Mention Eric Cantona and two things spring into many people’s minds: that kung-fu kick into a coward of a fan after being sent off at Crystal Palace and his subsequent remark to the world’s press: ‘When the seagulls follow the trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea.’ Spot on, big fella. I couldn’t have put it better myself.
I’ll get to both topics later, but first I want to talk about Eric Cantona the footballer. He was born in May 1966, something I wouldn’t normally mention, only he later went on to make an advert for Nike which proclaimed: ‘’66 was a great year for English football – Eric was born!’ Yes, I know he probably didn’t come up with the slogan himself, but he was happy to go along with it, and that says quite a lot about him.
He made his debut as a professional footballer for the French club Auxerre in 1983 but scored only twice in 13 appearances over three seasons. He was loaned to Martigues, and after his return to Auxerre he scored 21 goals over two seasons. That doesn’t tell half the story, though.
I guess you could describe his period in French football as ‘stormy’ to say the least. In 1987, he won his first French cap, but, on the down side, he was heavily fined for punching a club-mate, his own goalkeeper, the French international Bruno Martini. In 1988, he was sold to Marseille, where he promptly received a one-year ban from the French national team for calling their coach, Henri Michel, ‘one of the world’s most incompetent trainers’. He was also suspended by Marseille when, after being substituted in a charity match, he kicked the ball into the crowd and threw his shirt at the referee.
Marseille then loaned him out to Montpellier where, in 1990, he was banned for ten days after smashing his boot into the face of team-mate Jean-Claude Lemoult. Marseille accepted him back before selling him to Nimes in 1991, where he received a three-match ban for throwing the ball at a referee. At the subsequent French disciplinary hearing, he walked up to every member of the panel and, one by one, called them all ‘idiot’ to their faces. This, not too surprisingly, earned him a further suspension and so, in December 1991, at the age of 25, he announced his retirement from football. You see, nobody understood him.
Fortunately for young Eric, he had some admirers too. The man who was then French national coach, Michel Platini, and Gerard Houllier, who went on to manage Liverpool, were among them and they suggested he should perhaps try his luck in England. So it came to pass that in January 1992 a news agency report was titled: ‘Wayward French Star to Have Trial in Sheffield’. No, it wasn’t at the local Crown Court for assault, it was at Sheffield Wednesday, then managed by Trevor Francis.
The report said, in part: ‘France’s wayward striker Eric Cantona has been offered a chance to resurrect his soccer career at English first division Sheffield Wednesday, the club said. … Cantona quit club soccer last month after being suspended for two months by a disciplinary commission. But Wednesday manager Trevor Francis has now offered him a week’s trial, which, if successful, may lead to a permanent transfer for the French international next May. “We are still optimistic something will happen in the next couple of days,” Francis said. “He was due to be here last Sunday and he has still not arrived. There are one or two technical points still to be sorted out…”
‘Cantona, who has scored 12 goals in 20 games for France, said last week he would love to represent France in next June’s European Championship finals in Sweden. An unorthodox character who enjoys reading Freud and painting, probably at the same time, Cantona has changed clubs five times in the last three years, usually after disagreements with coaches or officials. The president of one of his former clubs Bordeaux once described him as “mentally sick”. He was also once banned from the national team for 10 months for calling former trainer Henri Michel a “shitbag”.’
Eric Cantona – one of Sheffield Wednesday’s All-time Greats. No, it doesn’t read right, does it? It never happened, of course, and a few days later the same agency announced, not too surprisingly, ‘French star walks out on Sheffield Wednesday’.
It went on to say, ‘French soccer star Eric Cantona walked out on English club Sheffield Wednesday on Friday after refusing to extend his trial period into a second week. Freezing weather has restricted Cantona to just a couple of training sessions on artificial pitches during his time in England but the controversial striker declined an offer to stay longer. “I wanted Eric to stay on trial for another week in the hope the weather would improve and I could see him on grass,” said Wednesday manager Trevor Francis. … “I think that even the greatest manager in the world would not have been able to make a decision on a player after seeing him in two training sessions on an artificial pitch and one indoors. He and his lawyer told me that he is a big star in France and would lose face with the people there if he stayed for another week on trial. But I felt that after three days I couldn’t make a decision and commit us to a substantial fee and wages for the loan.”’
A case of ‘Moi? The magnificent Eric, on trial? Vous can’t do that, Trev.’
A day later he signed on loan with Leeds United until the end of that season, the last of the old First Division before the top flight became the Premier League. Cantona’s debut can’t have been the most inspiring in the world: he came on as substitute for Steve Hodge in a Leeds team that managed to lose 2–0 to Oldham.
