“To see the ball, to run after it, makes me the happiest man in the world.”

If you don’t want to play clean football then go up into the stands

I hate everything that comes from the United States. I hate it with all my strength.

I’m alive and I want to keep living.

If I could apologise and go back and change history I would do. But the goal is still a goal, Argentina became world champions and I was the best player in the world

I’d give my life to be the national team coach.

When I wear the national team shirt, its sole contact with my skin makes it stand on an end.

Things are neither clear nor clean in the world of football right now and many people recognise this reality.

I was, I am and I always will be a drug addict. A person who gets involved in drugs has to fight it everyday.

My mother thinks I am the best. And I was raised to always believe what my mother tells me.

What I love most about Norway is you ladies. Back home I’m used to fat and hairy women journalists.

Everybody in Argentina can remember the hand of God in the England match in the 1986 World Cup. Now, in my country, the hand of God has brought us an Argentinian pope.

Messi scores a goal and celebrates. Cristiano scores a goal and poses like he’s in a shampoo commercial.

I have 23 top players and they are all ready to put on the jersey and work on the pitch and that makes you happy and then you have peace of mind.

I certainly have an advantage over some because I can pass on so much from the World Cups I played in.

I am Maradona, who makes goals, who makes mistakes. I can take it all, I have shoulders big enough to fight with everybody.

All the people that criticised me should eat their words.

If a man speak or act with a good thought, happiness follows him like a shadow that never leaves him.

A healthy country is a happy country.

Doing nothing is happiness for children and misery for old men.

I think happiness is love.

Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them.

Happiness exists when you don’t know a thing.

There cannot be a happy ending to the fight between the raging gods and humans.

Self-loathing doesn’t keep me from being happy. But that doesn’t mean I don’t struggle.