Some City fans were none too pleased by the comparison – given that the man with whom he was being categorised was one of rival Manchester United’s greatest ever heroes – but I could certainly see why it was made. Why some pundits started to call Balotelli ‘the black Cantona’ during the 2011/12 season. Mark Ogden, writing in the Daily Telegraph, led the way with a brilliant opinion piece, saying, ‘Balotelli, the dart-throwing, firework-releasing man-child, has become the modern incarnation of Cantona, despite the motorbike-riding Frenchman’s passion for art, acting and Gitanes. For neither cares much for authority or convention. ‘Balotelli, as wild as he can be, is a man of the people who will think nothing of offering a £50 tip to the guy who has just cleaned his car or a grateful Big Issue vendor on Deansgate. Cantona rejected the Millionaires’ Row lifestyleof his United teammates and chose to live in a modest semi-detached house in the Salford suburb of Boothstown.
‘And, while their brilliance on a football pitch has ensured adulation and iconic status, both men possess a dark side. Balotelli has been sent off three times in his 18 months at City.’
While Dan Jones, in the Evening Standard, described Cantona as a ‘a player-aesthete’ who operated ‘at the point where sport and art intersect: at which the sportsman becomes a performance artist’. He then added, ‘Balo combines the devil-may-care combustibility, the self-mythologising, and of course, the glorious talent that was Cantona’s hallmark.’
And Jonathan Harwood, in The Week, commented, ‘Balotelli has some way to go before he matches the exploits of the man who became known as “Le God” in the red half of the city, but he exerts the same kind of fascination as the legendary United number seven. ‘Over the last year Balotelli has rarely been out the news. He arrived in England with a bad reputation and was initially seen as a negative influence on his club and the league. But his madcap antics have somehow won over the City faithful and other football fans, and he is now seen as the sort of eccentric always welcome on these shores. His story is not dissimilar to that of Cantona, who moved to England after one too many controversies in France.’
Sun columnist Ian McGarry also pointed out the similarities, saying, when he was watching City at home, ‘The talk among the fans was all about Balotelli. And I don’t think they were all Manchester City fans either. It occurred to me that this is what it was like when Manchester United had Eric Cantona.’
Even Chelsea main man Didier Drogba got in on the act. Drogba admitted, ‘I know Balotelli and he’s a nice guy, a funny guy. I like him very much because he’s passionate and he loves football. He’s a good character for the Premier League, like Cantona, who loves what he is doing. I respect him for that.
‘You just have to see what he did in the last few weeks, scoring all those goals for his team, to understand what kind of player he is. I think he knows the league a bit more now, which has made things easier for him too.’
But Cantona himself professed to be unimpressed by the Italian’s antics – and rapped Balotelli for his now legendary unveiling of THAT ‘Why Always Me?’ T-shirt. Cantona said incidents such as his kung fu kick at Crystal Palace were spontaneous – and not pre-planned like Balotelli’s T-shirt pose. The Frenchman said, ‘I dreamt of being a footballer, of doing great things, of crying and laughing after a victory, of exploding with joy. It is about spontaneity. I never had anything on a T-shirt, never calculated anything. Every action is unique, every reaction unique.’
So is the comparison fair? Well, let’s take a closer look…
In one of his most famous comments in 1996 – a year before he quit United - Cantona would say of his time in Manchester, ‘I feel close to the rebelliousness and vigour of the youth here. Perhaps time will separate us, but nobody can deny that here, behind the windows of Manchester, there is an insane love of football, of celebration and of music.’
Certainly Balotelli was of the same opinion: he might have felt homesick at times, but he had settled fairly well in the north of England city and even admitted to friends that ‘it was pretty similar to Milan’. In its greyness, its rain but also its cultural spark – with music and literature high on the agenda of residents of both cities. And, of course, both Milan and Manchester had two big football teams – Internazionale (Inter Milan) and AC and City and United.
But there were differences between the two men. While, as we have noted, Mario had a troubled upbringing that would mould him as an adult, Eric was settled as a youngster and given the freedom by his parents to develop as a creative being. Cantona was born on May 24 1966 in Marseille in the south of France – his parents named him Eric Daniel Pierre – just two months before England’s greatest footballing triumph, when Bobby Moore would lift the World Cup at Wembley. His father’s family originated from Sardinia, his mother’s from Spain – that production line perhaps helping explain the volatility of his mixed Latin temperament. Yet from an early age Eric was no ‘brat’; indeed he much preferred painting and reading in the cave high above the city of Marseille that the family called home.
