Eric Cantona
Eric Cantona
Éric Daniel Pierre Cantonais a French actor and former international footballer for the French national team. He played for Auxerre, Martigues, Marseille, Bordeaux, Montpellier, Nîmes and Leeds United before ending his career at Manchester United where he won four Premier League titles in five years and two League and FA Cup Doubles...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionSoccer Player
Date of Birth24 May 1966
CityMarseille, France
CountryFrance
My ancestors were fighters, something I have inherited.
We knew that you don't get to be world champions without a struggle.
Whatever happens, there are always things you could have done better. You score two goals and you usually feel you could have done better. You score two goals and you usually feel you could have scored a third. That's perfectionism. That's what makes you progress in life.
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.
In football you have an adversary; in cinema that adversary is yourself.
I manage a team, for beach soccer. I'm the coach. Player, coach.
Messi, he's exceptional. When you watch him, you feel there's a child inside him and he is making some childhood dream come true. He's a Great Player, not only for today but also tomorrow.
When I was a child I had a dream to become a football player. I always played as I played when I was a child. I tried to improve. I never dreamt of becoming a professional football player, I dreamed just to play with the best players in the best team. I never dreamed to be paid to play. I would have paid to play an FA Cup Final in front of 80,000 people in Wembley. I just tried to play the wonderful game that football is. So, I hope young players will still have this dream.
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 have a car but it's not important.
You can lose in cinema too if you don't put on a good performance.
I don't play against any team in particular. I play to fight against defeat.
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.
Without spontaneity in any sport, you cannot succeed.