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

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.

There was huge pressure, especially before the big games. Not many people believed in us, but we believed in ourselves. We wanted to do something good and we did.

I have a big-picture outlook, I am willing to fall, and I understand it’s ok to fall, but I am going to get back up, I may take a step back, but in the end, I am going to take a giant leap forward.

As a camel kneels before his master to have him remove his burden at the end of the day, so kneel each night and let the Master take your burden.

The picture’s over. Now I have to go and put it on film.

When people come up and give me a compliment. I take each remark as if it were a flower. At the end of the day I lift up the bouquet of flowers I have gathered throughout the day and say, ‘Here you are, Lord, it is all Yours.’

There are two critical points in every aerial flight-its beginning and its end.

Some of these kids are spending more time with the coaches than they are with their parents. The coach is supposed to be raising these kids, not belittling them and talking to them like the world is coming to an end.

Mallarme said that everything in the world exists in order to end in a book. Today everything exists to end in a photograph.

Take me down to the river bend, take me down to the fighting end. Wash the poison from off my skin, and show me how to be whole again.