Few footballers have made the game look quite as effortless as Zinedine Zidane.
The Frenchman combined elegance and technical brilliance with a knack for delivering on the biggest stage, becoming aWorld Cup winner, Ballon d'Or recipient and Champions League icon during an unforgettable career.
After starring forJuventus, his world-record move to Real Madrid in 2001 was the Galactico signing of that era. Fittingly, it was the magic in Zidane's boots that crowned the Spanish side European champions in his debut season.
From teammates and opponents to managers and fellow greats, some of football's biggest names have attempted to describe what made Zidane so special.
Here are some of the best quotes about Zinedine Zidane.
Zinedine Zidane: The best quotes and tributes to the France great“When Zidane stepped onto the pitch, the 10 other guys just got suddenly better. It is that simple. It was magic. He was a unique player. He was more than good, he came from another planet. His team-mates became like him when he was on the pitch.”
“One of the best two or three footballers I have ever seen was Zinedine Zidane. To see Zidane in action was to witness poetry in motion. The skills, the vision, the goals, he was a sublime performer. When he was at his peak, winning the World Cup, the Champions League and all the rest, he was unquestionably the finest player on the planet.”
- Paul Scholes
“For me, Zidane is one of the best players I’ve ever played against. His touch is amazing – he can do things with a ball that you’ve never seen before – and he makes it all look so easy. There’s so much creativity there, but he never appears flustered in possession of the ball – that’s a sign of a great player.”
- Ryan Giggs
“He was as elegant as a dancer- he even used the soles of his boots efficiently. Everything was easy for him; he made such movements that if I tried to copy them I would break my legs.”
- Franco Baresi
“A true artist. What he could do with the ball was incredible. Only Maradona could do the same. Zizou was also a player capable of rising to the occasion at important moments, and deciding games. Remember those two goals in the final against Brazil in 1998? And that fantastic goal in the final of Champions League for Real against Bayer Leverkusen?"
- Marcel Desailly
“I don’t need to say anything about Zinedine Zidane. You have seen it all for yourself. The man is a simply brilliant player, who can do anything he wants on the pitch. He can score goals and make them. He is the one player who could play in any team and in any position. I feel lucky to have shared a pitch with him many times.”
- Laurent Blanc
“A special player. When we look back, he’ll be up there with Maradona and Pele as one of the world’s greats. He’s in that bracket."
- Shay Given
"He was just born to play football. When you’re a kid, and you’ve got a ball at the end of a rope, and it never leaves you, he was like that with his touch. When he ran, the ball ran in his stride, he was so classy. (He had) power, he was quick off the mark, so strong, his feet were brilliant. He was so gifted, such a natural football player.”
- Michael Owen
"Yeah [he was my toughest opponent]. The advice I would get from my friends in Ireland would be, the technical advice they would give me is, 'just kick him'. And I used to say: 'he's 6ft 2in, he can deal with that'. And I think he has been sent off eight or nine times. What I loved about Zidane was, he was nasty."