Johan Cruijff Quotations

I'm not religious. In Spain all 22 players make the sign of the cross before they enter the pitch. If it works all matches must therefore end in a draw.

I still have a lot of room for improvement.

However good an English team is, they will always have an additional advantage. It is that European players know that their English opponents will come at them in the belief they will win, and they can always be guaranteed never to stop fighting. They have a natural aggression that they are born with. If it ever goes, English football will lose its most valuable dimension.

After you've won something, you're no longer 100 percent, but 90 percent. It's like a bottle of carbonated water where the cap is removed for a short while. Afterwards there's a little less gas inside.

There is only one ball, so you need to have it.

I look at Messi, and he makes me laugh. A beautiful footballer who is still like a kid. A world superstar, but still a kid. Innocent, you know. He just plays.

Football is about having the best offensive play possible. I always like to play offensive football, and nobody will convince me otherwise.

Every professional golfer has a seperate coach for his drives, for approaches, for putting. In football we have one coach for 15 players. This is absurd.

Surviving the first round is never my aim. Ideally, I'd be in one group with Brazil, Argentina and Germany. Then I'd have lost two rivals after the first round. That's how I think. Idealisitic.

I felt sorry for the match ball - it came off the pitch crying.