His father Albert loved painting and hunting. By trade, he was a psychiatric nurse, but he also loved to play football, earning a reputation as a fine amateur goalkeeper. Albert would tell Eric: ‘There is nothing more simple than football. Look before you receive the ball and then give it and always remember that the ball goes quicker than you can carry it.’
Eric’s mother Eleonore would spend her time bringing up the man who would become known as The King, along with his brothers Jean-Marie and Joel. They were poor, but Eric loved his young life, later claiming he was the ‘son of rich people’ because of the variety of cultural and artistic activities open to him with his family.
By the age of five he was playing football in the streets and fell in love with the game, saying: ‘You start wanting to play [it] when you are three, four or five…you know you have a passion when you can’t stop playing the game, when you play it in the streets, in the playground, after school and when you spend your time at school swapping photographs of footballers…playing football in the streets gave us a tremendous need for freedom.’
And like Mario in Italy, Eric certainly had his run-ins on and off the football pitch while in his homeland. His career in France was littered with run-ins with authority and suspensions. By the age of 25, he had quit his homeland and joined Leeds United in February 1992 initially on a loan deal that would see the Yorkshire club pay Nimes £100,000 and Cantona’s wages until the end of the season.
Eric would take Leeds to the old First Division championship that season (1991–92) at the expense of Manchester United and his move to Leeds was made permanent, with an extra £1million leaving the Elland Road coffers.
Howard Wilkinson and Eric Cantona? Even in the same sentence the names hardly gel; they grate together, one an English footballing pragmatist and dull, dour Yorkshireman, the other a French romantic, a dreamer, a painter, a poet, a motorcyclist philosopher – a footballer who believed the beautiful game was just that: an opportunity for expression and joyful highs.
It was always going to be a marriage of convenience that would not last, although with Cantona, Sgt Wilko would notch up the one major success of his career.
Wilko remains, to this day, the only Englishman to lead a team to the Premiership title – and it was Leeds’ first top-flight in 18 long years. But that was never going to be enough to assuage the demands and ambitions of the King – years later he would say that Leeds, as far as he was concerned, had only been a shop window…a showcase that would ultimately lead to his dream move to the club he was always destined to grace and to lead, Manchester United.
Just as Balotelli found his place at City with his mentor Mancini, so Cantona would now find his ‘home’ with Ferguson. Legend has it that Fergie signed Cantona as a spur of the moment act. That Leeds MD Bill Fotherby had rang to ask Man United chairman Martin Edwards if Denis Irwin would be available for a move, and that, sitting across from him, Ferguson had scrawled on a piece of paper: ‘Ask him if Cantona is for sale’. The piece of paper bit is true, as is the fact that Fotherby rang back later that day to confirm Eric was, indeed, available.
But a source close to Sir Alex told me that Ferguson had been on the case for months. That this was hardly a last-minute move dreamed up from nowhere. That the United manager had been interested when Cantona turned up in England for an initial loan spell at Sheffield Wednesday; that he knew all about the man who had been a nightmare to manage in France.
That he had already earmarked Eric Cantona for a starring role at Old Trafford. That he wanted to pit his managerial skills up against the man who would play the George Best role to his Busby. It would be the ultimate test – and Ferguson was keen to bring it on when Fotherby gave the all-clear.
The wheels had actually been put in motion, I am told, weeks before when then Liverpool boss Gerard Houllier telephoned Ferguson to say that all was not well with Cantona at Leeds and that a bid to Howard Wilkinson might prove fruitful. Fergie bided his time – he did not want to pay over the odds, he knew that Cantona was perceived as the perennial problem boy.
At the end of the day, Wilko was just mighty relieved to get his million quid back.
So it was that on Friday 26 November 1992 Eric Cantona finally came home – for the ridiculously small fee of £1.2million. Of course, Balotelli had cost more than 20 times that amount – but he would tell friends that he too felt relieved to have left Inter Milan to team up with Mancini again. Just as Cantona would rely on Ferguson to provide him with an appropriate stage – and reassurance – to ply his trade, so Balotelli had only ever been able to work with one man…the man who brought him to Eastlands for £22.5million.
