Cantona: The Rebel Who Would Be King

by Philippe Auclair

  The media’s response to that performance (‘Stuttering Leeds Lifted By Cantona’ was one headline among many in the same vein) did not alter Wilkinson’s view that Éric was best used when the opposition lacked the physical freshness to close down space as rapidly as in the opening stages of a game. Not unreasonably, he also reminded the doubters: ‘I have not been down a championship road before, and neither have most of my players. So at this stage of the season, with every game like a cup tie, I tend to fall back on the team which started the season and has got us so far.’ So, when February turned into March, Cantona found himself in the dugout again, and had to wait until the 65th minute to take part in a goalless home draw against Aston Villa. The ploy nearly worked, when Éric forced ’keeper Nigel Spink to make a couple of outstanding saves in the last quarter of the match. Leeds had relinquished the lead in the title race to Manchester United by then. Ferguson’s men, who led by a single point, had the advantage of a game in hand, and many Leeds fans found it difficult to understand why their flamboyant Frenchman had not become an automatic choice in Wilkinson’s starting eleven. As Gordon Strachan reminded the fans, while praising Cantona’s ‘first-class attitude’, and regretting that ‘we could not have him at Eiland Road from the start of the season’: ‘You have to remember that when [Éric] joined us, he had not played for six weeks – so it was really like pre-season for him, and we have to break him in gently, though hopefully he will be a big help to us in the final weeks of the season.’ These considered words did little to alter the growing perception that Wilkinson’s measured approach was too rigid by half. The manager, however, would not bow to fan pressure.

  When Leeds travelled to Tottenham on 7 March, Éric found himself on the bench again, to be waved onto the pitch with a quarter of an hour to go when defender Mike Whitlow suffered an injury. Leeds, leading by two goals to one at that stage, faced a nervous conclusion to the game. A victory would see them overtake Manchester United in the league table by two points. When, less than sixty seconds after walking onto the turf, Éric laid the ball in the path of Gary McAllister, who doubled Leeds’ advantage, pandemonium erupted in the stand reserved for visiting fans, who had been chanting Cantona’s song non-stop since he had been warming up on the touchline. ‘No one in France gets that sort of reception for running up and down on the side of the pitch,’ a visibly touched Éric confided afterwards. What made it all the more special was that the Cantona clan – his father Albert, his brothers Jean-Marie and Joël – had come from Marseilles to see him play that afternoon. Éric’s heart must have swelled with pride. It hardly mattered that Wilkinson had yet again resisted the temptation to do what a whole city willed him to do and send him on from kick-off. ‘He’s subjected to less pressure when he comes on once the game has started,’ the manager explained, somewhat befuddled that a magnificent away victory could be overshadowed by a perfectly sane selection choice. But overshadowed it was.

  Éric had conducted himself irreproachably on and off the pitch since his arrival at Eiland Road. No complaints. No tantrums. No yellow cards. Frank Worthington, a free spirit who had plied his trade at no fewer than fifteen clubs (Leeds among them) in a career which spanned twenty-three years, called him ‘a breath of fresh air on the English scene’. ‘In this country,’ he said, ‘we’ve long had a mistrust of genuinely talented footballers; that’s why I’m glad to see Cantona here.’ But come the next game, Éric could only watch from the sidelines as Leeds folded 1–4 against QPR at Loftus Road. He played the last twenty minutes that time, taking Gary McAllister’s place long after the white flag had been hoisted: Rangers already led by two goals.

  Then, at long last, Wilkinson relented. On Saturday 14 March, on the occasion of Wimbledon’s visit to Yorkshire, he deployed the three-pronged attack fans had been clamouring for. Rod Wallace provided width and crosses, Lee Chapman battered the opposition’s centre-backs into submission, Éric Cantona added his je ne sais quoi in the ‘hole’, positioning himself just behind the target man. The Dons suffered their heaviest defeat of the campaign, and the final score (5–1) hardly flattered their victors. Chapman beat ’keeper Hans Segers on three occasions to walk away with the match ball. Éric pounced on a mistake by John Scales to run sixty yards and make it 4–1 to the hosts. It was a slaughter; and when a solitary strike by Nigel Clough gave Nottingham Forest a 1–0 win over Manchester United four days later, Leeds found themselves two points clear again at the top of the first division table.

