Bill Shankly

Someone said to me 'To you football is a matter of life or death!' and I said 'Listen, it's more important than that'.

William Shankly (2 September 1913 – 29 September 1981) was a Scottish football player and manager, who is best known for his time as manager of Liverpool.

Quotes

• A football team is like a piano. You need eight men to carry it and three who can play the damn thing.
  • Quoted by John Toshack in Kevin McCarra, "How Benítez built Liverpool," The Guardian (2006-01-21)

• At a football club, there's a holy trinity – the players, the manager and the supporters.
  • "Bill Shankly: Life, death and football", The Guardian (2009-10-18)

• Someone said to me 'To you football is a matter of life or death!' and I said 'Listen, it's more important than that'.
  • An interview on a Granada Television chat-show, hosted by Shelley Rohde on Wednesday 20th of May 1981

• The socialism I believe in is everyone working for each other, everyone having a share of the rewards. It's the way I see football, the way I see life.
  • Powley, Adam; Gillan, Robert (2015). Shankly's Village: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Glenbuck and its Famous Footballing Sons. Worthing, UK: Pitch. ISBN 9781785310706. OCLC 931595421. Retrieved on 2016-08-18. 

Disputed

• Aim for the sky and you’ll reach the ceiling. Aim for the ceiling and you’ll stay on the floor.
  • Attributed to Shankly in 2013 [1], thirty years after Shankly's death. However, very similar sayings are found anonymously from the late twentieth-century. Harrington and Kavanagh, Prayer for Parish Groups: Preparing and Leading Prayer for Group Meetings, p. 32, 1998

External links

• It's Not Your Leg Son - Book of Shankly Quotes pub. Tangent Books