“A Mediterranean city is really my culture.”

“I have a need to play intensely every day, to fight every match hard.”

“I was lucky to come from a difficult area. It teaches you not just about football but also life. There were lots of kids from different races and poor families. People had to struggle to get through the day.“

About his father: “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.”

“The only important thing I have to say is that my father never fought against his country.”

“Work, seriousness and respect, that’s what our father taught us. And he’s right because with this you get very, very far in life”

“We are a family who has come from nothing and now we have respect from French people of all sorts.”

"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." Zinedine Zidane, on returning to international football

"Playing for the team has given me my greatest satisfaction, my greatest joy." Zinedine Zidane, on playing for the French national team

"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."

"It's the first time it's happened to me and maybe the last. It's a strange sensation, not normal for me. I can't remember scoring three goals, even when I was a kid." Zinedine Zidane, after scoring three goals against Sevilla in 2005

“My family are very proud of me, but I am very proud of them and where they come from. I am proud that they come from Kabylie. It is a special place and my roots there are important to me. We used to go all the time to my father's home village when we were young.”

“To be recognised by a whole country is incredible. This is massive. Before it was hard to talk about certain things, especially if like me you came from a difficult area or from an immigrant background. But now it tells you how France has changed and is changing. It's a message to everybody - politicians, the kids I grew up with, ordinary French people - about what can be done.”

“I am first of all from La Castellane and Marseille. 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. Wherever I go, La Castellane is where I want to go back to. It is still my home... It is true that it is still a difficult area, what is called in French a quartier difficile. But I think there is also a special culture there. I think Marseille is probably a place like Liverpool, very vibrant and very tough.”

“I don’t want to come back as Zorro, as the savior.”

“It’s the time, it’s my time. It’s the end of a cycle: there have been some great players who retired in 2000 and 2002, other players are doing it and now I’m doing it. It’s like that. You have to stop one day.“

“Simplicity is the height of intelligence.”

“Why put another layer of gold paint on the Bentley when you are losing the entire engine?” on Perez’s decision to sell Makelele and buy David Beckham

“We had no dreams when we were kids. We lived in our borough and what we saw on television was out of reach, another world. We had no reason to wish for something. We didn’t dream of things we didn’t have, or of being someone who we weren’t.”

“Preferably I would only talk to people I don’t know every two months or so.”

“It was my dream to become a father since I was 18, it’s the moment you become a man. There’s nothing better than this feeling. It’s the real life.”

“It’s only important what you do, not what you say.”

“I am a sportsman, not a politician. The only idol I want to be is the one on the pitch.”

“I am Muslim, believing – I think that there is somebody up there who created everything – but I’m not practising. The important thing is what is in deep inside of us. If one looks closely, every religion is about the same. The important things are the values that are instilled in one, more than the practice of a religion.”

Even if you dream about it, hear about it, see it , want to do it, you tell yourself that its impossible, thats why in my life nothing is impossible - about scoring in a World Cup final

"Magic is sometimes very close to nothing at all."

“You can't force other men to follow you to the ends of the earth.”

"If you are determined and confident, there is nothing in this existence that can stop you from achieving what you want."

• Pelé :”He’s quite simply the master. [...]I place Zidane in the top 5 players (ever). During the last ten years there have not been others like him.» «Zidane was the wizard of the match. » about the 2006 World Cup quarterfinal against Brazil.
• Franz Beckenbauer : «Zidane is one of the greatest players in the history of our sport.» «I can’t get into my head that one of the greatest players of our time shouldn’t take part in this competition », talking about Zidane and the 2006 World Cup.

• David Beckham : «Zidane is the best player of the world. I get along well with him, and he’s the one who understands me the most. He’s a player that makes special things happen on the pitch.» «To train with Zidane for three years was a dream. To me he is the best ever. »

• Roberto Carlos : «Zidane is the best player in the world to me, and he will always be. He mustn’t retire. To me he’s a professor. I have learned a lot from him. He’s the master.»

• Alfredo Di Stéfano : « Zizou leaves wearing a nimbus. To me he was a brilliant player who brought pleasure to the audience. An incomparable master of the ball.»

• Luis Figo : «The Golden Ball 2004, it’s Zidane who deserves it, he’s still the best.»

• Thierry Henry : «In France everybody realizes that God exists and that he has returned to the French National Team. » about Zidane’s return to Les Bleus in 2005. «We will miss Zizou simply because it’s Zizou. I prefer talking about the man because one can talk about the footballer for hours. In a group he’s someone special, capable of dragging everybody to the top of a mountain.”

•  Marcello Lippi : «I think he is football’s biggest talent of the last 20 years. I am honored to have been the coach of Zidane. I am overjoyed to have been able to help him express his qualities. I am convinced that he has given me even more than I could give him. » “It’s impossible to know him and not directly feel the need to help him, to protect him, to love him.”