His next appearance was for the French national side at Wembley when Platini showed his faith in him by selecting him to face an England side that had three new boys in it. One of them, Martin Keown, did a good job of keeping Cantona quiet and another debutant, a young Alan Shearer, scored in a 2–0 victory, France’s first defeat in three years.
It didn’t take long for Cantona to start scoring in England, however. His Elland Road debut saw him score a goal as substitute in the 2–0 victory over Luton. Leeds manager Howard Wilkinson, who had signed him up after seeing him on video, explained why he used the Frenchman so often as sub: ‘If it hadn’t been for injuries, Eric would have spent more time on the bench than he has since joining us. He has a lot to offer, but we have a communication problem while he learns the language. We’re in the trenches and by the time you shout, “Duck!” he’s dead.’ Wilkinson and seeing talent, there’s an anomaly.
Cantona simply said, through an interpreter, ‘I find English football very fast and hard, but I’m enjoying it.’
He’d soon have a lot more to say.
By the end of April that year, Leeds and Manchester United were battling it out for the title. Even though many of his appearances were as substitute, Cantona had quickly become a favourite with the Leeds fans. The chant ‘Ooh, aah, Cantona’ was beginning to be heard as the Yorkshire club clinched the title, and he moved to Leeds permanently for £900,000, signing a three-year contract.
During the summer, he announced he wanted a break from international football but it didn’t take him long to get into the swing of things at club level in the new season. In August, he scored two hat-tricks: one in the 4–3 defeat of Liverpool in the Charity Shield and another in a 5–0 trouncing of Tottenham Hotspur. Soon a group called Ooh La La had recorded a song called ‘Ooh Ah Cantona’ and there were articles appearing about him in The Economist magazine – not the usual place for items on footballers.
It said, ‘He is a French intellectual with an interest in existentialist philosophy; a rebel, he has clashed often with authority; in his spare time he writes poetry. The latest hero of the Paris salons? No, Leeds United’s centre-forward. … The great Leeds sides of the past had been famous for their discipline and teamwork. A fancy Frenchman with intello pretensions and an attitude problem seemed unlikely to go down well. On Mr Cantona’s arrival, the English newspapers christened him “Le Brat”. But he has become the undisputed idol of Leeds. Everywhere he goes – on or off the field – Leeds fans serenade him with a special chant of “Ooh, Ah, Cantona”. The supporters’ magazine, Marching Altogether, has been renamed Marchant Ensemble in his honour.’
The article ended: It is Mr Cantona around whom a cult has formed. It has been nurtured by the fact that he speaks almost no English. While British footballers mouth clichés in post-match interviews, Mr Cantona remains necessarily silent and mysterious. The first attempt to interview him on English television went as follows:
‘Interviewer: Eric, magnifique!
‘Cantona: You speak French?
‘Interviewer: Non.’
Can’t say fairer than that, can you?
Although he’d kissed and made up with the French national side and their new boss Gerard Houllier, things weren’t going too smoothly on the field for Leeds. They made an early exit from the European Cup at the hands of Rangers and the League Cup after a defeat by Watford. The Premiership results weren’t too brilliant either but that didn’t stop the Leeds fans from adoring Cantona.
Perhaps they saw something in him the manager didn’t, because at the end of November came the startling news – Cantona had signed for Manchester United for £1.3 million. One of the ironies of the move, even ignoring the fact that Howard Wilkinson let him go in the first place, was that he wasn’t United’s first choice. To quote Alex Ferguson, ‘Because of [Sheffield] Wednesday’s refusal to let us sign David Hirst, we looked around at strikers we rated and who might be available. I tried Leeds and was delighted when they agreed to release Cantona.’
Howard Wilkinson’s explanation was: ‘As a result of a conversation on Wednesday afternoon, a deal was struck which from my point of view was in the best interests of all concerned. This is a move which, perhaps, gives Eric a better chance of first-team football than he would have had at Leeds. Obviously, at a club with aspirations to establish itself as one of the top names in the game, it is impossible to pick more than 11 players. Somebody is always going to be disappointed.’ Typical Wilkinson. With hindsight, not the best decision ever made – just ask any Leeds fan.
Eric’s views on transfers are, well, typically Cantonesque: ‘Leaving a club is like leaving a woman. When you have nothing left to say, you go.’
But any way you look at it, the legend was about to begin in earnest. Although 1992 isn’t exactly a million years ago, it has to be emphasised that Cantona wasn’t joining an all-conquering side at Manchester United. Far from it. You had to go back to the 1966/67 season to find the last time United had won the (old) First Division, the star prize in English league football, and that was with a team including Best, Law and Charlton managed by Matt Busby. During the intervening 26 years – literally a lifetime for many fans – Liverpool had won the title an amazing 11 times, Arsenal, Leeds and Everton had all won it on three occasions and even teams such as Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest and Derby County had carried off the title.
