Rio Ferdinand Quotes

Every professional athlete has fear, doubts and negative thoughts. But people expect you to just ignore them and move forward.

What cracks me up is people who think I don't take baseball seriously. It's the most important thing in my life. They don't know how hard it is for me to get a bad game out of my mind. I still can't, but I'm getting better.

When I'm on my own, I can be negative. I need my friends and family around to help pick me up if I've had a bad qualifying session. I think insecurity plagues a lot of sportspeople.

What's the worst thing that can happen to a quarterback? He loses his confidence.

I went from being one of the best players, batting .550, to not being able to do it mentally, hitting .200. I thought I was mentally tough. But I couldn't hit the ball.

I can just remember what I have seen, and then I often think about how I do well throughout the match, and then, if I miss one chance, everyone talks about the miss. Only that.

You have to forget you are playing against your idol, because the guy on the other side also wants to play better than you and beat you. I don't think you should allow yourself to think like this when you go against any player.

I believe that some athletes have fear, but you have to work on that. Athletes can't have fear. Fear of what? Fear of losing? Everybody loses one day.

I get quite stroppy if I lose - but I've developed skills with a mind coach to help deal with the highs and lows of tennis at this level.

If you start badly, and the crowd get on your case, there is no way back. But if you start well and your confidence is high all that booing becomes music to your ears.

Learning how to compete is one of the most important things that an athlete can do. You can train as well as you possibly can and go compete and completely choke.

Teams go on runs. We have to be able to withstand a run and not get down on ourselves.

I think we all have had better days in competition.

I think in the lifetime of a tennis player there are many times where you feel that tremendous confidence.

People attach too much importance to intangibles like heart, desire and clutch hitting.

Good pitchers, after a tough outing, bounce back. Real good pitchers don't let too many poor games get in there.

After I lost the first set, I was like, 'OK, I need to get help because I can't play this way.'

Four years ago maybe we thought we were inferior to Brazil, subconsciously we didn't see ourselves beating them. Now we believe in ourselves, we can be on the pitch with any team in the world and think we can win.

It is very dangerous to have your self-worth riding on your results as an athlete.

As far as the anxiety, I have no idea about it. I don't feel like I have any nervousness out there. I'm just a guy who really cares about being competitive and that's the bottom line.

As I got older and started moving up the ranking, the matches got more important, and my emotions ratcheted up. I guess I hid my real feelings behind the anger.

Most of my best games were when I felt crap - I could hardly move on the morning of the World Cup semi-final in 1990 - but there's a thing called adrenaline that gets you through.

When I go to competitions, I don't have so much confidence that I don't worry or get nervous about the other skaters doing well.

People might think it's all about getting up for a game but it's often the opposite.

Sometimes I go home, put the game on, and think, 'How can I miss that?' It affects you; it also affects you to know your career also depends on the opinion of journalists, fans, directors, and sometimes they're not really qualified to judge.