Roy Hodgson

I've worked for a long time and hope people have developed enough confidence in me that it will remain even in a period when we're not winning many games.

It's very flattering that those who have assessed my work over the years think that I have the qualities to be an England manager.

I don't like the way I see society going.

There is so much interaction in a football match: between you and your team-mates and how you support each other, work for each other, make runs. But I also enjoy the other aspect: the pressing and how people work so hard to recover the ball.

Getting that first foot on the rung of the ladder, that's where you find it easier to shrug off those times when your foot slips off, and you have to get yourself going again.

I assisted Bobby Houghton at Halmstads, and we were both just under 30. We'd say, 'Wouldn't it be great to do this for maybe 10 years, save a little money, then perhaps start a little business together.' Some sort of travel agency. We had no football thoughts beyond that, other than maybe combining it with a bit of sport, getting a few tours going.

A lot of the players who've done so well aren't necessarily the big names: James Tomkins, Luka Milivojevic to name two.

You can't flirt with relegation every year.

If success is about winning the league, there will always be 19 disappointed clubs.

I think, increasingly, people will define success as staying in the League, being a stable Premier League club that treats its fans to good football every year.

I don't sit around wondering, 'Why am I here? Who made the stars?' I prefer to look at the stars and benefit from them rather than concern myself with how they got there.

Fans jump on your bandwagon and desert you when you hit the harder times.

I am not only privileged to work for the FA and England: I have enjoyed working for the FA and England.

Hindsight does always serve the purpose of putting you in the right, and if you don't have it, you find yourself very often in the wrong.

I think I like the artistry of the game. I still get a lot of pleasure watching the good-quality teams play, where the movements of the players are coordinated. It's almost ballet-like, although 'ballet-like' is a bit of an exaggeration.

When you have been lucky enough to move up the ladder, all you see, really, is the slide back down. You don't see the further steps upwards.

I try very hard not to look back.

A lot of young coaches who respect the fact I have been doing it a long time, that is often their question: 'Does it get any easier? Can you relax more during the games? Can you take it all a little bit more philosophically and put it more in perspective?' The tragedy is that I have to tell them, 'No. If anything, it gets worse.'

Hugh Grant is about the only actor I've met who has taken any proper interest in football, being a big Fulham supporter. But he'd be far too good-looking to play me in any film.

I suffer during games. We follow the action, kicking every ball, wondering if our centre-backs can stop the cross... In some ways, you enjoy it, but your heart is always thumping.

I speak five languages: English, Swedish, French, Italian, and German.

I'm always disappointed when we lose, and it's happened quite a few times.

Everywhere I've managed, I've left a platform for my successor to build on, and this is a great satisfaction for me, even if I don't necessarily get the recognition for it.

Getting the balance right in everything is all of football and all of sport.

The Premier League is what it is. Some people will see the intensity and quality as a great advantage for your players: it will make them better. Some will see it as a disadvantage because the players play at such a high level and such intensity, it's difficult for them to drum that up, that intensity, with a very short space of rest time.

It wasn't purely Alex Ferguson's experience that made him a good manager, because he did it when he was inexperienced. But if you've got the qualities needed, and then you add experience to it, someone who's been through it, well, that has to be advantageous. There's no doubt about that.

I'm a football manager, a football coach; I can't be expected to pontificate on everything.

I don't think there are many people out there - except, perhaps, the odd Twitter troll who knows no better - who believes that racially abusing people or threatening people is the right way to go.

Brazil is a fantastic football country.

I like Philip Roth, John Updike, and Richard Yates.

I don't own photograph albums - the pictures that are important to me are etched in my mind.

I played a lot of tennis when I was young.

I've got to that stage in my life where, difficult decisions I don't have to make, I push them into the future until such time I have to make them.

I have always promised myself and my wife that when I don't enjoy it anymore, or I can't handle the stress and the pressure that comes with having such a high-profile and top job - or my energy levels starts to fail me, or my enthusiasm starts to be dented - I won't prolong my career longer than I feel I should.

There aren't many English managers, I suppose, who've had the sort of career that I've had, outside the country. With the amount of money that is going around in the Premier League, not many people are tempted to move abroad.

What you've got to do in any coaching job, whether it is moving to Sweden as a young man - where being English gave you a slight advantage - or something else, you've got to win the players' respect.

In football, however well you think you are doing, however well your life is going, there is always a mugger there lurking in the shadows to bash you over the head when you least expect it.

Of course, any work you do as a sporting person, a football coach or any coach, if it is good work, you've got to have something - a championship - to show for it.

Why shouldn't Harry Kane take corners? If he happens to be the best striker of a ball in the team and gives you the best delivery, why shouldn't he do it?

Really and truly, I don't like talking about refereeing decisions.

I don't think anything's cruel - if you're so sensitive these days that you see cruelty everywhere, unfortunately every time a comedian comes on television, you're going to accuse him of cruelty, because that's the kind of humour that the English people enjoy.

I didn't realise I had a speech impediment until I came back to England. I spent the whole of my life working abroad, and no-one mentioned it. I came back to England and suddenly realised I had a speech impediment.

I don't know whether you ever get over things that cause you pain.

I can get by quite well in Italian or German, though if the discussion got to a high level, I'd run out of vocabulary. I'm stronger in French and Swedish.

I quite liked Dostoyevsky when I was younger.

I was so fully involved in football and building a career that I didn't spend nearly enough time with my son when he was growing up.