Eric Cantona

If you have only one passion in life – football – and you pursue it to the exclusion of everything else, it becomes very dangerous. When you stop doing this activity it is as though you are dying. The death of that activity is a death in itself.

I started beach football in Monte Carlo when I retired from football in 1997. I liked the game very much.

I manage a team, for beach soccer. I’m the coach. Player, coach.

My best moment? I have a lot of good moments but the one I prefer is when I kicked the hooligan.

I stopped playing football because I’d done as much as I could. I needed something which was going to excite me as much as football had excited me.

Often there are players who have only football as a way of expressing themselves and never develop other interests. And when they no longer play football, they no longer do anything; they no longer exist, or rather they have the sensation of no longer existing.

I’m proud of what I achieved there, but a life built on memories is not much of a life.

We won the European Championship last September and now the world title. That is some year for French beach soccer! Now comes the hard part. We have to keep improving and that’s difficult because it’s tough to do better than winning a world title.

Even as a footballer, I was always being creative.

In football you have an adversary; in cinema that adversary is yourself.

Sometimes you get submerged by emotion. I think it’s very important to express it – which doesn’t necessarily mean hitting someone.

On sand, you can never be sure of anything. An ordinary shot can take a wicked deflection at the last moment.

When the seagulls follow the trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea.

I don’t want to be in Terminator. I don’t want to go to Hollywood.

Sometimes in life one experiences an emotion which is so strong that it is difficult to think, or to reason.

Actually, I wanted to act even when I was still playing football.

It is enjoyable to make things visible which are invisible.

You can lose in cinema too if you don’t put on a good performance.

I prefer to play and lose rather than win, because I know in advance I’m going to win.

I didn’t study; I live.

The pressure people put on themselves and the rivalry between the teams is much more marked. And I think that’s a good thing. As long as that rivalry remains within the spirit of competition, it con only spur everyone on.

I try to find different ways of expressing myself. Without that I will die.

We knew that you don’t get to be world champions without a struggle.

I am searching for abstract ways of expressing reality, abstract forms that will enlighten my own mystery.