“The England team must always be respected. They always fight to the end.”

It’s hard to explain but I have a need to play intensely every day, to fight every match hard. And this desire never to stop fighting is something else I learnt in the place where I grew up.

Nobody knows if Zidane is an angel or demon. He smiles like Saint Teresa and grimaces like a serial killer.

If Zizou kept his temper, he would not be the genius that he is.

It’s true, pressure is something that goes with football nowadays. You need to accept it, and everything that it involves – the good and the bad.

Every day I think about where I come from and I am still proud to be who I am: first, a Kabyle from La Castellane, then an Algerian from Marseille, and then a Frenchman.

Everything I have achieved in football is due to playing football in the streets with my friends

The French team has given me so much and I want to help it. I told myself I did not have much time left in soccer, and I want to profit from it to the maximum.

Mandela has played a crucial part in history. He’s done some extraordinary things, not only for his country but also for the whole world.

I have always said the French team is the most important thing that has happened to me. I thought deeply about it and I want to play for France again.

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.

The supreme end is the freedom of the spirit.

And I’m kind of the end product of a collection of a really good vibe, and feeling, and creativity on the field.

If you go the way of your thoughts you will be carried away by them and you will find yourself in an endless maze.

Some stories untouched by the atrocity of time start right from the place they ended.

Silence is never-ending speech. In silence one is in intimate contact with the surroundings. Language is only a medium for communicating one’s thoughts to another. Silence is ever speaking.

When our time expires my love for you won’t.

True silence is really endless speech.

The search “Who am I” ends in the annihilation of the illusory “I” and the Self which remains over will be as clear as a gooseberry in the palm of one’s hand.