"At the end of the day, I ask you: who is the most successful team in the world? Brazil. What do they play? Good football. Who won everything last year? Barcelona. What do they play? Lovely football. I am not against being pragmatic because to be pragmatic is to make a good pass, not a bad pass. It is as simple as that. When I see Barcelona, to me it is art."

“This guy should never play football again. What is he doing on the football pitch? I've gone along with the idea for a long time that to stop Arsenal, you have to kick Arsenal. I knew that was coming for a long time now.”

“If I go into a season and I say, ‘For fuck’s sake, if we don’t win anything, they will all leave,’ I have already lost. The problem of the media is always to imagine the worst. The problem of the manager is always to imagine the best.”

“You forget what you wrote last September, October, November. You have a little bit of Alzheimer's.”

“Gérard thoughts on the matter echo mine. He thinks that what the national coaches are doing is like taking the car from his garage without even asking permission. They will then use the car for ten days and abandon it in a field without any petrol left in the tank. We then have to recover it, but it is broken down. Then a month later they will come to take your car again, and for good measure you're expected to be nice about it.”

“The speed at which we moved the ball in small spaces and our quality was superb. We played the ball through needles and it was very difficult for Aston Villa.”

“We do not buy superstars. We make them.”