to build on, and this is a great satisfaction for me, even if I don’t necessarily get the recognition for it.

All you can do when you are given a chance to play for England is to go out against whoever that opponent may be and do it very well. And if you do that, you get yourself in the forefront of the manager’s mind.

Why shouldn’t Harry Kane take corners? If he happens to be the best striker of a ball in the team and gives you the best delivery, why shouldn’t he do it?

Hindsight does always serve the purpose of putting you in the right, and if you don’t have it, you find yourself very often in the wrong.

I don’t know whether you ever get over things that cause you pain.

It wasn’t purely Alex Ferguson’s experience that made him a good manager, because he did it when he was inexperienced. But if you’ve got the qualities needed, and then you add experience to it, someone who’s been through it, well, that has to be advantageous. There’s no doubt about that.

I don’t think there are many jobs that would have tempted me away from Fulham, to be perfectly honest.

All managers have someone they lean on and take advice from.

I’ve worked for a long time and hope people have developed enough confidence in me that it will remain even in a period when we’re not winning many games.

I didn’t realise I had a speech impediment until I came back to England. I spent the whole of my life working abroad, and no-one mentioned it. I came back to England and suddenly realised I had a speech impediment.

I have been in football a long time.

Of course, any work you do as a sporting person, a football coach or any coach, if it is good work, you’ve got to have something – a championship – to show for it.

With a national team, you’ve just got to be even more focused on what’s most important because the time you’ve got with the players is limited.

The one thing we have to remember about Fernando Torres is that he’s a human being who has come in for an enormous amount of criticism, not least during the World Cup from people in Spain and around the world.

I don’t think any job is impossible.

In an ideal world, the season would end, and the players would have two to three weeks by the beach. You’d have four to five weeks of preparation, and then you’d play the tournament.

Often, in a tournament, the players that get injured or suffer a lack of form are the guys at the cutting edge, the guys who make the difference or score the goals.

I think any manager who tells you, ‘I am very good at keeping my equilibrium. I’m always calm and reasoned, and results don’t affect me particularly. I can take the good with the bad, and I can put the wins and the losses in perspective,’ you will find a special person. I’ve never met one.

I try very hard not to look back.

I suffer during games. We follow the action, kicking every ball, wondering if our centre-backs can stop the cross… In some ways, you enjoy it, but your heart is always thumping.

I don’t have any intention to resign.

I was so fully involved in football and building a career that I didn’t spend nearly enough time with my son when he was growing up.

I don’t think anything’s cruel – if you’re so sensitive these days that you see cruelty everywhere, unfortunately every time a comedian comes on television, you’re going to accuse him of cruelty, because that’s the kind of humour that the English people enjoy.

To be frank, you can’t compare the atmosphere and the way people behaved in the Olympic Stadium with the game I watched the day after, the Community Shield.

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

As far as I know, Fulham were never for sale during my time there. Mohamed Al Fayed never wanted to sell Fulham.

I think, increasingly, people will define success as staying in the League, being a stable Premier League club that treats its fans to good football every year.

What you’ve got to do in any coaching job, whether it is moving to Sweden as a young man – where being English gave you a slight advantage – or something else, you’ve got to win the players’ respect.

As far as I’m concerned, if you’re only going to call managers who have won a trophy any good, then basically, you have four or five.

I’m always disappointed when we lose, and it’s happened quite a few times.

I don’t own photograph albums – the pictures that are important to me are etched in my mind.

Anyone who watches football and watches Tottenham play would have to be an admirer of the way they play football and the way they go about their business.

Maybe I see things too naively at times.

I don’t like talking about not getting what you deserve, because that has no part to play in football. You get what you get.

Brazil is a fantastic football country.

I am not only privileged to work for the FA and England: I have enjoyed working for the FA and England.

Getting that first foot on the rung of the ladder, that’s where you find it easier to shrug off those times when your foot slips off, and you have to get yourself going again.

The main problem with English players has always been the price.

Really and truly, I don’t like talking about refereeing decisions.

It’s an achievement I can be happy about – if you call getting old and still being in a job an achievement.

I have worked long and hard to reach the level I have reached.

You’re as old as you feel.

I don’t sit around wondering, ‘Why am I here? Who made the stars?’ I prefer to look at the stars and benefit from them rather than concern myself with how they got there.

Systems win you nothing, and football players win you games.

The reality of football rests on that patch of green between 90 and 95 minutes. Whichever team is going to win has to do it on the field of play and by scoring more goals than the opposition.

I enjoyed Wembley like all the managers before me, and I would hope that games would still be played there by the England national team.

In football, however well you think you are doing, however well your life is going, there is always a mugger there lurking in the shadows to bash you over the head when you least expect it.

It’s very flattering that those who have assessed my work over the years think that I have the qualities to be an England manager.

Getting the balance right in everything is all of football and all of sport.

I played a lot of tennis when I was young.

I have been in football a long time, and Wayne Rooney has been in football a long time. He would regard me as someone who is very false if I ever said to him, ‘Your place is guaranteed.’ He would not expect it, and I would be very upset anyway if anyone asked me to give them a guarantee of a place.

I like Philip Roth, John Updike, and Richard Yates.

You are never quite sure how it will go, and even after a thousand games or so, that tense feeling is still there.

There is a belief that getting any particular job may depend on who has just had five consecutive victories. If that’s the way it is, I’ve got a healthy attitude.

There might be more meetings and situations where you’re required to represent the country in some way that wouldn’t necessarily happen to you if you’re a club manager, but other than that, I haven’t found any differences in my approach between running a club side and a national team.