But while Cantona would make an immediate impression on his new club, it would take Mario longer to settle – and even longer to prove that he could indeed be the man who could be relied upon and trusted to take City to the very top. Sure, City fans loved him for his unique talent and idiosyncrasies, but they doubted whether he would ever settle enough and knuckle down enough to take them to the very top of the footballing world.
With Cantona, I am told by United insiders that Fergie ‘knew immediately that he had struck gold’. That the signing of the Frenchman was the last piece in his jigsaw at the time. Ferguson would later comment on how Cantona had thrilled him by ‘walking in as though he owned the bloody place’ and that while some players found Old Trafford and the United aura too much, Cantona was at the very head of the queue of those who ‘simply belonged’ from day one.
Fergie needed him to settle in quickly if he was to have any hope of winning that first crown for 26 years in 1993 – which he did, and they did. Cantona found at United what he had never experienced before. A club and a manager who embraced and adored him – just as Balotelli did when he arrived at City and was greeted by the man he considers ‘the best manager in the world’ – his compatriot, Mancini.
And, like Cantona with United, so Mario found with City a club big enough to achieve the major ambitions he himself demanded. A club on the up, with the backing and planned facilities that would conceivably outdo his native Milan clubs in years to come. Cantona found in Ferguson a man who would stand by him and praise him; a manager who knew that the best way to deal with a man like Cantona was with respect and friendship. The big stick had never worked before – so why should it work at Old Trafford? It was the same story with Mancini and Balotelli – Roberto was arguably the only manager in the world who could deal with Mario. He treated him like a surrogate son – and he was certainly the only club manager Balotelli felt totally confident and at ease with.
Cantona arrived in Manchester in November 1992 and soon got to work, showing the kids in the team how it was done and bringing a huge confidence lift to the club. Fergie had joked that United could do with Superman to take them to the next level…well, he didn’t get the man of Krypton but the next best thing.
His very own footballing superman – just as Mancini is confident Balotelli will become for City when he has sufficient maturity and commitment, which he believes will come to Mario over the next 12 months. United had been crying out for a superman to lift them from the depths of normality for 26 years. Twenty-six long years since they had last won the league title – just as City were crying out for glory when Balotelli arrived. Within six months of Eric’s arrival, the wait that had lasted from 1967 was finally over. The nightmare was over: Cantona was the final piece of the jigsaw, the catalyst for what would become known as The Ferguson Years: two decades of non-stop glory. And for five of them, with Eric in the team, half a decade of non-stop cabaret. Similarly, within his first year at City, Mario had helped them lifted their first major trophy for 35 years. Not only that, he had done so as the official Man of the Match in the clash with Stoke at Wembley.
When Mario arrived at City in 2010, he had walked in with a swagger and a confidence that said, ‘Look, I can play…just watch me’. Similarly, Cantona had also walked into Old Trafford like he owned the place: 26 years old, but with more baggage than a normal team might pick up in two lifetimes. He had picked up the tag ‘Le Brat’ for his adventures in his native France and had managed to fall out with Howard Wilkinson at Leeds within nine months of arriving in the UK.
But it would be his very temperament that would endear him to Manchester United fans – indeed most of us can relate to the rebel, we just usually do not have the guts, or if you look at it another way, the foolhardiness, to act like one. Eric did what he wanted, how he wanted, when he wanted: he remains the ultimate rebel without a pause and earned a permanent place in the heart of United fans.
At Old Trafford, he would forge a partnership with Fergie that would win four Premiership titles in five years, including two league and FA Cup ‘doubles’ and in 2001 he was voted Manchester United’s player of the century. To this day, United fans still refer to him as Eric the King, the Frenchman taking up the mantle that once belonged to the also legendary Denis Law – and this is how the equally loved Bobby Charlton described Eric’s qualities in the mid-nineties: ‘We’re just very grateful he’s here. He’s such a great player. I’m still pinching myself. A player like that only comes along once or twice in a lifetime, and you don’t leave him out or put him in the reserves. You respect his skill. Eric is the brainiest player I’ve ever seen, he sees such a lot when he has the ball. The big thing he has given United is the ability to make attacks count, not waste good positions until the right option appears, and we now finish almost every move with an effort on goal. The other thing is his ability to release players, even when the pass doesn’t look on. If you make the run Eric will probably get you the ball.’
