"When the seagulls follow the trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea."

"I didn't study; I live. You can't study these things; life teaches them to you. You don't find them in a book. I've read a lot of Socrates on page three of the Sun."

"I feel close to the rebelliousness and vigour of the youth here. Perhaps time will separate us, but nobody can deny that here, behind the windows of Manchester, there is an insane love of football, of celebration and of music."

"When you are a rich man you are proud to own a Rolls Royce and when you are a poor man you are proud to own a Renault."

"After his first training session in heaven, George Best, from his favourite right wing, turned the head of God who was filling in at left-back. I would love for him to save me a place in his team - George Best that is, not God."

"I might have said that, but on the whole I talk a lot of rubbish."

"I am God."

"Whatever happens, there are always things you could have done better. You score two goals and you usually feel you could have done better.You score two goals and you usually feel you could have scored a third. That's perfectionism. That's what makes you progress in life."

"I prefer to play and lose rather than win, because I know in advance I'm going to win."

"I am very mistrustful of people who are constantly overintellectualising things. It kills passion. You have to allow yourself to lose control from time to time."

"If you have only one passion in life - football - and you pursue it to the exclusion of everything else, it becomes very dangerous. When you stop doing this activity it is as though you are dying. The death of that activity is a death in itself."

"My best moment? I have a lot of good moments but the one I prefer is when I kicked the hooligan."

"Often there are players who have only football as a way of expressing themselves and never develop other interests. And when they no longer play football, they no longer do anything; they no longer exist, or rather they have the sensation of no longer existing."