Yet United remained one of the biggest clubs not just in British football but in the world. So the scene was set for someone like Cantona to come and strut his stuff. With his natural arrogance and his shirt-collar turned up high, he had a self-belief second to none and Old Trafford was to be the perfect stage for him. Cantona had an aura about him, as all great players do, and even the opposition fans could see it.
Being Cantona, he had to describe it in his own, unique way: ‘I am in love with Manchester United. I feel it like finding a wife who has given me the perfect marriage.’
Obviously Eric’s way with words was infectious, because even Alex Ferguson, hardly known for his reflections on the meaning of life, said, ‘Eric is an artist, and like all artists he needs a stage. He is a man searching for his theatre, and we are providing it.’
That is part of Alex Ferguson’s genius as a manager. He needed a catalyst to make United the best again and realised it could be this mercurial Frenchman.
Cantona went on to score goals, yes, but not on a massive scale. It was the other qualities that he brought with him that made him stand out: he had vision, presence, he made everyone else play better around him and he could handle any pressure situation. It was as though he was born to play at Manchester United. As Alex Ferguson put it, after landing the title: ‘There’s that moment, we’ve all experienced it, when you are fiddling with a key and someone comes along and does it for you with the first turn. That is what Cantona did for us. He unlocked the door to the championship. The man has the touch of velvet. He scores goals, creates goals, and dreams up little miracles that are simply beyond the scope and imagination of most players. He is the true theatrical performer.’
In January, United went top of the Premiership for the first time that season. The following month, Cantona returned to Elland Road and the Yorkshire fans who had adored him – some of whom were in tears when he left – shouted, ‘Judas!’ as his team coach arrived at the ground. But it didn’t stop the Reds from gaining the point they needed to stay at the top of the table. Eric being Eric, however, that wasn’t the end of the matter. He was later fined £1,000 by the Football Association for spitting at Leeds fans when walking to the dressing room after the match – worse than kung-fuing someone in my book – though the FA spokeswoman said, ‘The commission did take into consideration that he was subject to provocation prior to the incident.’
United were on a roll, however, and by Easter that first title in 26 years was within their grasp. Mark Hughes was rattling goals up front and a teenage Ryan Giggs was a revelation. Peter Schmeichel, voted the best goalkeeper in the world at the time, and Steve Bruce were superb at the back, but it was Cantona, who played the last month of the season with a strapped broken wrist, who provided that extra something special. As Bobby Charlton put it, ‘Great players can be quirky. That’s what makes them different. You have to put up with that because of who they are. We’ve done that with Eric Cantona.’
United went on to win the title by ten points from Aston Villa. In doing so, Cantona had won back-to-back titles with different clubs. People were practically queuing up to echo Bobby Charlton’s comments. Paddy Crerand, like Charlton, a member of the last United side to win the title, said, ‘When Eric came, I thought he was a panic buy. I was wrong. Cantona has been the brain, the greatest difference from last season when United collapsed. Alex has never made a better signing. Cantona has won them the title.’
‘This is the ideal stage for Eric,’ said Mark Hughes. ‘He’s a very emotional player, lifted by atmosphere. He’s got a great rapport with the fans, they love him here and he seems to revel in the attention. His creative ability has been very significant this season. He has helped to make us more creative, less predictable. We have definitely been a better side since he arrived.’
Cantona’s poor English had not been a problem, Hughes added. ‘Football is an international language and we get by on a nod and a wink.’
Surprise, surprise – Leeds manager Howard Wilkinson, whose side went down the table to 17th that season, wasn’t as fulsome in his praise, saying the signing by United was a gamble that had worked! ‘He does what he does well, but he does it best in a winning team. People say he won us the championship last season, but I didn’t play him in any of the last crucial matches.’ Do I detect sour grapes?
Anyway, with a second title under his belt, what did Eric do but suggest he might not stay with United! He told the French daily newspaper L’Equipe, ‘I would like to be a European champion with Manchester,’ but added he did not know if he would be at Old Trafford for the new season. ‘I don’t know. I’ve got two months on holiday and a lot of things could happen. The sunsets are beautiful everywhere. In the Camargue, in England, in Spain… for the moment I feel really great here. If I don’t feel good here tomorrow, I’ll leave. But I would have to talk to the club chiefs. I still have three years of my contract to run.’
