31) “Despite the global warming, England is still not warm enough for him.”
32) “Gerard Houllier’s thoughts on the matter [international football] echo mine. He thinks that what the national coaches are doing is like taking the car from his garage without even asking permission. They will then use the car for ten days and abandon it in a field without any petrol left in the tank. We then have to recover it, but it is broken down. Then a month later they will come to take your car again, and for good measure you’re expected to be nice about it.”
33) “Gerard is an open-minded and passionate man. I am the opposite: stubborn and stupid. But sometimes stupid behaviour makes you win.”
34) “I do not think about the national team too much because footballistically it is not of too much interest.”
35) [On losing the lead of the league in November 2004] “It’s like a child who is used to having ice cream whenever he wants. When it doesn’t come when he asks he tends to get confused and nervous.”
36) “Any man who concentrates his energies totally on one passion is, by definition, someone who hurts the people close to him.”
37) “We were considering him [Ruud van Nistelrooy] and Francis Jeffers and, in the end, we went for Jeffers.”
38) “Maybe people will be surprised that I have signed an Englishman but I looked at his quality and not his passport. Francis is a ‘fox in the box’.”
39) [On Ruud van Nistelrooy in 2003] “He can only cheat.”
40) “I think in England you eat too much sugar and meat and not enough vegetables.”