  This splendid exhibition convinced Wilkinson to field an unchanged side for what promised to be one of the toughest games of the season: a trip to Arsenal, who remained formidable opponents at their Highbury home despite a mediocre defence of their title. A brutal confrontation was expected and that is exactly what millions of ITV viewers got. The game, played in atrocious conditions, ended in a 1–1 draw that satisfied the visitors rather more than their hosts. Chapman scored his 19th of the season, and Cantona was a few inches away from gaining all three points for his club, only for David Seaman to produce a stupendous one-handed save and deny him at the very last second. Leeds had passed a stringent test that many thought they would fail, and so had Cantona. With seven games to go before the curtain fell on the 1991–92 season, he had finally established himself as one of the key players in the United squad – in the minds of Leeds supporters, that is, even if Howard Wilkinson was yet to be convinced. One Mr A. Bradley won £5 for submitting the prize-winning letter in the Posh sports mailbag at the beginning of March. ‘Cantona’s ball skills,’ he wrote, ‘allied to his obvious liking for the English game, have made him a great hit with the Eiland Road crowd. Even during the pressure of the push for the First Division title, Cantona has proved there is still room for a little Continental flair.’ There was indeed – but a couple of disappointing results made the Leeds coach rethink his strategy.

  Leeds first drew 0–0 with West Ham at Eiland Road on 28 March, three days after Éric had played 90 minutes with the French national team against Belgium (3–3). Cantona showed no signs of tiredness, though. A dubious offside decision deprived him of a goal in the first half, and later on in the game, he tested the Hammers’keeper Ludk Mikloško with a fine chip, after gracefully evading a couple of tackles. Then, on 4 April, Leeds’ hopes of a first title in eighteen years were dealt what many thought was a mortal blow by Manchester City, who simply walked over Wilkinson’s team 4–0 at Maine Road. Starved of service, Cantona had sunk like all around him. Bookmakers now rated Leeds’ chances at 9/2, while Manchester United’s odds had been cut to 8/1 on – roughly what could be had for Neil Kinnock’s Labour Party in the forthcoming general election. But whereas the bankers and brokers of the City were panicking at the thought of a ‘socialist’ government, Wilkinson was merely ‘weighing his options’. He had held talks with Éric’s adviser Jean-Jacques Amorfini, as the 15 April deadline to finalize a permanent transfer from Nîmes was fast approaching. A statement was passed on to the press: ‘both parties are hoping for a satisfactory outcome’. Wilkinson’s mind was made up in that respect: he wished Cantona to commit himself to Leeds for the three seasons to come. But which role would Éric play until the end of the present one?

  Manchester United had – on paper – a far better chance than Leeds to capture the trophy that had eluded them since 1967. The next four fixtures that awaited them (Southampton and Nottingham Forest at home, Luton and West Ham away) should have held no fears for the recent winners of the League Cup (won 1–0 against Forest, on 12 April). Leeds would have to travel to Liverpool and face Sheffield United at Bramall Lane, while hosting Chelsea and Coventry. Wilkinson decided he would trust the players who had taken Leeds to the top of the championship by Christmas, which meant that Cantona, though in no way personally responsible for his team’s stuttering progress, would revert to the role of ‘supersub’. And rarely was this epithet better deserved than when Chelsea turned up at Eiland Road on 11 April.

  Éric watched Rod Wallace give Leeds a 1–0 lead before re
placing him with twenty minutes to go. And what a twenty minutes they were. First, he presented Chapman with his 20th goal of the season. Then . . .

