“I love Madrid. I am happy to be here. I have been here three years and hope to be here longer. But I am proud of where I come from and never forget the people I grew up with.”

Football boots are very technical and have lots of specific requirements.

Ronaldinho is a special player, but Thierry Henry is probably technically the most gifted footballer ever to play the beautiful game.

Everything Iniesta does impresses me. He could even play as goalkeeper. He’s magical.

I have decided to come back for Les Bleus.

In France, everybody realized that God exists, and that he is back in the French international team. God is back, there is little left to say.

Sometimes I don’t know what takes me over during a game. Sometimes I just feel I have moved to a different place and I can make the pass, score the goal or go past my marker at will.

You rarely come across the complete footballer, but Scholes is as close to it as you can get. One of my regrets is that the opportunity to play alongside him never presented itself during my career.

I’m very inspired by him-it was my father who taught us that an immigrant must work twice as hard as anybody else, that he must never give up.

Zidane is unique. The ball flows with him. He is more like a dancer than a football player.

I am proud of where I come from and I will never forget the people I grew up with.

A Mediterranean city is really my culture.

I once cried because I had no shoes to play soccer, but one day, I met a man who had no feet.

It doesn’t matter how many times you win an award, it is always very special.

We must not let ourselves get driven off course, no matter what happens we must stick to our natural game.

To be recognised by a whole country is incredible. This is massive.

Zidane is probably the best player there has been in the past 20 years. France have recovered the best Zidane and they have progressively grown throughout this tournament.

Now it is established in the sciences that no knowledge is acquired save through the study of its causes and beginnings, if it has had causes and beginnings; nor completed except by knowledge of its accidents and accompanying essentials.

Anytime you work with animals, you begin to see more humanity in them.

The journey of fire begins, survives and ends with air.

The fear of God is not the beginning of wisdom. The fear of God is the death of wisdom. Skepticism and doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of wisdom.

A performer learns with experience and with age. I did not know the future when I left home and started out to begin my career: I started qawaali; then I met Peter Gabriel and was exposed to a lot of new ideas.

The apple cannot be stuck back on the Tree of Knowledge; once we begin to see, we are doomed and challenged to seek the strength to see more, not less.

The beginning is the promise of the end.

People are beginning to see that the first requisite to success in life is to be a good animal.