"Everything I have achieved in football is due to playing football in the streets with my friends"
Zinedan Zidane 

"I love football - particularly beautiful football"
Johan Cruyff

"In England there is so much talent. I am convinced that at least 20 players at non league level could have played as well as Thierry Henry in the Premiership if they had been exposed to the correct coaching. I think it is easier to spoil your talent than bring it to the top."
Arsene Wenger

"I go out and play with imagination. It comes naturally to me. That's how everybody plays in London when your playing street football."
Joe Cole 

"I must admit that football in the streets gave us a great sense of freedom and liberty."
Eric Cantona

"I am not sure about the academy system most clubs have - what is the point of trying to discipline a seven year old? You have to let them find their own game. I never changed my game - people have to do what they feel comfortable with."
Gazza

"We didn't need a referee; we accepted the rules of the game and stuck by them. For us not to of done so would of spoilt the game for everyone. It taught us that you can't go around doing what you want because there are others to think of and if you don't stick to the rules, you spoil it for everyone else. Of course that was not a conscious thought at the time, but looking back those  kick about games on the waste ground did prepare us for life."
Stanley Matthews

"Before a game when all the noise is happening around him, Zola sits in the corner and remembers when he used to play football in the hills of Sardinia, where he was born. He remembers the sheer joy of football and that is what is important."
Malcolm Cook

"The kid's game, chaotic as it is, is still the surest way of nuturing talent."
Paul Gardner (football journalist on street football)

"They learn to win before they can play."
Ted Bates (ex Southampton manager, on how young boys are rushed into competition far too early at the expense of acquiring technique.)

"It helped that I had so many quality player's around me.They all seemed so comfortable on the ball. (which explained why so many converted from left wing to left back or from midfield to sweeper) They could all pass the ball well and had sweet first touches. In England it was so often the case of 'don't pass to him, he can't handle it.'
I never heard that in France.
(Chris Waddle on his time at Marseilles)

"We played until our legs gave way - scores of 15-13 were not uncommon - and I never stopped running.  I tried to make up in enthusiasm what I lacked in physical presence, for all the boys were much bigger than I was, or so it felt.
Football united the kids. You didn't have to call for your mates; simply walking down the  street bouncing a ball had the Pied Piper effect. We could all smell a game from 200 yards."
Tom Finney

"But when you go out into the street or park to play football with other children for the first time, you are immersed into a world you do not control and of which you are not the centre. There is no safety net. You have to learn how to get along, how to resolve disputes, how to get by."
Paulo de Canio

"Young players need freedom of expression to devlop as creative players...they should be encouraged to try skills wihout fear of failure."
Arsene Wenger

"I knew I was better at football than the others in the playground, although the teachers just looked at my size and that was against me from the start."
Alan Ball (Ball was never selected for his school side despite winning a World Cup winners medal some 4 years later at the age of 19)

"It strikes me that these days clubs don't even want players that can truly play anymore; they just want athletes, quick guys that don't have a football brain, but can just run and run."
Robbie Fowler

"In a sport obsessed not merely by youth but by sheer childhood - clubs now co-opt eight and nine years olds - the late developers tend to be over looked."
Brian Glanville (football writer)

"I like to play by instinct."
Zinedan Zidane

"We played total football before the term was even invented. Times were hard, football I guess helped us forget, kept our spirits up, and gave us plenty to laugh about."
Jimmy Johnstone

"The spirit is wrong and it hurts me. I spent my whole career as a manager trying to stop this devaluation of the game. I cared more about the purity and finer values of football than I did about winning for winning's sake - and if that is a sin then I am a sinner. Football should be about taking risks."
Ron Greenwood