Abby Wambach Quotes

Whenever you get to win, you feel the satisfaction of all of your hard work, all the sacrifices, all the blood, sweat and tears. It feels right and makes you realise that you are really doing the right thing.

Note: When they say you're ridiculous, you know you're onto something.

The growth of women's soccer and women's sports all around the world has been slow.

You must not only have competitiveness but ability, regardless of the circumstance you face, to never quit

Four goals in (16) minutes. Literally I don't even know how that happens especially in a World Cup final.

Women - who are feared by many to be a threat to our system - will become our society's salvation.

I always think that struggle can bring out the best in people - or the worst.

My sole focus is to help bring a World Cup back to the U.S.

If given a really great chance, I'm going to put it away every single time.

[...] insist upon remembering. Because we know that the lessons of yesterday's loss become the fuel for tomorrow's win.

I really enjoy helping people out, and I enjoy time spent with kids.

A champion never allows a short-term failure to take her out of a long-term game.

The minute you step off that podium is the minute you start preparing for the next world championship. That's kind of how I work. You celebrate for a brief moment, then you move on.

When I was in college, I learned to really take care of my body and figured out what works best for me and what doesn't work for me when it comes to my nutrition. That helped so much on the field because soccer is such a fitness-oriented game.

When I was really young, the women's national team wasn't on a grand media stage, so my role models were male basketball and male American football players.

No I or individual is better than the team. I've scored no goals just on my own. Every goal I've ever scored has been because of someone else on my team, their excellence, their bravery. And I'm kind of the end product of a collection of a really good vibe, and feeling, and creativity on the field.

I would love to be a mum if I'm blessed to have children. My wife and I have those plans.

I can't speak for other people, but for me, I feel like gone are the days that you need to come out of a closet. I never felt like I was in a closet. I never did. I always felt comfortable with who I am and the decisions I made.

Soccer players generally burn through all of their carbohydrate stores by halftime, so how are you going to replace those? That's what we do at halftime.

I have a unique ability to predict the flight of the ball, and my teammates have a unique ability to find me.

Sometimes there has to be a goat on some level, and I'm totally fine with that being me.

A few goals is the way soccer is meant to be played.

People don't think an athlete nowadays can have a team-first mentality and I do.

Sometimes when you fail, it allows you the opportunity to grow more motivation and get more intense about your training.

It's always really challenging trying to go from player to player/coach. You have a kind of friendship basis of relationship with all of your teammates, and now you go to this power position where you have to make decisions that might hurt people's feelings.

This might sound masochistic or narcissistic, I don't know, but when I'm not playing the game, the validations I feel about life are always through the hardships. I relate more to sadness, in a lot of ways, when I'm not playing.

Playing on turf affects everything, you know, it affects the way the ball rolls, it affects the way the ball bounces, it affects the way you think about whether or not going into a slide. It's kind of a nightmare.

My go-to karaoke? 'Alone' by Celine Dion.

One thing I love to do when I'm working out is take my watch off, take my heart strap off, and just run - not for time, not for exertion, but just to get the blood flowing.

I would trade all the individual awards I've won for a World Cup.

If I can help a kid feel more comfortable in their skin because they're struggling with maybe the things I struggled with in high school, that's great.

I think making the referee aware of a situation, there is nothing wrong with that.

Recently, on a call with a company hiring me to teach about leadership, a man said, "Excuse me, Abby, I just need to ensure that what you present is applicable to men, too."
I said, "Good question! But only if you've asked every male speaker you;ve hired if his message is applicable to women, too.

Women must stop following the Old Rules, which exist only to maintain the status quo. If we follow the rules we've always followed, the game will remain the same. Old ways of thinking will never help us build a new world. Out with the Old. In with the New.

I've always had a dream of owning a restaurant.

I don't care who scores the goals, I'm going to leave my human beingness on the field!

It's not pressure. It's responsibility We put it on ourselves.

Wear what you want.
Love who you love.
Become what you imagine.
Create what you need.
You were never Little Red Riding Hood.
You were always the Wolf.

You can do as many sprints as you want but there's nothing like playing in a 90-minute soccer game. There's no better way to gain your fitness, in my opinion, than playing in consistent games.

As an athlete, you are literally programmed to endure a specific amount of pain.

I'm not in the business of politics.

To win a championship, you have to have a little bit of luck on your side.

Having different people come together and be on a team and win a world championship is literally, I think, the definition of being American.

At the most elite level, your nutrition becomes a lifestyle: it's not something you have to do when you're preparing for Olympic games or World Cup games - you just do it. You're more inclined to eat healthier because it's better for your muscles.

As a competitor, I want to continue to keep turning the chapters and keep challenging myself.

To watch people push themselves further than they think they can, it's a beautiful thing. It's really human.

My teammates have put me in all different kinds of positions to score goals, and I can't say it enough, and I really through and through believe it in my heart that I'm only as good as my teammates allow me to be.

I'm not spending every second thinking about the World Cup, but it's always in my mind when I make choices and decisions.

Sometimes if you have a coach or team-mates for too long, you get caught in certain routines. I think it's good to shake up things a little bit.

I know that I was put on this planet to be an athlete.

For any athlete growing up, the Olympics is the one thing you watch with your family, and it's the one thing you dream about. Seeing your country's flag go up as you get a gold medal is the best thing you can achieve.

Any good attacker will always beat a defender who's face-marking you.

When you can score three goals without the most prolific scorer in the world, you know you have a lot of depth, and it gives you confidence.

My nephew has type 1 diabetes, and it's my goal and hope that in his lifetime there will be a cure for diabetes. There's no place better to give the money to than the Juvenile Diabetes Association.

My parents, they're the kind of people that didn't want me to get a big head, so they just kept challenging me and challenging me.

If we can trust each other and leave everything-all our hearts-out on the field, I think we're going to have something to come home to and cheer about.

I'm pretty goofy. I laugh at my own jokes.

You know me, I'm not that kind of person that cares to unveil all of my personal things to the world because frankly, in terms of my soccer, it doesn't matter.

What keeps the pay gap in existence is not just the entitlement and complicity of men. It's the gratitude of women. Our gratitude is how power uses the tokenism of a few women to keep the rest of us in line.

Any little touch a defender can make on me when I'm in the air literally moves me. On the ground, I can use my muscle, but in the air, it's harder to fight that off.

I have never once dribbled the whole field and scored a goal by myself.

I don't care how many championships you've won or how many records you've broken - if you've had a hand in pushing forward not only a game but women in sport's movement, then I think that's pretty darn good.

If you break an individual record, it's because of the greatness that comes before you.

The world needs to see women take risks, fail big, and insist on their right to stick around and try again. And again. And again. A champion never allows a short-term failure to take her out of the long-term game. A woman who doesn't give up can never lose.

The most important thing is that sometimes you have to go through hard times to get to the good stuff.

I think that in order to get better as an athlete and to see whatever kind of results you're after, you have to make goals. Whether you write them down or tell someone about them, it's important to set goals for yourself in order to achieve any kind of success.

You never know if you can actually do something against all odds until you actually do it.

People don't understand that the feel of the surface is so important for a footballer. The ball travels on the surface; our feet move on the surface - all of that goes into how the game is actually played.

During events like the World Cup and the Olympics, I tend to get really wrapped up in my own experience to stay focused, but it's like a bubble. I don't see much outside my own perspective.

I've always been motivated more by negative comments than by positive ones. I know what I do well. Tell me what I don't do well.

There are standards of the game that FIFA governs and promises to uphold.

I know that I'll end up being a role model for many, many people out there for all kinds of reasons.