LONDON — As Scottish soccer giants Rangers and Celtic waited Friday to learn their fates after a series of fiery confrontations by the teams’ benches midweek, the man responsible for the sport’s most infamous sideline attack, Manchester United great Eric Cantona _ now the New York Cosmos’ boss _ named his kung fu kick on a fan as the highlight of his career.

When asked to reflect on his playing days, the Frenchman, who recently returned to soccer as the Cosmos’ director of football, ignored the many trophies he won at United or the mercurial performances that wrote him into the English Premier League club’s modern folklore.

He instead spoke at length of the 1995 attack that saw him banned from the EPL for eight months and sentenced to 120 hours of community service.

While the 44-year-old told the BBC the two-footed lunge on Crystal Palace fan Matthew Simmons was a “mistake,” he added it was a “great feeling” and made fans across the country “happy” to see a “hooligan” kicked.

“These kind of people [hooligans] don’t have to be at the game. I think maybe it’s like a dream for some people, you know for sometimes to kick these kind of people. So I did it for them. So they are happy,” Cantona said. “[Fans] feel pressure in their job or in their business. It’s a kind of freedom for them … It’s a great feeling, but different. It was a mistake, but that’s me.”

Cantona, who at 30 chose early retirement from the game to pursue an acting career, said he refused to reflect on his glory days, adding that he no longer kept any of the medals or national team shirts won during his remarkable career.

“I don’t care about the past,” he said. “Yeah, it was a great memory, but I don’t want to think about. I want new ambitions, new things to think about.”Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/football_focus/9413628.stm