- [press conference] You have different socks on? [Journalist: Yeah, I like to mix it up a bit sometimes.] Do you? [Journalist: Yeah. You're not a fan?] Well... [long pause] no. [Journalist: I'll make sure they're the same next time.] I'm okay with them but I'm not a fan.
- [June 2008] I don't know if he [David Beckham] would play if I was manager because I'm really impressed with David Bentley - I'm surprised he doesn't play regularly.
- [June 2008] [Would you, then, like to manage England?] Who wouldn't? England is like a cool woman - whoever says they wouldn't is afraid. They haven't got balls, or he's lying, though I'm not sure about José Mourinho. He has balls and he's not a liar. Maybe with Mourinho, the problem - and I love him - was that if you're a national-team manager doing a good job you know you can do it with a club because if, for example, you need a left-back, you buy. But too long in club management, you could face problems managing a national team because you have no time, no players to buy. Maybe this was the reason Mourinho didn't... But I don't think so, maybe every day he needs to work.
- [June 2008] Sometimes club managers, to protect their jobs, say, "Oh, it's like nuclear physics." The only question is can you cope with 25 guys who think they're great, can you change the game, and [deal] with journalists. I'm not big-headed, but Wenger and Lippi didn't tell me something new. They proved to me that I'm right.
- [June 2008] [My maternal grandmother] was sports mad. I remember the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics she would stay up watching water polo and everything.
- [June 2008] It's normal in Europe [smoking]. In my national team we have two who are smoking. [Does it concern you?] No. Of course, they don't smoke in the dressing room, when we have our lunch together, they don't smoke in front of me. But if we're in a hotel bar and they are sitting over there and I'm here then, I mean, why stop them? It's better to see them than if they're going to go to their room and smoke three in a row. In my national team, we had maybe 10 players who were smokers. [What did Miroslav Blazevic - Croatia's head coach from 1994 to 2000 - think?] Nothing. He used to ask me for a cigarette because he was always short. In Germany, maybe 20 per cent were smoking. In England it was different - only the foreigners and Julian Dicks [the West Ham left-back], of course. The players were like, "Oh you're smoking", and were totally pissed. I said, "How can you drink so much?"'
- With the greatest respect to women, football is the most beautiful thing in the world.
- I won't [take off my earring]. The earring reminds me of my time at law school.
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