Cantona: The Rebel Who Would Be King

by Philippe Auclair

  Just as in Leeds, Éric enjoyed his English teammates’ tolerance of a man who kept himself to himself when he wanted to, provided he was also able to let his hair down from time to time. And just as at Leeds, Cantona got on with almost everyone. ‘Straight away, he mucked in with the rest of the boys,’ Gary Pallister recalled in his autobiography, Pally, ‘fitting in socially and clearly relishing our “team meetings”’ – a euphemism that no reader should have much trouble deciphering. Pallister could sense that Cantonas supposedly poor command of English was akin to the deafness from which elderly family members miraculously recover whenever they’re talked about at the dinner table.

  Paul Ince too fell under Éric’s charm. ‘He was a lovely, lovely man,’ he said. ‘We used to spend a lot of time together, go out for a few drinks together. It was always all about him, the way he walked in, his charisma. He was one of the best, perhaps the best I’ve played with. It was his awareness. He seemed to know where anyone was on the pitch at any given time when he had the ball. He used to say to me, “Treat the ball like you treat a woman – caress it.” I’d say, “I’d kick the ball over the fucking bar! I couldn’t kick my wife over the bar.” He just loved the ball, didn’t he? His little touches, flicks . . . he was just unbelievable. A fantastic player and a lovely, lovely person, the most gentle gentleman.’ Not everyone, though, agreed with Ince’s and Giggs’ opinion that Éric was ‘just one of the lads’ who enjoyed joining in the lager-fuelled banter.

  Steve Bruce, an older and perhaps more perceptive man, later told Lee Chapman that the Frenchman had ‘hardly said a word’ in his first few weeks in Manchester. This chimed with the Leeds striker’s recollection of Cantona as a loner who ‘would often arrive, train and leave . . . without uttering more than a few words’, and this despite the fact that Chapman was one of the very few people Éric could converse with in French. Everyone, it seems, had ‘their’ Cantona; garrulous with some – Gary McAllister, for example – he would shut up like a bad clam with the rest. He could switch from one persona to the other at will, with the paradoxical ease of one who is convinced of the worthlessness of outsiders’ judgement yet nonetheless craves their approval. How much he delighted in being the centre of attention was demonstrated a few days later, when, leaving his teammates in Lisbon, he headed for Paris, where France’s answer to Terry Wogan, Jean-Pierre Foucault, had asked him to be the star of a one-hour prime-time television special.

  Here was more proof of how his status had been enhanced by the quality of his performances for Les Bleus and his largely unexpected success with Leeds United. The broadcast revealed little about Cantona, who was happy to engage in a sentimental, almost mawkish, celebration of his Marseillais roots, crowned with a ‘surprise’ appearance by his grandmother. This made for excruciating television, not that Cantona seemed to be aware of it. The attention devoted to him flattered his vanity and more than made up for the embarrassment many of his admirers felt at the time. Moreover, on 3 December Éric’s starisation was completed by the first appearance of his puppet (nicknamed ‘Picasso’) on France’s answer to Spitting Image, Les Guignols de l’info, a spasmodically amusing programme in which Cantona’s party trick was to throw his shirt at whoever happened to be on the set with him. Unsurprisingly, Cantona loved his latex alter ego and was later seen sporting a promotional cap for that popular programme.

  A subtle change had occurred. Éric had always provided good copy, in his interviews as well as in his regular brushes with authority, but, within a matter of weeks, the rebel in exile, now covered with an exotic veneer, underwent his transformation into un people (a celeb), the first French footballer to enter the age of celebrity. He was a willing protagonist in this metamorphosis, and would be richly rewarded for it, with some of the most lucrative commercial endorsements ever offered to a European sportsman. The self-confessed loner who ‘would love to be poor’ did nothing to discourage the creation of a Cantona brand. Shortly after the end of the 1992–93 season, he appeared on the catwalk modelling Paco Rabanne’s suits. The couturier had been attracted by the ‘sincerity, sensitivity and authenticity’ of ‘a passionate, excessive, generous human being who symbolizes a whole generation’. For Éric? ‘Just another experience.’ Another experiment, rather. If he had yet to transform Manchester United, he was now well on the way to transforming himself.