And quite rightly he refused to accept that he had been lucky with his choice of clubs: ‘Listen, when I arrived here, we were sixth and a hatful of points behind. It was a real challenge. Perhaps what was missing was a piece of the puzzle, a small but indispensable piece. I’m not like Maradona who can make a team play all on his own.’
United started off the next season in blistering form, in the Premiership and in Europe. You could tell that the marriage of Cantona and United really was perfect. He even went on record as saying, ‘This is the first time I really feel settled in my football life. Some teams win and they are happy but with Manchester we must win and we must play nice football. I love that. I have tried for a long time to find the level I wanted. I love to win, I love football, I love the pass, the move, the joy and I have to find that to be content. For Manchester, it is the same. We have the same vision of football and victory. If you have 11 workmen, you will never win. If you have 11 artists, you will never win. It is important that the team complements each other and we have that.
‘It is not the same football we played at Leeds, which was more direct,’ he added. ‘At Manchester it is more pass, move. I think we are the best team in the European Cup, with Milan and Barcelona, really I do. We can beat anybody if we play with patience and if we play with what we know. We have international players here with a lot of experience and a manager who has won the European Cup Winners’ Cup. After the English clubs had five years out of Europe, it was important for me to play with players who know international football, like Bryan Robson and Paul Ince. I don’t know if it’s a big thing for them to play with me, but for me it’s a big thing to play with them. I can play at the level I want because I play with a beautiful team.’
You can definitely say that Eric didn’t talk like most footballers. There again not a lot of the lads spent their spare time as he did: shooting, painting, playing the piano and violin. He also did a bit of yoga, wrote poetry and said his heroes included The Doors’ dead singer Jim Morrison, the 19th-century poet Arthur Rimbaud and Antoine de Saint Exupery, a French novelist and fighter-pilot.
The artistic inclinations didn’t stop there. ‘At other clubs it has been a little like playing in a little street band who play together on the corner,’ he said. ‘They might not play so well and I don’t play so well either. But Manchester United are a symphonic orchestra, a philharmonic orchestra of players. You can’t help but perform well when you have such a perfect harmony all around you. They inspire me to produce a great symphony.’
I think he meant it’s easier to play with good players and a manager who wants to play proper football.
While playing for United in the early years, he lived in a semi-detached house in the Boothstown district of the city. ‘It’s boring to be in a big house,’ he said. ‘When you are four people, why would you buy a house with seven bedrooms? Why would I do that, if not to show people that I am rich? I buy a house that I need not to show people I am rich – they already know that. The man who buys the big house with all the bedrooms he doesn’t need shows he’s rich, but maybe he’s not rich inside. For me the atmosphere inside a house is very important: everywhere I have been with my family, it has been cosy.
‘When I was a footballer I never thought I was different to other people, I just had a different job. People who are successful want to show they are different, they live in the big house and try to live in another world. I want to live in the same world. I don’t have the pretension to be somewhere else. If I have 11 children, I will try to get a house with ten bedrooms.’ Or maybe bunk beds, Eric?
By the start of 1994, United were an amazing 16 points clear at the top of the Premiership and had suffered just one defeat in the league. Everyone had practically handed them the title as they chased a domestic treble. When one newspaper proclaimed, ‘Title Almost in the Bag for Manchester United’, the date was 1 January.
There was a controversial exit from the European Cup in December, however, when they were knocked out at the group stage on goal difference. The 0–0 draw against Turkish side Galatasary in September proved particularly contentious. Cantona was shown the red card at the end of the game as a fight broke out involving players, spectators and the police, and he was given a four-match ban for his trouble. He also reportedly called the referee a ‘cheat’, although United later said he was misquoted, and swung a punch at the Turks’ reserve goalkeeper.
March 1994 really did turn out to be a bad month for Eric. First he got sent off for stamping on an opponent at bottom-of-the-table Swindon Town and a few days later two yellow cards meant he had first use of the soap in a Highbury match with Arsenal. He got a five-match ban for all that and United started dropping points in the league: if the wheels hadn’t exactly come off the cart, the nuts were loose.
But, with Cantona back in action, United won the league by eight points and beat Chelsea 4–0 in the Cup Final – he scored two penalties – as they became the sixth side in history to win the double. Not surprisingly, Cantona also became the first foreign player to pick up that season’s PFA Player of the Year – the award voted for by his fellow professionals.
Cantona started the following season in typical fashion: he was sent off in a pre-season friendly at Rangers for a lunge at an opponent a minute after being booked. That was nothing, though, compared to the storm that blew up after the legendary game at Crystal Palace in January. It had been a fairly ordinary night for Eric, in that after 48 minutes he was sent off for trampling on an opponent. As he headed for the tunnel, however, it all – as they say – kicked off as he passed the Crystal Palace fans.