Fergie needed him to settle in quickly if he was to have any hope of winning that first crown for 26 years in 1993. United’s season had been a letdown – they were sixth in the table, behind the likes of big-spending Aston Villa and Blackburn Rovers and surprise challengers including Norwich City and QPR.
Goals had been a problem and Fergie prayed that Eric would put that right. Never one for low-level publicity, Eric made his competitive debut as a second-half sub in the derby match against Manchester City at Old Trafford on 12 December 1992. United won 2-1, but Eric was only a bit-part player.
Not a comment you would normally associate with Fergie’s Gallic genius, and one that would never again be used.
Eric soon settled down, scoring goals and creating them. His first United goal came in the 1-1 draw at Chelsea on 19 December 1992; his second a week later on Boxing Day as United claimed a point after being 3-0 down at the interval.
The next couple of weeks saw a 5-0 win over Coventry and a 4-1 thrashing of Tottenham – Cantona scored one and made one against Spurs. He had taken United to the top of the table, a slot that would generally be theirs throughout his five years apart from a period during his nine-month ban.
But like Mario, he certainly had that darker side. A side that led to suspensions and bans from the game – disciplinary setbacks that would also hit both their clubs.
The shadow Eric cast over Old Trafford can be seen by the fact that the 1994/95 campaign – which took in the brunt of his ban for the infamous kung fu kick – was the only one of Cantona’s five seasons at United in which United failed to win the Premiership, or any other trophy.
As with Mario’s indiscretions in Italy, there had been an inkling of the Frenchman’s dark side that first season when he spat at a fan on his return to Leeds; an indiscretion that would land him a £1,000 fine from the FA. And, as in 2011 when Balotelli was dropped from the Italian national team because the boss didn’t trust him enough, so Cantona was also dropped from the French national team.
But in Cantona’s first two seasons at Old Trafford, United went on an amazing run, winning the inaugural Premier League in 1993 by 10 points…and let’s not forget they had been six points BEHIND Norwich when Eric walked into Old Trafford. That title breakthrough was vital to Ferguson’s ambition of becoming a United great like Sir Matt Busby, but also extra sweet for Eric as it meant he had already wrote himself into English football’s history books – by becoming the first player ever to win back-to-back English top-flight titles with different clubs.
Cantona hit nine goals in 22 Premiership games in that first season – and he would lead United to even greater glory in his second, scoring 25 goals in 48 matches and bringing United their first ‘double’.
There had even been hopes of a first Treble in the English game – but Aston Villa outplayed the Reds at Wembley in the League Cup final to win 3-1.
But Eric’s successful brace of penalties against Chelsea helped United to a comfortable 4-0 triumph in the FA Cup final to secure the ‘double’. Then came the icing on the cake – Cantona was named Footballer of the Year by the PFA. In the words of the legendary movie star James Cagney, Eric was certainly ‘on top of the world, ma’ – and so was his boss. The two were on a winning streak that would seemingly never end – Fergie’s gamble on the Frenchman had turned the club around; had turned United back into a major footballing force.
But, just as there was big trouble in Balotelli’s second season at City, so would there be big trouble in Eric’s third season at Old Trafford. Big, big trouble.
As a boy Cantona had adorned his bedroom wall in the cave above Marseille he called home with pictures of the one and only Bruce Lee. Many years later he would show just how much a hero Lee was to him in an episode that is arguably the most infamous in English football – far beyond anything Mario has ever got up to at City.
Cantona will never be able to shake off that night of kung fu fighting madness at Crystal Palace in January 1995. It was the turning point, the defining moment of his career: his nine-month ban cost United the league and cup, indeed it left them trophy-less at a time when the team was arguably strong enough to win everything; perhaps even the strongest in Ferguson’s entire reign at Old Trafford. Yet it did bring an unlikely bonus: for the first time in his career Cantona found a man who would back him when most others were saying, ‘Sack him’.
Just as, in March 2012 after City fans had booed Balotelli for arguing on the pitch over a free kick with a team-mate in the 3-3 draw with Sunderland, Mancini had pledged to stand by his man. That, yes, he would stick with Balotelli because he believed he was a genius and that he could turn him around; that he could make him a world beater – another Messi, another Ronaldo.
