"I was putting myself under enormous pressure to be successful"
About this Quote
The phrasing matters. “Putting myself” shifts responsibility away from managers, tabloids, or fans and onto the athlete’s internal scoreboard. It’s a confession that the harshest critic is often the one in the mirror. “Enormous pressure” is deliberately unspecific, which makes it more credible: it covers everything from form and fitness to leadership expectations and the fear of letting down a club that treats you as a civic symbol. The word “successful” is equally telling. It’s not “happy,” not “proud,” not even “better.” It’s the metric the industry rewards, and the one that erases nuance: win, score, deliver, repeat.
In Dalglish’s context - playing and later managing in eras when mental strain was rarely discussed as mental health - the line reads like a quiet corrective to the old mythology that toughness means not feeling anything. It also hints at the double bind of legends: the better you get, the more your baseline becomes everyone else’s ceiling. The subtext is that pressure isn’t just applied by the sport; it’s learned, internalized, and, for champions, sometimes self-inflicted.
Quote Details
| Topic | Success |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Dalglish, Kenny. (2026, January 15). I was putting myself under enormous pressure to be successful. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-was-putting-myself-under-enormous-pressure-to-152086/
Chicago Style
Dalglish, Kenny. "I was putting myself under enormous pressure to be successful." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-was-putting-myself-under-enormous-pressure-to-152086/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I was putting myself under enormous pressure to be successful." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-was-putting-myself-under-enormous-pressure-to-152086/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.





