“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.”
― Roy Hodgson
“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.”
― Roy Hodgson
“The Premier League is what it is. Some people will see the intensity and quality as a great advantage for your players: it will make them better. Some will see it as a disadvantage because the players play at such a high level and such intensity, it’s difficult for them to drum that up, that intensity, with a very short space of rest time.”
― Roy Hodgson
“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.”
― Roy Hodgson
“Talk is talk; action on the field is action on the field.”
― Roy Hodgson
“I don’t have any intention to resign.”
― Roy Hodgson
“A lot of young coaches who respect the fact I have been doing it a long time, that is often their question: ‘Does it get any easier? Can you relax more during the games? Can you take it all a little bit more philosophically and put it more in perspective?’ The tragedy is that I have to tell them, ‘No. If anything, it gets worse.’”
― Roy Hodgson
“I try very hard not to look back.”
― Roy Hodgson
“When you have been lucky enough to move up the ladder, all you see, really, is the slide back down. You don’t see the further steps upwards.”
― Roy Hodgson
“I think I like the artistry of the game. I still get a lot of pleasure watching the good-quality teams play, where the movements of the players are coordinated. It’s almost ballet-like, although ‘ballet-like’ is a bit of an exaggeration.”
― Roy Hodgson
“I am not only privileged to work for the FA and England: I have enjoyed working for the FA and England.”
― Roy Hodgson
“Fans jump on your bandwagon and desert you when you hit the harder times.”
― Roy Hodgson
“It hasn’t always been a Premier League ride for Crystal Palace supporters. They’re there to support us through the hard times.”
― Roy Hodgson
“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.”
― Roy Hodgson
“If success is about winning the league, there will always be 19 disappointed clubs.”
― Roy Hodgson
“You can’t flirt with relegation every year.”
― Roy Hodgson
“A lot of the players who’ve done so well aren’t necessarily the big names: James Tomkins, Luka Milivojevic to name two.”
― Roy Hodgson
“I’m always disappointed when we lose, and it’s happened quite a few times.”
― Roy Hodgson
“I assisted Bobby Houghton at Halmstads, and we were both just under 30. We’d say, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to do this for maybe 10 years, save a little money, then perhaps start a little business together.’ Some sort of travel agency. We had no football thoughts beyond that, other than maybe combining it with a bit of sport, getting a few tours going.”
― Roy Hodgson
“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.”
― Roy Hodgson
“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.”
― Roy Hodgson
“There is so much interaction in a football match: between you and your team-mates and how you support each other, work for each other, make runs. But I also enjoy the other aspect: the pressing and how people work so hard to recover the ball.”
― Roy Hodgson
“I don’t like the way I see society going.”
― Roy Hodgson
“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.”
― Roy Hodgson
“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.”
― Roy Hodgson
“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.”
― Roy Hodgson
“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.”
― Roy Hodgson
“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.”
― Roy Hodgson
“I quite liked Dostoyevsky when I was younger.”
― Roy Hodgson
“I can get by quite well in Italian or German, though if the discussion got to a high level, I’d run out of vocabulary. I’m stronger in French and Swedish.”
― Roy Hodgson
“I don’t know whether you ever get over things that cause you pain.”
― Roy Hodgson
“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.”
― Roy Hodgson
“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.”
― Roy Hodgson
“Really and truly, I don’t like talking about refereeing decisions.”
― Roy Hodgson
“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?”
― Roy Hodgson
“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.”
― Roy Hodgson
“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.”
― Roy Hodgson
“There aren’t many English managers, I suppose, who’ve had the sort of career that I’ve had, outside the country. With the amount of money that is going around in the Premier League, not many people are tempted to move abroad.”
― Roy Hodgson
“I speak five languages: English, Swedish, French, Italian, and German.”
― Roy Hodgson
“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.”
― Roy Hodgson
“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.”
― Roy Hodgson
“I have always promised myself and my wife that when I don’t enjoy it anymore, or I can’t handle the stress and the pressure that comes with having such a high-profile and top job – or my energy levels starts to fail me, or my enthusiasm starts to be dented – I won’t prolong my career longer than I feel I should.”
― Roy Hodgson
“I’ve got to that stage in my life where, difficult decisions I don’t have to make, I push them into the future until such time I have to make them.”
― Roy Hodgson
“Hugh Grant is about the only actor I’ve met who has taken any proper interest in football, being a big Fulham supporter. But he’d be far too good-looking to play me in any film.”
― Roy Hodgson
“I played a lot of tennis when I was young.”