When Ferguson stuck by Cantona that dark night in 1995, it was also arguably the defining moment of Sir Alex’s own managerial career. The boss put his reputation on the line for his mercurial Frenchman and retained Cantona’s services. Whereas Sir Matt Busby had struggled and ultimately failed to ‘save’ Georgie Best from himself, Fergie did save Cantona from imploding. If Eric had left United during the ban for Inter Milan in Italy, who is to say what would have happened to his career?
Would he have knuckled down and changed in the San Siro; would he suddenly have lost the edge that made him the player he was? More likely his indiscretion at Selhurst Park would have been followed by further speedy black marks at Inter – and he might have been cast out of the game for good. Similarly, if Balotelli had gone back to Milan – and split from his mentor Mancini – his own career could have nosedived as he struggled without Roberto’s guidance.
Fergie saved Eric – and his own developing team – by showing him amazing love and loyalty…just as Roberto did with Mario when many pundits and fans were clamouring for him to be sold, to be exiled back to Italy. In Alex Ferguson, Eric finally found the only manager he had ever played under who would hunt him down and plead with him to remain a part of his football club. Similarly, Mario with Mancini – although the Frenchman’s indiscretion at Selhurst Park was far more serious than anything Balotelli had ever got up to on a football pitch.
Cantona was sent off at Palace, four minutes into the second half of United’s Premiership match there – which ended 1-1 - for kicking out at defender Richard Shaw. As Eric made his way from the pitch, 20-year-old Palace fan Simmons rushed down the stands to taunt him. Cantona was enraged; he responded with his kung fu kick and then exchanged punches with Simmons. As a result, he was banned from football for nine months.
Looking back on the incident there is, of course, no defence for the fact that Cantona finally took his Bruce Lee obsession one kick too far. Sure, Simmons was out of order, but verbal abuse happens all the time in football.
I am assured by one Palace insider that Simmons, a 20-year-old self-employed glazier and ‘victim’ of Cantona’s attack, was not the loyal fan of the club he was usually portrayed. Indeed, I am told his ‘first love’ was not Palace, but Fulham, and that he returned to Craven Cottage after he was given a life ban from Selhurst for his part in the run-in with Cantona.
Simmons would claim that all he said to Cantona – in true stiff-upper-lip-style English – was along the lines of: ‘Off, off, off! Go on, Cantona, that’s an early bath for you.’ Cantona would say it was a much more racist more along the line of: ‘F*** off back to France, you French motherf***er.’ Simmons remains adamant that Cantona lied: ‘For God’s sake you can’t say a worse thing about anyone [than what he alleges I said], can you? What he did in saying that was totally unjustified. The man is filth. How can he accuse me of saying such a thing? Where has this allegation against me come from? From him. It ruined my life. And that is why it is inexcusable.’
Simmons would become one of the most recognisable and hated men in Britain: he lost his job, family members ignored him and reporters pursued him.
Most commentators would range against Cantona – describing his assault as ‘shameful’. There were a couple of notable dissenters, Jimmy Greaves in the Sun and Richard Williams in the Independent on Sunday. Greavsie wrote: ‘We’ve heard a lot about Cantona’s responsibilities. What about analysing the responsibility of Simmons and every foul-mouthed yob who thinks his £10 admission gives him the right to say what he likes to a man… to abuse, taunt, spit and behave in a way that would get you locked up if you repeated it in the high street.’
And Williams believed that ‘Cantona had the excuse of genuine provocation.’ He said: ‘You didn’t have to look very long and hard at Matthew Simmons of Thornton Heath to conclude that Eric Cantona’s only mistake was to stop hitting him. The more we discovered about Mr Simmons, the more Cantona’s assault looks like the instinctive expression of a flawless moral judgement.’
There was also the belief among United fans that Cantona was being mauled by the British sporting press because he was a foreigner. In a similar way, some people would argue that Balotelli was always on the receiving end of it from the English Press because he was from Italy – maybe another answer to ‘Why always me?’ question from the man himself.
