Lothar Matthäus

“Life on the football pitch is simple. There are rules, they get broken, there's fouling, there's trickery, the referee blows his whistle, and in the end everyone knows how to behave. Life outside is more complicated, more opaque, like a jungle.”

“Woulda, woulda, bicycle chain. (a mangled version of the German idiom 'hätte, hätte, Fahrradkette' – no use crying over what might have been)”

“We just mustn't stick the sand in our heads now. (a famously garbled 'bury our heads in the sand')”

“I wouldn't want to be a woman, otherwise I'd be playing with my breasts all the time.”

“This is work that you perform... Saturday afternoon. And one man, in the stadium, robs the players of their performance, of their bonus and everything. And that is an absolute outrage.”

“He was not only the best player in the world at this time. He was very fast, had very good technique, good movements. He really was very difficult to defend.”

“In the last seven or eight years, always Messi and Ronaldo. But if you ask me from these two, I'd say Messi.”

“Diego Simeone, the coach from Atlético Madrid, was a very strong player as a midfielder. He played so strong like his teams. You want him more in your team than playing against him.”

“A million marks in cash was waiting for me in a suitcase. I would only have had to reach out my hand for it.”

“Why did they sign Palhinha? They could have saved the money.”