  BBC pundits awarded the honorary goal of the 1991–92 season trophy to a spectacular Mickey Thomas effort for Wrexham against Arsenal in the FA Cup. But Éric’s strike against Chelsea was on a different plane altogether, the kind of goal that is dreamed of and remains scorched in the memory. Gordon Strachan took a quick throw-in on the right wing. Cantona ran to the ball just outside the area, and, seeing that Paul Elliott had committed himself to the tackle, flicked it over the Chelsea defender’s head with his right boot. Elliott regained his balance, only to see the ball loop beyond his reach again. As it fell, in slow motion it seemed, Cantona’s right foot connected with the sphere on the volley and sent it soaring into the top corner of the net. Eiland Road had seen nothing like it for more than twenty years, not since Eddie Gray, starting from the corner flag, had ghosted his way past five Burnley defenders before slotting the ball home. Elliott, the reigning Scottish footballer of the year, freshly acquired by Chelsea from Celtic, had spent two seasons with Pisa in Serie A. ‘I can honestly say that I haven’t seen anything like it since I was in Italy,’ he said afterwards. And then it came from Marco van Basten. That should tell you everything.’

  Gordon Strachan, with one eye on the confrontations that laid ahead, tried to temper the wildly enthusiastic reaction of Leeds supporters. ‘That goal came when the game was won,’ he said, ‘and maybe just now it suits Éric to come on when the heat of the battle has died down a little. Not because he physically cannot take it, but because coping mentally with the demands of the English game at this particular time might be a bit of a problem for him.’ Try telling that to thousands of famished fans who had waited for a generation to be treated to such splendour again. Nor were the Eiland Road season-ticket holders the only ones to stand up and notice. Across the Pennines, a teenage Welsh winger who had made his debut for Manchester United in the previous season was enthralled by the beauty of a goal ‘that any player would have been proud of: Ryan Giggs.

  Two days later, Wilkinson announced that Leeds intended to take up their option on Cantona’s contract, ‘subject to agreement on personal terms’. Éric’s salary was rumoured to approach £7,000 a week (far more than his manager was paid), a huge outlay for a club like Leeds United, which could not yet rely on television money and European games receipts to balance its books. Prudent by nature, gambler by instinct, Wilkinson felt he could not afford to lose a player who had given substance to his team’s ambitions by his presence alone. Éric Cantona did not win the title single-handedly, as it could be argued he did for Manchester United in 1995–96. When Leeds fought out a crucial goalless draw at Anfield on 18 April, the hero of the day was ’keeper John Lukic, not Cantona, who couldn’t summon the verve he had displayed against Chelsea the week before. Gordon Strachan would, quite rightly, be voted Leeds player of the year, a distinction to which McAllister also had a better claim than the Frenchman. But Éric, as so often in his career, was a catalyst. When I asked Gary whether he thought Leeds could have become champions without their ‘supersub’, his answer was as unequivocal as the view expressed by every single fan I’ve spoken to.

  ‘He played a vital role in our winning the championship,’ he said. ‘It’s not about the statistics. When you’re going for the championship, you get a bit nervy towards the end, the pressure starts to tell. Certainly when Leeds played at home, the visiting teams tried to park the bus in front of the goal, and play ultra-defensively. Éric would come on when we struggled to find a way through, and more often than not, he’d get the crowd going with a little bit of magic, and the crowd would lift us – and we’d score an important goal. Strachan, Batty, Speed . . . they were the engine of the team, but, when it came to winning the championship, Éric played a pivotal part, and his role grew as the season went on.’

  If nerves were frayed at Eiland Road, they were exposed raw at Old Trafford. Manchester United’s progress in the League Cup had led to the postponement of a number of their league games, five of which had to be played between 16 and 26 April. Wilkinson compared his team’s situation to that of Mary Decker in the 1984 Olympic 3,000 metres final, when the American favourite’s heels were clipped by Zola Budd as she was about to kick for home in the back straight. No one was fooled. The title was Ferguson’s to lose. Much depended on his skipper Bryan Robson’s fitness – a recurrent theme in this magnificent footballer’s career – but even ‘Captain Marvel’ couldn’t cope with the accumulation of matches, and neither could his teammates. On Easter Monday (20 April), Leeds took the field against Coventry knowing that their rivals had been beaten 2–1 (at home, no less) by their bogey team Nottingham Forest. Fired by this unhoped-for result, Leeds strolled to a 2–0 victory over the Sky Blues, in which Cantona played his now customary cameo. He jogged on the pitch with fifteen minutes to go, and induced a penalty when Lloyd McGrath appeared to block his shot with a hand on the goal-line. Two days later an exhausted Manchester United then proceeded to lose 1–0 at already relegated West Ham, which prompted Alex Ferguson to ‘concede’ the title. With 76 points to the Mancunians’ 75, and a substantially better goal difference than their rivals (+35 against +30), Leeds were now 3/1 on to become champions of England.