Certainly, Martin Creasy, a United fanatic since the Seventies, told me he feared it would be the end of Cantona at Old Trafford – and that he believed the Frenchman got a bad deal from the English press precisely because he was from abroad. Creasy said: ‘When Eric launched his assault on that Palace moron, I must have been the only United fan still in my seat in stunned disbelief, wondering if this would be the last we would ever see of the greatest United genius since George Best. United fans all around me were too busy jumping up and celebrating Eric’s revenge in an incident some in the Press would sneeringly label “The S*** Hits The Fan” to share my immediate concerns. People go on about cutting out racism in football. Total hypocrisy. If Eric had been English, would he have taken the level of crap he did – especially from the Press? Of course not.’
As well as the nine-month ban, Cantona was also sentenced to two weeks in prison which was reduced on appeal to 120 hours community service for the attack. He was also fined £20,000. It was during a news conference after the appeal that he would cryptically refer to the British press as ‘a flock of seagulls following the trawler’.
Ferguson’s work in travelling to Paris to track down his top player in exile and to persuade him his future was still at Old Trafford was one of the key moves of his time as manager at Old Trafford. Again, there are similarities in how Mancini refused to give up on Mario when most people – certainly in the Press corps at least – were all for hanging him out to dry. When Mario was sent off at Arsenal in April 2012, most pundits argued he should be sold and the Sun even dubbed him ‘The man who cost City the title’. Of course, Mario had no more cost the club the title than say Tevez, who had swanned off to play golf in Argentina for half a season, and it didn’t cost City the title anyway! And despite initial public misgivings, Roberto would sit down with Mario and talk through how, if he was to stay, he would need to improve his attitude and temperament – he would need to give his all for City.
The duo had many heart-to-hearts in private. Ferguson was much more public in his bid to keep Cantona back then. Indeed, it is the stuff of legend – including how he jumped incognito on the back of a motor cycle for a showdown meeting in a café.
Fergie certainly had a bit of work to do when he arrived in the French capital. It is not always remembered that Cantona actually put in a transfer request in the summer of 1995, the reaction to the news that he had taken part in a practice match against Rochdale. Although it was held behind closed doors at United’s training ground, it appeared to breach the terms of the suspension, and the FA opened an inquiry. The boss convinced him all would turn out well if they both stayed solid to their belief in Manchester United.
Richard Williams explained it in this typically elegant way of his: ‘By asking for a move, he was making a stand not against the club but against English football. He went off to Paris, apparently intending to talk to the representatives of other clubs. That spring he had received a £4.2m offer from Massimo Moratti, then recently installed as president of Internazionale. Instead he signed a new contract to stay at Old Trafford, worth £3m over three years. But it was assumed Moratti’s offer was on his mind when, in exasperation, he put in his request.
‘Sir Alex Ferguson flew to Paris, where he sweet-talked Cantona back to the club. In truth, however, Cantona knew that in England he had found a place where his talent could find its fullest expression. In Italy it would all have been very different. In the Premiership, Cantona’s touch and vision shone. In Serie A he would not have stood out to such a degree, if at all. The directness of his play would have gone down well there, but his low boiling point would have betrayed him, perhaps fatally.’
It is an interesting point of view – basically that while Eric was the cream in England he could not cut it in Europe; not only that he could not cut it but also that he knew that. That he stayed for reasons of self-preservation.
What is beyond doubt is that Ferguson definitely made that summer trip to France in 1995 out of self-preservation – and admiration for the man who was on the brink of implosion. Sir Alex was naturally upset and bewildered by the events of that crazy night. He would admit that he had not seen the incident – and that it only dawned on him when he watched the video of it over and over again when he got back home to Manchester at 4am the following morning.
It was a Burns Night the proud Scot would never forget. Many years later Fergie would later admit that what he saw on the video was ‘pretty appalling’ and say: ‘Over the years since then I have never been able to elicit an explanation of the episode from Eric, but my own feeling is that anger at himself over the ordering-off and resentment of the referee’s earlier inaction [at the way Palace players were getting away with fouling him] combined to take him over the brink.’
But he never had the slightest doubt that he and United should move Heaven and earth to keep the Frenchman. Just as Mancini remained convinced in his belief that Mario should be kept at City, not just because he would become good – but because he would become one of the three best players in the world…along with Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo and, yes, better than Rooney!
