“My ambition is always to get better and better.”
“What I do is play football, which is what I like.”
“Money is not a motivating factor… My motivation comes from playing the game I love.”
“You can overcome anything, if and only if you love something enough.”
“Sometimes you have to accept you can’t win all the time.”
“Something deep in my character allows me to take the hits and get on with trying to win”
“Being named among the best at something is special and beautiful. But if there are no titles, nothing is won.”
“I used to serve tea at a shop to support my football training.”
“Being a bit famous now gives me the opportunity to help people who really need it, especially children”
“The best decisions aren’t made with your mind, but with your instincts”
“Ronaldo was my hero. I loved watching players like Zidane, Ronaldinho and Rivaldo, but Ronaldo was the best striker I’ve ever seen. He was so fast he could score from nothing and could shoot the ball better than anyone I’ve ever seen.”
“I am the happiest man alive and I am happy for myself, for my family and for my country.”
“You cannot allow your desire to be a winner to be diminished by achieving success before and I believe there is room for improvement in every sportsman.”
“Today I am the happiest man in the world, my son was born and thanks to God for this gift.”
“The truth is my idea has been to always stay at Barcelona and see out the rest of my career here. Like I always say, one doesn’t know what can happen in the future, but if it were up to me to decide, I would stay at Barcelona for the rest of my career.”
“It doesn’t matter if I am better than Cristiano Ronaldo, all that matters is that Barcelona are better than Madrid.”
“Argentina is my country, my family, my way of expressing myself. I would trade all of my records for the World Cup trophy.”
“Barcelona is my life. They have brought me to where I am today. I could not leave, I don’t want to leave. I know the Premier League is very good. But I cannot see myself playing in England because my heart is with Barcelona, always.”
“I’m always proudest whenever I’ve been part of a trophy-winning team. Lifting a title makes me feel so happy because it’s what I want to do in football: be successful.”
“I’m lucky to be part of a team that helps to make me look good, and they deserve as much of the credit for my success as I do for the hard work we have all put in on the training ground.”
“Whether it’s a friendly match, or for points, or a final, or any game – I play the same. I’m always trying to be my best, first for my team, for myself, for the fans, and to try and win.”
“I never think about the play or visualize anything. I do what comes to me at that moment. Instinct. It has always been that way.”
“I start early and I stay late, day after day, year after year, it took me 17 years and 114 days to become an overnight success.”
“I don’t need the best hairstyle or the best body. Just give me a ball at my feet and I’ll show you what I can do.”
“I still have a lot of room for improvement. For example, I want to shoot equally well with both feet.”
“If I hadn’t had support, I wouldn’t have been able to fulfill my dreams.”
“For my part, I try to do my bit to make people’s lives more bearable, in particular children across the globe who are having problems.”
“I think my desire to always get better, to always want more, to always be my top critic, and accepting the good and the bad is a trait that accounts for my success”
“There’s nothing more satisfying than seeing a happy and smiling child. I always help in any way I can, even if it’s just by signing an autograph. A child’s smile is worth more than all the money in the world.”
“My family was always present when I needed them and sometimes felt even stronger emotions than me.”
“You have to fight to achieve your dreams. You have to sacrifice and work hard for it.”
“Just to hear people saying and thinking that makes me very proud indeed. But I try not to think about it too much and just focus on enjoying everything that I have in this life.”
“It takes sacrifice as well as talent.”
“I am a normal person. I have the same life as any human being. When I finish playing, doing my work, I have my family, my friends, and I live like any other person.”
“Little by little, I’m getting better all the time. I’ve not lost the passion to play.”
“I have fun like a child in the street. When the day comes when I’m not enjoying it, I will leave football.”
“Every year I try to grow as a player and not get stuck in a rut. I try to improve my game in every way possible. But that trait is not something I’ve worked on, it’s part of me.”
“I go out and do the best I can in each game, and I don’t think about the fouls other players will commit or whether I might be injured. It only does you harm to worry about those things.”
“I am more worried about being a good person than being the best football player in the world”
“When the year starts the objective is to win it all with the team, personal records are secondary.“
“There are more important things in life than winning or losing a game”
“I like to score goals but I also like to have friends among the people I have played with.”
“You have to show up in the World Cup, and in the World Cup anything can happen.”
“I’ve never stopped being Argentine, and I’ve never wanted to. I feel very proud of being Argentine, even though I left there. I’ve been clear about this since I was very young, and I never wanted to change.”
“If I wasn’t paid to be a professional footballer, I would willingly play for nothing.”
“The objective is to win with all the team, personal records are secondary.”
“Every time I start a year, I start with the objective of trying to achieve everything, without comparing it to how I’ve done in other seasons.”
“Motivation is not something I struggle with. I love playing football, I love being in training.”
“I always thought about carrying on training and working, chasing my dream.”
“This is why I didn’t go out to parties and many other things. I am successful because I made sacrifices for success.”
“I have no intention of comparing myself with Maradona – I want to make my own history for something I have achieved.”
“I made sacrifices by leaving Argentina, leaving my family to start a new life. I changed my friends, my people. Everything. But everything I did, I did for football, to achieve my dream.”
