Simon Barnes

Football is based on desperation. All clubs are desperate in one form or another - desperate to succeed, desperate to survive, desperate…

— Simon Barnes

The combination of an out-of-control tabloid press and a readership that thrills to the destruction of the England head coach is something…

— Simon Barnes

Penalties are not football. They are not even as television people keep telling us, great drama. They are cheap melodrama.

— Simon Barnes

We can only truly be civilised people when we have regular and meaningful contact with the wild world

— Simon Barnes

A living countryside is not a luxury but a necessity for the human population; if you let conservation go hang until your…

— Simon Barnes

The traditional dress of the Australian cricketer is the baggy green cap on the head and the chip on the shoulder. Both…

— Simon Barnes

Humans lived for several million years as fully wild beings: only in the last 10, 000 did we invent agriculture; only in…

— Simon Barnes

Nature is not horrible. Nature is not wonderful. Nature is not cruel. Nature is not beautiful. Nature only is.

— Simon Barnes

If you are old and you wish to be young again, if only for a moment, try and identify a dragonfly.

— Simon Barnes

Acquiring the trick of listening to birds will teach you how better to enjoy life and how better to endure it

— Simon Barnes

Sven must have neglected to pay tribute to one of those strict Nordic gods. But instead of cursing Eriksson himself, Thor has…

— Simon Barnes

Behind every footballing tough guy there lurks a mincing aesthete with a love of art for art's sake, football for football's sake.…

— Simon Barnes

Everybody loves birdsong. It's a human need... the sound of birds gives a deep, if sometimes almost unnoticed, pleasure

— Simon Barnes

Sport is something that does not matter, but is performed as if it did. In that contradiction lies its beauty

— Simon Barnes

There are three great international team sports in Australia: cricket, rugby (two codes), and Pom-bashing. But the greatest of these is the…

— Simon Barnes

It is a truism that no row is ever about what it is about.

— Simon Barnes

There was an advert I rather liked. Devastated woman: "I've just seen the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse!" Husband: "Never mind, love,…

— Simon Barnes

What politician ever thinks beyond 4 or 5 years? But such thinking is hopelessly inadequate for the big questions that involve the…

— Simon Barnes

Never mind, love, it's not the end of the world.

— Simon Barnes

An innings of neurotic violence, of eccentric watchfulness, of brainless impetuosity and incontinent savagery - it was an extraordinary innings, a masterpiece…

— Simon Barnes

The comfort zone is always the most desirable place to be. But in settling for comfort, there is a price to pay…

— Simon Barnes