- So many people want to live their lives and their dreams through their own Facebook page or their Twitter page. They want to show every detail of their life to everyone in the world. That scares me because I don't have any Facebook page or Twitter. I don't like it, I don't want it.
- If you start to focus on your opponent then you see so much quality in your opponents and weaknesses in your own side. You start to put doubts in your mind. You need to respect your opponents but that's it, no more.
- It's sometimes difficult living in France. People are more open minded in England, and of course I'm missing England in terms of football and the passion that the fans show, they're really passionate.
- I'm convinced that when you are a footballer you are a symbol. You have to be a superman in some ways, to send messages to people all the time, to the youth all the time.
- The squad [Arsenal] was full of big characters, crazy people. The culture and style of play was completely different [to France] and we were preparing for games with rap music. I remember Ian Wright tramping through the bars into the Highbury dressing room and I could feel the walls shaking from the fans.
- This is why the social networks are successful actually, because we are living in a society where people are frustrated with living their own life but in a quiet world so that's why with the internet they are creating a new world and that is why society has changed a lot in the space of 10 years.
- When you see what is happening with the social networks, with Facebook, Twitter and co., it is becoming obvious that the reputation of ourselves is becoming more and more important everyday. Image is becoming too much for me, and we are living in a virtual world and sometimes it is very easy to make mistakes. It is more difficult to take responsibility for our mistakes.
- Footballers nowadays are controlling their image through their own Facebook page so it's not the club that controls them anymore, they do what they want at anytime.
- You have to grow the same way that you're seeing your own kids grow.
- I want to keep my own guard, I want to keep my secrets, I want to keep my private life for me.
- If you want to be a professional footballer, you have to respect your profession. You have to respect the people that are making you the star you are. You have to protect the passion every day.
- At Arsenal me and Patrick [Vieira] didn't want to face [Paul] Scholes. We would avoid him.
- A football team is like a company. All of the people working in a company are not supposed to love each other, but they are supposed to be professional.
- If you ask me can you explain the success of Facebook or Twitter, it's very simple. People want to have the right to speak, people want the right to say what they feel. They don't want to wait for the question to be asked, they want to say before asking the question, they want to say everything that they feel.
- If I had the choice I would live in London. There are a few things I don't like about England but it's just details, I don't really think about them but I really like England and I really like London.
- Being a footballer is not just about wearing the shirt and playing football on the pitch. You have to be clean, you have to do right things, you have to show courage, you have to show many many things you know. I always say that you play the same way on the pitch as you do in life.
- I don't play anymore because I can't play anymore and I retired when I was playing for Chelsea because the doctor had to cut my leg in two parts so this is why I retired. I started going to the gym recently and my knee started to hurt again, so you can imagine what it would be like if I tried to play! I play football on the beach with my daughters and my friends but that's it.
- Being a coach means giving your job 200% all the time and your family is left on the side so I don't want to risk my family anymore just because I love football. I don't feel this ambition, I'm involved in many businesses and I want to live my own life, to see my daughters grow and want to see my family happy.
- I'd like to be a dog. Dogs are nice. They can sleep any time, they wag their tails and on top of that they can get stroked all the time.
- [on the death of his brother, Olivier] I used to keep a diary. That's what I used to do because I lost my brother on the pitch. I lost my grandfather and my best friend in the space of two years when I was at the academy. When you are at this age, at 14 or 15 years of age and you know that you are playing for your own future, you are in a man's world but you are still a teenager, a kid. You have to pretend and act like you are a man when you are confronting death or bad things. You have to take it and deal with it, it's as simple as that. I had to live at that age like a man, but I was not. It hurt me a lot in my private life as well. It was just a couple of weeks before I signed a professional contract. He received a ball on the head and fell down a couple of minutes later and he died. And my other brother, he was playing on the pitch with him. My brother was supposed to be married a couple of weeks after that. His girlfriend was watching the game as well. It was a terrible moment for my family. My parents were with me at Monaco at that time, that was the first and last time I saw my father smacking his head against the wall.
- [2016 interview on The Fantasy Football Club, talking about his reaction to France winning the World Cup in 1998 and why there are hardly any pictures of him with the trophy] I was in a room close to the dressing room with one of my best friends, which is Fabien Barthez. We were together, entering that moment, you know, alone, and, I don't know if I can say it... but we were smoking a cigarette. We knew, we understood, that we won the World Cup, I think we decided to be a part of all the celebrations, but we just wanted to get this moment for ourselves.
- In Monaco, Arsène Wenger tried several times to get me to quit [smoking]. It was at a time when tobacco was more tolerated than today. People were smoking on TV, on airplanes, in restaurants. I don't know if it's a taboo today, you would have to ask current players, but at the time, I never experienced it as such.
- I had cramps twice in my life, and if I had a bad game, I didn't tell myself that it was because of the cigarettes.
- Alcohol, tobacco, in the imagination of the average person, it does not fit at all with the image of a top athlete.
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