Niall Quinn & The Old School

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,4-476987,00.html

Nice piece-but interesting bits about how the game has changed:

Even though we were off the beaten track, fans would drive by, beep their horns and remind us of what it was all for. Doesn’t happen any more in the game. And we stopped doing it too: our foreign brethren had to be home for their yoga teacher. I’ve seen this great change in our football culture and I don’t think it’s as good for the game as people think. On paper, the view of the foreign player makes sense. You eat better, you look after yourself better and no fan can ever say he saw you drunk in the pub. But often the dedication of the foreign player stops when he drives out of the club’s car park. The thrill of doing it as a group can help you more than one individual eating pasta for the five days before the next game.

"...There are tons of people in the game, non-football people in my opinion, who have become very influential because they know about diet and physiology and psychology. They are clever people but their point of view is not as important as it is made out to be.

In the teams that I played, the ones that did best were the teams that went out and died for each other. I look around at the teams in today’s Premiership, with their five or six foreign players, and I ask myself ‘if I was on their team, would I die for them?’ No I wouldn’t because I know they would never die for me.”
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