Versions vary of what was said, but within a second he had raced to the crowd and kung-fu kicked one of the fans who’d been taunting him from behind the barrier. The fan, window-fitter Matthew Simmonds, had raced down 11 steps of what he thought was the sanctuary of the family enclosure, and says he shouted, ‘Off you go, Cantona! An early shower for you!’ What a load of bollocks. Others there say he said, ‘You French bastard, fuck off back to France!’ Simmons later admitted he may have sworn.
Either way Eric was right in the merde this time. United banned him for the rest of the season and fined him £20,000. The FA banned him until the end of September and fined him £10,000. The French axed him as national team captain. He ended up in court and had to do community work. After his court appearance, he attended a press conference and came out with the immortal words, ‘When the seagulls follow the trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea.’ He then pushed back his chair and left the room. Magnifique!
Let’s deal with the philosophising first. When he said that, he was obviously trying to show that he possessed a deep intellect. If an English player had said it, you’d just think he was a twat, wouldn’t you? Because someone is French they could go on about ‘I am the moon, the team are my stars, the fans are my universe’ and just about get away with it. I think they should just stick to ‘I’m over the moon’ or ‘I’m sick as a parrot’. Because it’s coming across with a French accent it’s the same as their movies where you think – It must be good because it’s in French and it’s in black and white – even if you don’t understand it.
But as for the sending off: you have this knob who thinks that because he is in the safety of the crowd he can abuse another man who is no more than ten yards away. I am a great advocate of you pay your money to go into a football ground and you have every right to boo or sing what you like. But if you think that is going to make it better for your team – or think booing and abusing is going to put opposition players off – then you are so mistaken it is frightening. Players are so mentally strong that it’s only going to make opposing players want to play better and shut you up.
Every time you watch a game on television and a player takes a corner or a throw-in, you can see the hatred on the faces of some of the fans. It comes down to a tribal thing and, because they have the safety of being in a crowd and the players can’t do anything to them, they think it’s all right to abuse them verbally or racially or as they choose. If you did that in any other walk of life you would be arrested. Everyone knows that, if they met the same player in a bar or in the street, they wouldn’t dare say anything to them one-on-one.
Doing things in a crowd is the coward’s way. I had it in my career. At Colchester when I started, it was so quiet you could hear someone open a packet of crisps, so you’d hear every remark. I’d sometimes turn round to the crowd and say, ‘Who the fuck said that?’ and no one would say a dickie bird. I’ve been booed by away fans, home fans, everyone in fact. They have a right to voice their opinion on your performance because they have paid their money, so that is fine. But there is a line to be drawn.
Obviously this bloke was giving it to Cantona and something inside of Cantona’s head said, ‘I’m not going to take this from this twat. Why should I?’ The idiot thought he was safe, but Cantona did what every player who has taken abuse over the years has wanted to do. Instead of smashing him in the face with a right hook, he launched himself and the fear on the no-mark’s face is great to look at. Was it a good example for a player to set? The answer is no. Was it wrong for a player to do it? The answer is yes. Was it understandable? Undoubtedly. Every footballer has wanted to do something like that, 100 per cent.
After his return from exile and all those months away from the game, the Cantona myth, if anything, grew even greater. In his absence, United had narrowly failed to win the title for a third year running, finishing a point behind Blackburn. With Cantona back in their ranks, they won the title for the next two seasons. In other words, they won it in the four seasons he played continuously for them, missing out only in his ban year.
When Cantona came back in that 1995/96 season, he also scored the late winner in the Cup Final against Liverpool. Five minutes from time Liverpool failed to clear a corner and Cantona’s twisting right-foot volley from the edge of the area went into the roof of the net for the only goal of the game. He was captain that day and became the first non-British or Irish player to hold the Cup aloft as skipper. As he said afterwards, ‘You know that’s life. Up and down.’
Eventually, he was voted Manchester United’s Player of the Century on the club’s official website, beating into second place his only serious rival, George Best. That shows what Alex Ferguson knew all along about Cantona. How important he was, not just in the year that he signed him but also in the development of Manchester United Football Club and of the players around him. Fergie also showed superb man-management in guiding a player who had appeared uncontrollable throughout his career, never publicly criticising him in any article.
Even Cantona makes mistakes, though. Later, he turned to acting. Footballers may think that because they perform on a ‘stage’ and they are in a ‘theatre’ they are an ‘artiste’ but they are not. When you are playing football you’re just being yourself. Don’t make yourself look a prat by trying to be someone or something else. Not that I think that would worry Cantona – he never did care what people thought of him anyway.