167 Quotes by Gary Lineker

I don't think there was a definite day, but it would have been around my mid-20s. I was always interested in the media side of things. When we travelled with England away, or to World Cups, I used to sit with journos while they wrote their copy.

When Bob Wilson left the BBC for ITV, I got the 'Football Focus' job, and it went from there. It came completely out of the blue, but the fact I had a high profile certainly helped.

In this country, since footballs made from pigs' bladders were whacked into goals without nets, we've played on full-size pitches. Whatever our age.

Football matters so much to people, and they get very defensive - or angry.

World Cups can be career-defining.

That's what being a footballer is, really: you train at this time, you finish at that time, then you do that, then you go home, then you're not allowed out, then you do this... there comes a point in your career - about thirty, thirty-one - when you get a bit sick of being screamed at.

I try very hard to be bad, but people never take me seriously.

If I hadn't have been good enough at football, I'd have been a sports journalist - which is what I do now anyway. Or a cricketer. I might have been a cricketer.

In any other corporation, if there was so many things that were found to be corrupt, then the man at the top would go - but that doesn't seem to be the case with FIFA.