• Diego Maradona : «I like Zinedine Zidane a lot. He’s a player who can create spectacles, he is very technical and is one of the best players of the world. I will see him during the World Cup and I will salute him. I will tell him that he should continue to play, that he should not retire, because Zizou we don’t like because of the titles he has won, but more for his way of playing and how he makes us profit from football. Here someone retires who has given so much joy to the world of football and all the lovers of the ball will be sad. Zidane is a master. His biggest strength was the way he controlled the ball with his big body»

• Michel Platini : «I think he has scored two goals and shaped an entire generation. He scored two goals in the final of 1998, he shaped the generation Zidane of the years 1998, 2000, 2006…Zinedine is a playmaker par excellence. If it was possible to make a team with the four best players ever: Pelé, Platini, Maradona and Zidane, they would be the best team ever. When it comes to technique I think he was the king of the basics: the king of the control, the king of passing, because there has never been someone who could control, caress a ball as well as he could. He had an exceptional basis.»

• Ronaldinho : «One of the best players ever, one of my idols. He was one of the players I had the most pleasure in watching. He was also a real gentleman away from the pitch and I have always loved to play against him. He had such an elegance and such grace, a marvelous way of touching the ball and a superb overview of the game», in the magazine FourFourTwo in a list of his current favorite players. Zidane was on the number 1 spot. «To me the French National Team is a favorite for the World Cup 2006 with Zidane as a playmaker, who is an idol for me, I always let myself get inspired by his way of playing and Thierry Henry who I love playing with»

• Lizarazu : «He has been a heavyweight of football during his last 20 years. He has become an idol and the spokesperson for young North Africans. His exceptional story as well as the top level of his different clubs and of the national team are a proof of his immense talent. Zinedine has always been driven by a healthy aggression that has always kept him willing to develop and has given a human side to his precision and to his inhuman vista His career is behind him but he still has a social and cultural role to play” In the L’Equipe magazine after Zidane’s retirement.

• Gennaro Gattuso : «Playing against Zidane you have only one chance: praying. » «You can’t stop Zidane! It’s not my goal. He’s one of the best players of the world.» «The problem about playing with Zidane is that it’s a bit like playing “Bunto” (a game with three bells under which you hide a ball): You see the ball, you don’t see it anymore, you see the ball, you don’t see it anymore!»

• Arsène Wenger : «Me, I’ve seen him make his debut with AS Cannes. It’s the end of a beautiful era. It’s always sad if a player that has ecstasised you for years retires, especially since he has given so much to football»

• Marcel Desailly : «Zidane has made us dream. We will miss him a lot, he has shaped the history of football, he has enabled the French National Team to win this World Cup. He has done so many things, he has such a technical quality. He illuminated football. Zinedine Zidane is THE player recognized today around the world. There’s but one Zidane, there’s not another player with his capacity of touching the ball, of changing the direction, of pushing a match, of his way of playing the ball long, of making headers, of using both feet, the control. It will be difficult to find another one like him. Today I haven’t seen anybody who could be the next Zidane. Zidane is Zidane. He’s on top for me.»

• Fabien Barthez : «It’s clear that he’s a monument. Apart from being his friend, he’s the player of the century for me»

·         Michel Denisot : «Zidane, he’s not only a footballer. He’s a lot more than that. He’s someone that is admired by the whole world. He offers proudness to people by procuration. On the pitch he was the leader. His behavior in his life is an example for many. He’s a discreet person: you know he does a lot of things but without making a huge deal out of them. His way of thinking is very humane. He embodies generosity. If you are a genius on the pitch, you aren’t always one in your life. He, yes.”

·        Lilian Thuram: «If Zidane was that important for the team, it wasn’t just because he was the magician that we all know. It’s because of his modesty. He was someone positive, who didn’t need to say much. By his way of being, he gave respect.”

·         Laurent Blanc: “He’s the epitome of frankness, honesty and maturity. He is respectful and he deserves respect. He is something totally different from a player, he is luck.”

·         Jamel Debouzze: “He’s like Father Christmas, because of the presents he is giving to all of us.” “Someone who comes from La Castellane isn’t supposed to quote Kant. It’s not his job to give speeches. He scored two goals in a World Cup final, that was a political act.”

·         Unknown Journalist: “He should make you puke, actually. But you don’t puke because you can’t help but love him.”

·         Rock singer Jean-Louis Murat: “Nobody knows if Zidane is an angel or demon. He smiles like Saint Teresa and grimaces like a serial killer.”

·         Magic Johnson: “Zidane is as magical as me and Michael Jordan put together.”