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

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.

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.

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.

It isn’t normal to know what we want. It is a rare and difficult psychological achievement.

I am doomed to an eternity of compulsive work. No set goal achieved satisfies. Success only breeds a new goal. The golden apple devoured has seeds. It is endless.

If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it.

If you can imagine it, you can achieve it. If you can dream it, you can become it.

One of the great undiscovered joys of life comes from doing everything one attempts to the best of one’s ability. The smallest task, well done, becomes a miracle of achievement.

With no goals, no priorities, no life strategy of our own, we drift with the herd through an endless meadow of mediocrity, unable to break loose, to achieve even a small part of the dreams we once cherished.

Nothing limits achievement like small thinking; nothing expands possibilities like unleashed imagination.

Enthusiasm is the match that lights the candle of achievement.