Quotes on World Cup

An artist in my eyes, is someone who can lighten up a dark room. I have never and will never find difference between the pass from Pele to Carlos Alberto in the final of the World Cup in 1970 and the poetry of the young Rimbaud, who stretches cords from steeple to steeple and garlands from window to window. There is in each of these human manifestations an expression of beauty which touches us and gives us a feeling of eternity.

The truth is that I don't have a favourite goal. I remember important goals more than I do favourite goals, like goals in the Champions League where I had the opportunity to have scored in both finals I have played in. Finals in the World Cup or Copa del Rey are the ones that have stayed with me for longer or that I remember more.

The World Cup is a very important way to measure the good players, and the great ones. It is a test of a great player.

You know the marathon in my country is just exceptional. It's like soccer in England. If England win the world cup and Ethiopia win the marathon - it's the same.

You have to show up in the World Cup, and in the World Cup anything can happen.

The first World Cup I remember was in the 1950 when I was 9 or 10 years old. My father was a soccer player, and there was a big party, and when Brazil lost to Uruguay, I saw my father crying.

It seems that soccer tournaments create those relationships: people gathered together in pubs and living rooms, a whole country suddenly caring about the same event. A World Cup is the sort of common project that otherwise barely exists in modern societies.