Motivation Quote by Ruud van Nistelrooy

Gratitude, disbelief, and a little bit of opportunism all land in the same breath here - the emotional signature of tournament football, where your fate is often decided by someone else’s game. Ruud van Nistelrooy isn’t delivering statesmanship; he’s narrating the strange moral economy of international sport, where “duty” becomes a convenient word for “you helped us by beating them.”

The line “thankful to the Czechs” frames a rival nation as temporary allies, a reminder that group-stage math can scramble loyalties faster than any geopolitical map. Calling it “their duty” is the slyest move: it casts the Czech Republic’s win as something almost obligatory, as if competitive integrity exists primarily to serve the drama of qualification. It’s half compliment, half claim on the outcome - a way of saying: the tournament is working the way it’s supposed to.

“I can’t believe it” does the opposite work: it punctures any sense of entitlement. Van Nistelrooy toggles between control and chaos, between the athlete’s insistence on merit and the fan’s awe at randomness. Then he snaps the camera outward: “a huge party with all the people here.” That public, communal image matters. It reframes qualification not as a technical achievement but as a social event, where the real payoff is release - a crowd’s permission to exhale, to celebrate survival as much as superiority. The subtext is clear: in football, you’re never just winning; you’re being spared.