Success Quote by Alan Hansen

Pressure, in Alan Hansen's framing, isn't some abstract mental game; it's an economic system you can feel in your ribs. The line is unfinished on purpose, and that dangling "more and more" does the heavy lifting. It mimics the treadmill he is describing: no final arrival, no stable plateau, just an escalating cycle where the stakes keep rising and the room to breathe keeps shrinking.

As an elite footballer who later became a broadcaster, Hansen sat at the intersection of two eras: the older, rougher, less monetized game and the modern sport remade by TV money, branding, and relentless scrutiny. His point isn't that athletes are suddenly softer. It's that the incentive structure has hardened. When rewards explode (contracts, endorsements, legacy) and penalties multiply (benching, public humiliation, career-ending injuries, being memed into oblivion), the emotional cost isn't a personal failing; it's the logical outcome of a high-stakes marketplace.

The subtext is a quiet rebuke to the "just handle it" culture. Hansen implies that pressure is not merely internal, something you conquer with grit, but external, engineered by institutions that profit from constant jeopardy. The phrase also smuggles in a warning: when success becomes jackpot-sized and failure becomes catastrophic, risk-taking narrows, joy drains out, and performance turns defensive. The modern game doesn't just demand excellence; it demands it under conditions designed to make falling short feel like free fall.