Cantona was Ferguson’s talisman; the man who had made the difference – now it was payback time, time to stand by the footballer extraordinaire who had made Fergie’s dream come true. His efforts would pay dividends: Eric would serve his ban and stay at United for almost another two years. Eric would later admit that his love of United and the fans had played a key role in his decision to stay, saying: ‘I feel close to the rebelliousness and vigour of the youth here. Perhaps time will separate us, but nobody can deny that here, behind the windows of Manchester there is an insane love of football, of celebration and of music.’
The United boss was in no doubt that he had done right to fight for Cantona – he needed only look at how United suffered badly as a consequence of the fall-out from that traumatic night to see that. At the start of 1995 things had been looking good for Ferguson. He had just been awarded the CBE in the New Year honours list; he had bought Andy Cole for £7million from Newcastle United and United looked on their way to a third Premier League title.
But the Red Devils would lose the plot after January 25 and failure to win at West Ham on the last day of the season and falling to Everton in the FA Cup Final meant that the trophy cabinet at Old Trafford was empty for the first time in five years.
Ferguson would grind his teeth on the Cantona Speaks video and complain: ‘I think it’s summed up in the three games we had in a row at home (between March 15 and April 17). We drew 0-0 with Chelsea, 0-0 with Tottenham and 0-0 with Leeds United. Having only lost the League by one point, no one’s going to tell me or even attempt to convince me that he would not have made one goal or scored a goal in one of those three games.’
But Cantona would soon be back at the top table.
Mario’s ‘seagulls’ moment would come with the ‘Why always me’ poser on his T-shirt that time – although it was, of course, in no way as cryptic as the Frenchman’s comment! Just like Cantona, Mario has always stressed how determined he was to be a success on the European stage. ‘Playing in the Champions League is of key importance to him,’ I am told. ‘Mario wants to play against the best – and win against the best. That was one of the reasons why he agreed to move to City and work with Mancini. He believed Roberto could lead City to the Champions League given the resources he had to work with from the wealthy owners.’
Certainly, disillusionment with United’s inability to crack the Champions League at the time led to Cantona quitting United in 1997. He had won four league titles in five years with United, but admitted he had lost his love for the game. He was particularly anguished to have failed yet again in Europe – United were eliminated by Borussia Dortmund in the semi-finals of the Champions League, and felt that he had become a marketing tool at Old Trafford.
In his 1999 autobiography Managing My Life, Sir Alex said that Eric told him of his decision to retire within 24 hours of United’s European exit – confirming how badly the legendary Frenchman had taken the defeat.
But it would be another month before he left for good, his last competitive game being the 2-0 home win over West Ham on May 11, 1997.
Cantona would later explain his exit from football in this way: ‘When you quit football it is not easy, your life becomes difficult. I should know because sometimes I feel I quit too young. I loved the game but I no longer had the passion to go to bed early, not to go out with my friends, not to drink, and not to do a lot of other things – the things I like in life.’
Cantona had scored a total of 82 goals in 185 appearances for United in five marvellous years. Fergie knew he would be missed…and would miss him, his professionalism, his genius and the way he inspired those around him.
United legend Mark Hughes would later sum up the unique relationship between the boss and his star player in this way in his autobiography, Hughsie: ‘Alex Ferguson didn’t exactly rewrite the rule book but he treated him differently and explained to the rest of us that he was a special player requiring special treatment.’
It rings a bell when you think of Mancini and Balotelli. In the 2011-12 season Roberto defiantly stood by Mario when the boy was on the end of a constant barrage of criticism from the Press – particularly after the 3-3 draw with Sunderland. The Daily Mail summed up the mood in Fleet Street regarding Balotelli, ‘Manchester City manager Roberto Mancini will not give up on maverick striker Mario Balotelli. The mercurial forward remains a source of recurring frustration for Mancini but the City boss still wants to coax the best out of him. Mancini was highly critical of the 21-year-old’s overall display in Saturday’s clash with Sunderland despite his two goals in the 3-3 draw at the Etihad Stadium.’ But when asked whether he would give up on Mario, Mancini said, ‘No. I am frustrated because sometimes I think it is not possible that a player with his class and his technique can play a game like this. I think he is young and I hope for him he can improve very quickly for his future. A player like Mario in the Premier League should score one or two goals every game.’ It could have been Ferguson talking about Cantona 17 years earlier. Now let’s fast forward to 2012 and look at Mario’s contribution to that wonderful title win for City.