  The pressure on both title contenders was increased by the Football League’s decision to bow to television’s wishes and hold their next games at different times on Sunday 26 April. Neither side relished the trips that a sadistic schedule had set for them. Leeds had to go to Bramall Lane, knowing that their neighbours Sheffield United would like nothing better than to derail their campaign at the very last. Manchester United had to perform in the noxious atmosphere of Anfield, where Liverpool fans would celebrate a victory by the home team as if it had brought them another championship crown. Wilkinson’s men had the support of 5,000 of their fans, who could not have felt that confident when the game was locked at 2–2 with fifteen minutes to go. McAllister made way for Cantona at this point. A few seconds later, Éric and Rod Wallace closed down on Brian Gayle in the Sheffield United penalty area, hurrying the panicking defender who comically managed to loop the ball over his ’keeper Mel Rees with the strangest of back-headers. Somewhat fortuitously, Leeds had taken all three points, and could now sit back and watch Manchester United try and bring the title race to the wire.

  Sit back is precisely what Éric did, in Lee Chapman’s living room, where ITV had installed a camera to record the reactions of the Leeds players to the events unfolding at Anfield. David Batty and Gary McAllister also perched themselves on the sofa, literally on the edge of their seats. It soon became clear that Manchester United’s tank was running on empty. Demoralized by the result at Bramall Lane, their bodies drained by the insane schedule that had been forced on them, Ferguson’s players barely put up a fight. Once Ian Rush had scored his very first goal against Manchester United, the Kop cruelly sang: ‘And now you’re gonna believe us/You’ll never win the league’ to the tune of ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’; and when Mark Walters put the result beyond doubt late in the second half, thousands of jubilant Kopites joined in an impromptu conga: ‘Let’s all laugh at Man U, let’s all laugh at Man U, ha haa ha ha’. As Ryan Giggs walked back, broken-hearted, to the team coach, he was accosted by a fan who asked for his autograph. The player complied – only to see the sniggering Liverpool supporter tear up the piece of paper in his face. It wouldn’t be too long before Cantona found himself the subject of such visceral hatred.

  Back at Chapman’s home, Walters’ title-clinching goal had been greeted with an explosion of joy; but while his teammates embraced and danced a victory jig, Éric remained impassive throughout, his arms folded, his eyes staring at the television screen, with the face of a child stumbling on an incomprehensible scene of adult celebration. True, some of the events of that afternoon verged on the surreal. The ITV presenter Elton Welsby tried to get a comment from Cantona, but in vain, and ven
tured in desperation: ‘Magnifique, Éric!’ to which the player answered – in English – ‘Oh, do you speak French?’ ‘Non,’ came the reply, bringing an immediate end to one of the most bizarre interviews ever aired on British television.

  It’s not that Éric felt he didn’t belong – he most certainly did, and would overcome his shyness in the days to come; but he must have found it difficult to believe that he, the outsider, the rebel who had been cast away five months previously, had just won the third championship title of his career and perhaps the first that meant anything to him, even if he had spent far more time on the pitch when Marseille were crowned in 1991. As the magnitude of what he and his new friends had achieved began to sink in, a different Cantona emerged from his shell. He opened himself fully to the extraordinary outpouring of pride that lit up the city and, by his own admission, barely slept over the next few days. He had never encountered such devotion to a club. Everywhere he looked, windows were now festooned with blue and white flags. Fans climbed up the statue of the Black Prince in City Square and sang his name (two of them had to be taken to hospital when they fell). Another supporter, one Christopher Bromage, told the Yorkshire Post that he had travelled 50,000 miles to follow the Peacocks in the 1991–92 season, timing his business trips so that they would coincide with football fixtures, as he worked in Japan. One of his most cherished moments was ‘being there’ when ‘Éric made his debut at Oldham’. What can you say to fans like these? Precisely what Cantona said to tens of thousands of revellers from the balcony of the Town Hall: ‘Why I love you? I don’t know why, but I love you.’22