  Four-and-a-half years later, one of the reasons he advanced for his decision to retire from the game was his unease at how his image had been exploited by Manchester United. I would argue, however, that, whilst Cantona might have had reason to feel that United had ‘betrayed’ his trust – something that still stirred his anger when he spoke to L’Équipe Magazine in 2007 – he was not quite the innocent victim of a ploy hatched by others to ‘exploit’ his increasingly powerful image. He was, by and large, a willing actor in the campaigns designed to turn him into a commodity, and I can’t help but feel that his main bone of contention at the time was United’s reluctance to give him a fair share of the profits; in which, by the way, he may well have been in the right. ‘Shrewd’ and ‘businessman’ make a lazy couple in the prose of journalism, but could be used in tandem with good reason in Éric’s case. While George Best – the only footballer who had benefited from similar opportunities before him in England – just went with the flow and, quite literally, got drunk on fame, Cantona had more than a measure of control over his reification in the media. Not only did he sell himself, but he helped define what would be sold, and found in Manchester United a club of immense potential in that regard. Crucially, his departure for England had also provided him with a unique opportunity, as French League regulations prohibited professional players from striking sponsorship deals on an individual basis. In other words, had he not been forced into exile, he would probably never have been in a position to enter the enduring relationship with Nike which shaped his image and – to a significant extent – his career to the last. As it is, the sportswear manufacturer (who already had John McEnroe on its books) courted and won the rebel as early as 1992, almost as soon as Cantona had put the Nîmes charade behind him. In this, as in so many other ways, he was the right man in the right place at the right time, or, as Alex Ferguson puts it, ‘the perfect player, in the perfect club, at the perfect moment’.

  Meanwhile, in Leeds, Howard Wilkinson was fuming. Some fans backed the manager, and their number would grow in parallel with Éric’s influence in his new team. One of them came out in support of Cantona’s sale in a letter to the Yorkshire Evening Post, in which he produced a set of ‘damning’ statistics, such as: none of the three goals Éric scored in the 1991–92 championship-winning season helped clinch a single point; or: when Cantona made three consecutive starts after the 5–1 demolition of Wimbledon in that campaign, Leeds failed to record a single victory. No mention was made of his hat-tricks in the Charity Shield and against Spurs. Consolation had to be sought where it could be found. Wilkinson too went on the attack, his anger fuelled by the loss of any hope that his Cantona-less team had of retaining its title. He passed on his programme notes to the Yorkshire Evening Post on the eve of Nottingham Forest’s visit, which would take place on 5 December, twenty-four hours before Éric’s competitive debut for United. ‘Éric Cantona left because he wanted to go,’ he wrote:

  . . . to put it another way, he wasn’t prepared to stay and abide by the rules for everybody at the club. I have categoric proof of that. It has never been my policy to keep a player once he has expressed a strong desire to leave. Look at the facts. He has stayed only a short time at any of his seven previous clubs. By his own mouth, he is the sort of person who, in order to survive needs change, a new environment and new surroundings. He was very disillusioned with football [when I took him to Leeds], his international career was in serious jeopardy. He was good for us, we were good for him. For the first time at a club, he acquired a cult following. The easy way to avoid disappointing his fans would have been to stay here working within the rules of the club as they apply t
o everybody else, but he felt he couldn’t do that. So be it. He can’t have his cake and eat it. I cannot guarantee anyone that they will play every week.

  In private, Wilkinson was even more scathing, as the now travel-weary Jean-Philippe Bouchard found out when he managed to blag his way into the Yorkshireman’s office, the door to which had been repeatedly shut in the face of British journalists. ‘He was guarded at first,’ Bouchard told me, ‘then something snapped, and I couldn’t stop him.’ Wilkinson assured him that he had spent more time and energy talking to Cantona than he ever had with any other player. His voice rose. ‘I cannot tolerate the whims of a kid.’ What whims? Turning up late for training was one. Sometimes, not turning up at all. Wilkinson was on a roll. ‘I do not have to put Éric in the team just because he cannot bear being a sub. Nobody likes it. But you first have to prove you’re worth your place in the team, at training and in the games. Éric wasn’t doing it any more. He took advantage of his image with the fans and thought he was the best, like many players who’ve fallen into the same trap before. The saddest thing is that I don’t think he’s aware of it himself. That is why I didn’t think he was a good player any more.’ Then: ‘Éric wasn’t indispensable. The fans are the victims of media overkill. My own son cried when Cantona went. But I cannot be influenced by anyone.’

