56 Quotes by Johan Cruyff

"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 not about suffering. It's about enjoyment. Control the ball, be friendly with it, try to attack, try to score goals. Of course defending is part of it, but you can defend in a lot of ways."

"My generation put in a lot more hours playing football after school than kids today. These days, all the football these kids play, they play at their clubs, so the clubs need to work seriously on the basic skills."

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

"I always use the basic quality of people to achieve what I want to achieve. That's a different way of thinking. I always love that they do things. And when it goes wrong, well, try to correct it in one way or another."

"This is the great crisis in football now. It's not just Rangers; it's a lot of clubs. Big clubs always create more debt despite the huge income they have. It's almost an achievement, isn't it? They make so much money, and yet, still, their debts rise and rise and rise. How does that happen? It's absurd."

"When I don't have control of the ball, what do I do? I press to get it back. It's a way of defending."

"Van Gaal has a good vision of football, but it is not mine. He wants to gel winning teams and has a militaristic way of working with his tactics. I want individuals to think for themselves."

"How can you create a team and bring all these egos together? The main goal for Manchester United is for them to play well - and not have a player saying, 'I play well; I scored two goals'. Because if I score two goals, but three goals go into our net, then we lose."

"I learned my English from Keith Spurgeon. He had some small children, and I was young, too, and so we spoke the language together, and it was fantastic."