Classic football (soccer) quote

Factual Questions
1

It being close to the finals in the EC-2008 and Germany being one of the teams in the final (don’t want to spoil the second SF for anyone), RedFury wrote the classic football quote:

“[…]football is a game played by eleven players a side that Germany always win […]”

He credited it to Keegan, I think it was Lineker and my dutch buddy says it was a dutch TV-commentator.

So does anyone know who said it? The excact quote? And for extra brilliant scores with a gold star on the side: When it was said?

And this being a question with a factual answer, I’m guessing I’m in the right place. Right?

2

‘…played for 90 minutes, by 22 players, and Germany always win.’ That’s the way I know it, whether from fact or fiction, I don’t know. But it’s not out of keeping for the type of aside Gary Lineker will conclude a broadcast with.

3

That sounds more right, somehow… but I really also want to add: on penalties

And one vote for Lineker then.

4

Oooooooooooohh, good point. Other options for searchability, although I’ve tried brief Googling with them both, are ‘shoot out’ and ‘west germany’.

5

West Germany means the quote should be from the 80.s at the latest - which kinda excludes it being a Lineker quote, right?

Or did he say smart things as a player aswell?

6

I always thought it predated Linekar (though he’s definitely repeated it, and I definitely though it was “at the end the Germans win ON PENALTIES”). A quick google found references to both Linekar and Cruijff (though more often to Linekar):

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q="football+is+a+game"+"Germans+win"+quote&btnG=Google+Search

7

That was just me searching and finding lots of results, you’re right, it doesn’t make much sense for a recent quote.

8

Fucking hell. Googling ‘game men ninety minutes germany penalties’ gives over a million results.

9

Which is kinda what I found out before I posted the question :slight_smile:

I am counting on the infinite wisdom of the SDMB to help me in this quest.

(hmm… wonder if that works;) )

10

If Youtube would let us search the utterances of the characters onscreen, we would have no problem. The trouble is, we can’t even use quotes to search for ‘match of the day’ (although only one of those could be searched here, either).

11

Attributed to Gary Lineker on several web sites. (I searched for “football is a game played” and Germany. Only 959 hits.

12

Looks like we have a winner!

It’s post 162, in this thread

13

You can find the quote in Wikiquote, though it is unattributed.

Someone who really wants to can probably run it down; it came after the semi-final game in 1990 at the World Cup, so there has to be some report of it from the time.

14

Really? It sounds to me more like something from his current career as a TV presenter.

15

BBC Sports attributes it to Lineker (first line of the article). But no saying where or when…

My quest goes on (on a very slow workday with both bosses out of the office :cool: )

16

Just occurred to me that the wording including ‘ninety minutes…Germany win on penalties’ doesn’t make sense - that would be a game of 120 minutes, penalties after extra time.

17

So very true. And the BBC-link doesn´t include the penalty part either.

18

While there is some inconsistency in the quotation, it does not usually include penalties. For example, neither the BBC link given by WormTheRed nor the one by me mention penalties.

Many references associate the quotation with 1990, but I cannot find any direct link - the sites may just be associating the quotation back to an example of its truth.

19

And I just spent the last hour watching you-tube videos of the WG-England game, with none of them including that quote :frowning:

(Yeah, it´s a slow work-day. Why do you ask? :wink: )

20

As Lineker was on the pitch, I would assume that if he did come up with those words it would have been after the match anyway.