  The interview – which somehow escaped the attention of the English press – was concluded by two short sentences which showed how profoundly upset the old-style coach had been by Éric’s behaviour. ‘Let him have [his] fun in Manchester. If Leeds play well, it’ll be enough for fans to forget him.’

  The next day, Leeds were humiliated at home by bottom-of-the-table Forest (1–4), a defeat which saw them drop to 15th in the League, 18 points adrift of leaders Norwich, and prompted Wilkinson to say: ‘We’ve been so bad that people will spend the weekend talking about this rout and not about Éric Cantona.’ As to ‘forget him’, how could they?

  Take Gary King, a lorry driver (some say a plasterer) who had given up his Leeds season ticket when Éric had been sold, and told Bouchard that he hadn’t slept for three days afterwards. He confessed he had felt less pain when his wife had left him, and that he was ashamed of this. One comment King made at the time struck me: ‘Éric was putting [Wilkinson] in the shade. He was too popular. That’s why he sold him on the cheap, for £1.2m, when Ferguson was willing to pay f4m. To devaluate him.’ These words appear almost verbatim in the autobiography Éric and others cobbled together during the following summer, but were then attributed to anonymous ‘fans’. These ‘fans’ were, of course, King himself. He had played the role of self-appointed gopher for Éric and his entourage at Leeds. When the player left for Manchester, he felt that the only way he could assuage his grief was by following his god, and fulfilling the same function in a city he hated. Work, family, friends – King turned his back on everything that had composed his life up to then. He had five children, three of them boys who showed no interest in football whatsoever, and couldn’t comprehend their father’s social suicide.

  King acted as a chauffeur, or as a minder whose presence reassured Isabelle, especially after death threats started to arrive at the Cantonas’ home in Leeds shortly before Manchester United were to play at Eiland Road. He turned into a shadow within a shadow, enduring what must have been a nightmare, in order to live some kind of a dream. Wherever Éric turned up, Gary King could be seen, throughout the four-and-a-half seasons the footballer played for United. Then the most fanatical of all Cantonas worshippers disappeared without a trace. Erik Bielderman phoned almost every King he could find in the Greater Manchester directory when preparing the Cantona special published by L’Équipe Magazine in 2007, without success. My luck was no better than Erik’s. No one seems to know where Gary King lives today. When Éric left football, King was erased like so much chalk on a blackboard. The Cantonas moved from Manchester to Barcelona, and he was left behind. I’ve often wondered whether this tragic man feels betrayed now, or finds solace in the memory of having been someone Éric trusted. To him, Cantona must have died in May 1997. And I’ve also wondered if, in that, Gary King wouldn’t be closer to the truth than anyone else.

  The Cantona circus rolled on. Éric was readying himself for a Manchester derby in which Alex Ferguson had suggested he might play a role, and the 5 December edition of The Times devoted its traditional Saturday profile to the ‘enfant terrible’ (of course) of French football. The expression made its appearance as early as the first paragraph. ‘Gallic flair’ in the second. ‘Maverick’ in the third. His taste for ‘Rimbaud’s surrealism’ popped in later (the poet died five years before André Breton was born), together with comparisons with James Dean and Alain Delon. Alain Delon? Cantona had a knack for sometimes bringing out the worst in those who wrote about him. Here, the player was casually described as ‘slimly built’ and his height was given as ‘6ft’, when he had the body of a light-heavyweight boxer and was a good two inches taller. ‘Print the legend’, as Neville Cardus is supposed to have said, and the temptation to do just that becomes irresistible when the subject of the myth-maker’s distortions does nothing to dispel the untruths. Éric rarely disappointed in that respect.

  Moreover, his new coach was of the opinion that his recruit needed to be talked up in public as well as in the almost daily heart-to-heart conversations he had with him. ‘The most important thing is that he has tremendous ability,’ Ferguson told the press after barely a week spent with the Frenchman on the training ground. ‘I hope we can add to that, because at this club I think he has the potential to become a real giant.’ What sounds now like the prediction of a visionary was then also possibly more of a psychological trick played by the best man-manager in the business.

