Fundamentally, footballers don't look around a dressing room and think, 'He's a black player... he's Japanese.' They don't think like that. They think, 'He's a good player; he can help. He's not very good.' I'm not trying to defend anyone's actions, but there are going to be isolated incidents because it's an emotive, passionate sport.
Interpretation
Footballers prioritize skill over race or nationality, emphasizing a common goal.
In this quote, Gary Lineker suggests that professional footballers focus on their teammates' abilities rather than their racial or ethnic backgrounds. He acknowledges that while there may be instances of prejudice, the essence of teamwork in football is defined by the shared passion for the game and the recognition of talent, rather than personal differences.
In practice
During a sportsmanship speech at a youth football camp.
The big thing is, everybody says it's being in the right place at the right time. But it's more than that, it's being in the right place all the time. Because if I make 20 runs to the near post and each time I lose my defender, and 19 times the ball goes over my head or behind me - then one time I'm three yards out, the ball comes to the right place and I tap it in - then people say, right place, right time. And I was there *all* the time.
Playing football and presenting TV are totally different things, but there are similarities: it's exciting, it can go well, it can go badly... the difference is when presenting goes badly, it doesn't really affect anyone's life, whereas when you have a bad day on the pitch, it affects people's moods for a whole week.
Football is a simple game. Twenty-two men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans always win.
I watched Leicester City lose in the 1969 FA Cup final with my dad and granddad when I was eight and cried all the way home. I have seen them get promoted and relegated. I played for them for eight years. I even got a group of like-minded fans and friends to stump up a few quid to salvage the club when they went into liquidation.
Our tools are extensions of our purposes, and so we find it natural to make metaphorical attributions of intentionality to them; but I take it no philosophical ice is cut by such examples.
Nothing is more painful to the human mind than, after the feelings have been worked up by a quick succession of events, the dead calmness of inaction and certainty which follows and deprives the soul both of hope and fear.
But this is the great danger America faces. That we will cease to be one nation and become instead a collection of interest groups: city against suburb, region against region, individual against individual. Each seeking to satisfy private wants.
The world is a nested space, and so we have our brain as a person, and people are members of teams, and teams are part of business units, and business units are parts of corporations, and corporations are part of industries, which are part of economies.
Christian living means dying with Christ and rising again. That, as we saw, is part of the meaning of baptism, the starting point of the Christian pilgrimage.
Apathy is a rational reaction to a system that no longer represents, hears or addresses the vast majority of people.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.