― Roy Hodgson
“I don’t own photograph albums – the pictures that are important to me are etched in my mind.”
― Roy Hodgson
“I like Philip Roth, John Updike, and Richard Yates.”
― Roy Hodgson
“Brazil is a fantastic football country.”
― Roy Hodgson
“I don’t think there are many people out there – except, perhaps, the odd Twitter troll who knows no better – who believes that racially abusing people or threatening people is the right way to go.”
― Roy Hodgson
“I’m a football manager, a football coach; I can’t be expected to pontificate on everything.”
― Roy Hodgson
“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.”
― Roy Hodgson
“Getting the balance right in everything is all of football and all of sport.”
― Roy Hodgson
“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.”
― Roy Hodgson
“I have been in football a long time.”
― Roy Hodgson
“The important thing is to take each game as it comes.”
― Roy Hodgson
“For goal-scorers and centre-forwards, confidence does play a big part.”
― Roy Hodgson
“The last thing you want as a striker is the opposing team putting all 10 players behind the ball.”
― Roy Hodgson
“Most teams – whether they like it or not against Manchester City – you’re going to find yourself quite often penned in your own half.”
― Roy Hodgson
“The day it becomes impossible for teams like Palace to get results against City, the league might as well just fold up, and we’ll do everything on paper.”
― Roy Hodgson
“I don’t think you sign a four-year contract in the Premier League and then go to China at the age of 26.”
― Roy Hodgson
“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.”
― Roy Hodgson
“It does get hot in England from time to time.”
― Roy Hodgson
“I wouldn’t mind a spotlight also focused on the crowd, because, I think, one of the things that made the Olympic Games for Great Britain was the incredible support within the stadia where the events took place.”
― Roy Hodgson
“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.”
― Roy Hodgson
“If the be-all and end-all of your ability is, ‘Have you got a trophy to your name,’ I find that hard to understand. It’s so naive in terms of what the job of being a football coach is all about.”
― Roy Hodgson
“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.”
― Roy Hodgson
“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.”
― Roy Hodgson
“We believe defending is very much a team job, and we can’t just rely on a back four and a goalkeeper.”
― Roy Hodgson
“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.”
― Roy Hodgson
“Systems win you nothing, and football players win you games.”
― Roy Hodgson
“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.”
― Roy Hodgson
“People are entitled to say what they feel sometimes.”
― Roy Hodgson
“All of the top managers I have come across during my career and befriend, they suffer as much with the defeats and when things don’t go their way late in life as they did early in life.”
― Roy Hodgson
“New faces, maybe perking up the squad and giving you another arrow to your bow – that can be a help.”
― Roy Hodgson
“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.”
― Roy Hodgson
“I’ve got to be honest with you: I don’t regard 29 as old.”
― Roy Hodgson
“I don’t have any regrets.”
― Roy Hodgson
“It’s very hard to be happy when you’ve lost.”
― Roy Hodgson
“I am both proud and excited at the prospect of working as the Liverpool manager.”
― Roy Hodgson
“I don’t think there are many jobs that would have tempted me away from Fulham, to be perfectly honest.”
― Roy Hodgson
“I have worked long and hard to reach the level I have reached.”
― Roy Hodgson
“All managers have someone they lean on and take advice from.”
― Roy Hodgson
“As far as I know, Fulham were never for sale during my time there. Mohamed Al Fayed never wanted to sell Fulham.”
― Roy Hodgson
“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.”
― Roy Hodgson
“Maybe I see things too naively at times.”
― Roy Hodgson
“You are never quite sure how it will go, and even after a thousand games or so, that tense feeling is still there.”
― Roy Hodgson
“The main problem with English players has always been the price.”
― Roy Hodgson
“I don’t think any job is impossible.”
― Roy Hodgson
“It’s true that if it’s always going to be that if you win the World Cup or European Championship, you’re a success, and if you don’t, you’re a failure, then you’re bedding yourself for a lack of success because there aren’t many coaches who have won those things, and there are thousands who haven’t.”
― Roy Hodgson
“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.”
― Roy Hodgson
“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.”
― Roy Hodgson
“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.”
― Roy Hodgson
“It’s an achievement I can be happy about – if you call getting old and still being in a job an achievement.”
― Roy Hodgson
“You’re as old as you feel.”
― Roy Hodgson
“Achievements are often more interesting to you when you look back on them.”
― Roy Hodgson
“Luckily, my age doesn’t ever come into my thoughts.”
― Roy Hodgson
“When you focus the spotlight so much on one person, I think it’s very, very dangerous.”
― Roy Hodgson
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