  The Old Trafford crowd was introduced to Éric Cantona on 6 December, which happened to be the date of the 117th Manchester derby, an occasion on which Éric would nearly always shine in the future.31 Not that day, though. Wearing the no. 12 jersey, he came on as a substitute for Ryan Giggs after the Welsh winger had damaged ankle tendons. Cantona judged his performance ‘average’, and most summarizers spoke of a ‘negligible contribution’. Paul Ince was the catalyst of United’s 2–1 victory, chipping in with a rare goal, and the most remarkable aspect of Éric’s debut, bar a couple of decent passes, had been the restraint he had shown in the face of his man-marker Steve McMahon’s constant provocations. Cantona ignored the hand extended to him by the defender after the latter had hacked him for the umpteenth time, and that was all.

  Most habitués of the press box thought that Alex Ferguson would take his time to bed his recruit in, but they were soon proved wrong. The United manager knew how much his player had been frustrated by Howard Wilkinson’s refusal to make Éric the lynchpin of his team, just as Henri Michel’s failure to inform Cantona he would be rested for an international friendly had led, quite unwillingly on Michel’s side, to France missing their most potent striker in the qualifiers for the 1990 World Cup. Cantona needed proof of his manager’s trust, which meant being given a place in the starting line-up, no matter what. And on 12 December, the date of Norwich’s visit to Old Trafford in the League, Éric’s name featured in United’s starting eleven for the first time. Remarkably, in this season as well as the three to come, unless he was rested for a minor game or had picked up an injury, Cantona would be substituted for tactical reasons on two occasions only: when he came off the field in the 73rd minute of a 3–0 thrashing of Wimbledon fourteen months later – after scoring perhaps the most famous goal of his Manchester United career (the game was sewn up by then, and a League Cup semi-final lurked on the horizon) – and in March 1994, when, under the shadow of a five-game ban, he sleepwalked through the first 75 minutes of a 1–0 win over Liverpool. Alex Ferguson had never shown such trust in a player, and never would again.

  If Éric’s undroppable status would never be questioned by his mentor, his role would change markedly over the coming months. He had been identified as the man who could revital
ize United’s attack and revelled in Ferguson’s expectations. ‘I knew that Manchester United were looking for a striker,’ he told Bouchard, who hadn’t yet taken leave of his subject. ‘When you play for a team that finds it difficult to score goals, you really have the feeling you’re working for something.’ How he would best work hadn’t yet been ascertained. Against leaders Norwich, who were beaten 1–0 thanks to a Mark Hughes goal, he excelled in a link-up role, playing in the hole behind the Welsh centre-forward and Brian McClair. Paul Ince, the self-styled guv’nor, grumbled about Éric’s unwillingness to track back and share in defensive duties (‘it’s all very well doing the flicks when you’re winning, but when you are losing, it’s more important for someone to put their foot in’), but also remarked upon the quality of his short passing and his clear footballing vision, which Ferguson too singled out for praise: ‘the most important ingredient he has given us,’ he said after the game. ‘Éric starts attacks out of nothing.’

  Ryan Giggs, watching from the sidelines, was astonished by another of Cantonas qualities: his deceptive pace. ‘Once he got going,’ he said, ‘nobody could outrun him.’ Éric’s magnificent close control also enabled his teammates to use him – and Mark Hughes – as a point de fixation (another French expression for which there is no equivalent in English, despite the fact that Kenny Dalglish was perhaps the greatest exponent of that role), a forward who could dictate and orientate the play under pressure, and give his wing-backs or wingers time to rush down their respective flanks and overrun the opposition’s full-backs. ‘Eric would receive the ball, turn in one movement and lay it off,’ Giggs said. ‘Because of his vision, you just knew he’d read your run and play you in.’ What’s more, he could also score himself, as he did, vitally, in United’s next league game, a 1–1 draw at Stamford Bridge. Chelsea’s biggest crowd of the season so far had little to cheer, but the travelling support did, despite the atrocious weather: Cantona was magnificent. The players could be forgiven for registering a mere two shots on target throughout the 90 minutes as the rain arrowed on to the muddy pitch; but Éric flew over the puddles, unerringly finding another red shirt with his subtle flicks when all about him hoofed the ball like frustrated schoolchildren. Paul Parker rushed to congratulate him when he found the net to give United an equalizer that propelled United to fourth spot in the League – despite the absence of their injured captain Bryan Robson.