Here are some favourite quotes on street football, youth football and skillful football.

"A touch is a touch, even a bad one"
Bert-Jan Heijmans - The dutchUK football school

"As parents, if we're looking to develop a positive attitude in our children, we would do well to watch our own behaviour at matches. Do we give positive encouragement, or critical judgmental remarks? Do we show a calm demeanor, or heated overreactions to mistakes?
Do we praise participation, or match statistics, or the final score?
Next time you go to a match, remember, your attitude is showing, and your kids are watching.
Darell J. Burnett - Clinical & Sport Psychologist

“I listened to an interesting interview the other day with (I can't remember his name) a top sports scientist, who said the evidence now shows that coaching in sessions only improves the performance in the session itself. It does not transfer over into games very well, and the best way that kids will learn, is by themselves. It really is about providing the environment and letting them get on with it.

I went to a christening on Saturday and back to my brother's house after for a bun fight. My 4 year old nephew and his mate played football non stop in the garden from about 12.30 up until it got dark.

At one point they set up two goals made from a pair of flip flops at one end and two sausage rolls at the other, about 5 yards apart. They were lying on their sides taking alternate shots. When someone told them to get up, my nephew said "NO, we’re playing sit down football!"

It was great, but what struck me was the technique they picked up stretched out on their sides. They were getting a lot of power for 4 year olds and were very accurate! They just made it all up by themselves.

It was a brilliant day and I learned something else about kids and football.”
Richard Webb - Coach

"Let youngsters develop at their own pace and enjoy football. When they reach twelve to fourteen years, then start teaching them basic skills. Training should be fun, so the youngsters have fun as well as learning at the same time."
Colin Foster (ex Nottingham Forest player)

"I love football - particularly beautiful football"
Johan Cruyff

"Children learn by playing."
John Allpress - Player development - The FA

"Everything I have achieved in football is due to playing football in the streets with my friends"
Zinedan Zidan

"The World Cup wasn't won (in 1966) on the playing fields of England. It was won on the streets"
Bobby Charlton

"I go out and play with imagination. It comes naturally to me. That's how everybody plays in London when your playing street football."
Joe Cole

"In England there is so much talent. I am convinced that at least 20 players at non league level could have played as well as Thierry Henry in the Premiership if they had been exposed to the correct coaching. I think it is easier to spoil your talent than bring it to the top."
Arsene Wenger

"I must admit that football in the streets gave us a great sense of freedom and liberty."
Eric Cantona

"I am not sure about the academy system most clubs have - what is the point of trying to discipline a seven year old? You have to let them find their own game. I never changed my game - people have to do what they feel comfortable with."
Gazza

"We didn't need a referee; we accepted the rules of the game and stuck by them. For us not to of done so would of spoilt the game for everyone. It taught us that you can't go around doing what you want because there are others to think of and if you don't stick to the rules, you spoil it for everyone else. Of course that was not a conscious thought at the time, but looking back those kick about games on the waste ground did prepare us for life."
Stanley Matthews

"Before a game when all the noise is happening around him, Zola sits in the corner and remembers when he used to play football in the hills of Sardinia, where he was born. He remembers the sheer joy of football and that is what is important."
Malcolm Cook

"The kid's game, chaotic as it is, is still the surest way of nurturing talent."
Paul Gardner (football journalist on street football)

"They learn to win before they can play."
Ted Bates (ex Southampton manager, on how young boys are rushed into competition far too early at the expense of acquiring technique.)

"It helped that I had so many quality player's around me.They all seemed so comfortable on the ball. (which explained why so many converted from left wing to left back or from midfield to sweeper) They could all pass the ball well and had sweet first touches. In England it was so often the case of 'don't pass to him, he can't handle it.' I never heard that in France."
(Chris Waddle on his time at Marseilles)

"We played until our legs gave way - scores of 15-13 were not uncommon - and I never stopped running. I tried to make up in enthusiasm what I lacked in physical presence, for all the boys were much bigger than I was, or so it felt.
Football united the kids. You didn't have to call for your mates; simply walking down the street bouncing a ball had the Pied Piper effect. We could all smell a game from 200 yards."
Tom Finney

"But when you go out into the street or park to play football with other children for the first time, you are immersed into a world you do not control and of which you are not the centre. There is no safety net. You have to learn how to get along, how to resolve disputes, how to get by."
Paulo de Canio

"Young players need freedom of expression to develop as creative players...they should be encouraged to try skills without fear of failure."
Arsene Wenger

"I knew I was better at football than the others in the playground, although the teachers just looked at my size and that was against me from the start."
Alan Ball (Ball was never selected for his school side despite winning a World Cup winners medal some 4 years later at the age of 19)

"It strikes me that these days clubs don't even want players that can truly play anymore; they just want athletes, quick guys that don't have a football brain, but can just run and run."
Robbie Fowler

"In a sport obsessed not merely by youth but by sheer childhood - clubs now co-opt eight and nine years olds - the late developers tend to be over looked."
Brian Glanville (football writer)

"I like to play by instinct."
Zinedan Zidane

"We played total football before the term was even invented. Times were hard, football I guess helped us forget, kept our spirits up, and gave us plenty to laugh about."
Jimmy Johnstone

"The spirit is wrong and it hurts me. I spent my whole career as a manager trying to stop this devaluation of the game. I cared more about the purity and finer values of football than I did about winning for winning's sake - and if that is a sin then I am a sinner. Football should be about taking risks."
Ron Greenwood

"Young kids should be taught how to play in every area of the pitch, not taught to play a specific role. They don't need to be taught a role because it is innate. Every player has a natural disposition towards one role or another but first they have to learn to play everywhere."
Lippi

QUOTES ON LEARNING

"You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation."
Plato

"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing."
George Bernard Shaw

"What we want to see is the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child."
George Bernard Shaw

"If a child is not learning the way you are teaching, then you must teach in the way the child learns."
Rita Dunn

"Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself."
Chinese Proverb

"Good teaching is more a giving of the right questions than a giving of the right answers."
J.Albers

"Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Involve me and I understand."
Chinese proverb

"I, myself, have had many failures and I've learned that if you are not failing a lot, you are probably not being as creative as you could be - you aren't stretching your imagination."
J.Backus

"Learning is an active process. We learn by doing."
Dale Carnegie

"The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think - rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with thoughts of other men."
Bill Beattie

"People say kids are getting too much football.That's not right. They're getting too little football, but what they are getting is too much pressurised football. They play with their schools and clubs and have adults screaming at them from the sidelines. They only play in front of parents and coaches and don't play on their own where they can learn from their own mistakes. If you're dribbling and get kicked on the shins you say to yourself it's about time I passed now, or your team mates will say 'Oi, greedy guts, give us a pass.' That's the way to learn."
Gordon Strachan (Celtic Manager)

"A great pianist doesn't run around the piano or do push ups with the tops of his fingers. To be great, he plays the piano. He plays all his life and being a footballer is not about running, push-ups or physical work generally. The best way to be a great footballer is to play."
Jose Mourinho (Chelsea Manager)