Cantona: The Rebel Who Would Be King

by Philippe Auclair

  It was a strange season. At times, United only had to show up to turn their opponents over, as when Wimbledon visited Old Trafford on the last day of August. Éric was back, made a joke of Vinnie Jones’s attentions, and scored a stupendous header from a Ryan Giggs cross. At others, the Double winners fell victim to their delusions of innate superiority. Leeds beat them 2–1 on 11 September, the first time they had prevailed in that fixture at Eiland Road since 1980. Éric scored his side’s only goal, and was very close to adding a second when he flicked the ball over Carlton Palmer’s head and, while Palmer stood there, bemused, did the trick again, only to volley the ball wide of the post, inches away from reproducing the masterpiece he had created against Chelsea – for Leeds – two years before.

  Stop, start, stop, start again. He missed United’s European curtain-raiser (a 4–2 demolition of IFK Gothenburg on 14 September) through another suspension: UEFA had banned him for four games after his surreal sending-off in Istanbul. But three days later, it was he who orchestrated a crucial 2–0 defeat of Liverpool, playing a decisive part in the build-up to his team’s second goal. Neil Ruddock had decided to spice things up by putting his own collar up, and trying to pull Éric’s down every time he was close enough. He also elbowed him, which the referee didn’t spot. Almost inevitably, Éric retaliated late in the game, and was booked for a foul on his aggressor. Cantona’s reaction? According to Alex Ferguson, who could barely disguise his amusement when he told the story to Erik Bielderman, ‘Éric warned Ruddock that he would be waiting for an explanation, “man-to-man”, in the tunnel at the end of the game. Once the game was over, Ruddock must have done at least three laps of honour and spent ten minutes saluting the Liverpool fans . . . but Éric was waiting, Ruddock knew it. And I, down there, I was trying to push Éric towards the dressing-room. Fucking hell! He was one tough guy!’

  Somehow the team that had defeated Liverpool so convincingly lost 2–3 at Ipswich, a team that had yet to win at home that season – despite United registering twenty-five shots on goal, and Éric scoring his fourth goal in six games, this time from a cross by Roy Keane. His ongoing ban in European competitions prevented Cantona from settling into a consistent rhythm. However, Alex Ferguson believed his team could hang on until the player he had nicknamed ‘The Can-opener’ made his return in the Champions League: a 0–0 draw in Galatasaray’s Ali Sami Yen Stadium gave United top spot in their group in late September, ahead of Barcelona. The Red Devils had returned to hell and come back with a point.

  Stop, start, stop, start again. Everton lost 2–0 at Old Trafford in a passionless encounter, Cantona hardly stirring himself. Kevin Keegan’s Newcastle, meanwhile, had scored twenty-five goals in eight games so far, to United’s fourteen. Then Éric left once more, to play for France in Romania, while Sheffield Wednesday beat his club by the only goal. Their reliance on his gift for conjuring up space was costing them dearly, to the extent that bookmakers no longer considered them favourites to retain the championship. As one of them said at the time, ‘In our view, they’re more likely to win nothing rather than something.’ Come October, there wasn’t a single player of Ferguson’s in the list of the top ten goalscorers in the league. ‘All we’re doing at the moment is hanging in there,’ the manager said. That meant scrapping for a 1–0 win against West Ham, in which Cantona scored the decider at the very end of a scruffy, confused and confusing game, very much in the image of his club’s season. Perhaps minds were already turning to the impending challenge of Johann Cruyff’s Barcelona in the Champions League.

  Confronted with the ‘dream team’ of Koeman, Stoichkov and Romário, United responded with the best performance of their season so far, fully deserving of a 2–2 draw which ensured they held on to first place in Group A, with the same number of points as IFK Gothenburg. In their talisman’s absence – Cantona still had one game to go before the end of his ban – Ince, Keane and Sharpe proved determined deputies, and United passed the most arduous test they had been presented with so far, raising hopes that they would really kick on once Éric had been restored to the side. More encouragement came their way when Blackburn were outclassed 4–2 at Ewood Park. Rovers hadn’t lost at home for thirteen months, while United hadn’t earned a single point from their last three away games; but, helped by Henning Berg’s harsh dismissal on the stroke of half-time and Cantona’s ensuing penalty, United came back within seven points of leaders Newcastle, who would be their next opponents – both in the League Cup and the Premiership.

  This double-header was scheduled to take place over seventy-two hours and provided Alex Ferguson with the chance to gain the psychological ascendancy over Kevin Keegan, provided the gamble he had in mind paid off. Mindful of the physical demands that the Champions League and, later, the FA Cup would exert on his squad, he decided to squander the League Cup (which he had already won in 1992), fielding a team of youngsters such as Paul Scholes, Keith Gillespie, Nicky Butt and David Beckham, who were outclassed 2–0 at St James’ Park. Three days later, however, the apprentices were back in the reserves, and Cantona reinstated in United’s starting line-up for the league encounter. The score was repeated, but at the expense of Newcastle this time, who had turned up without their most prolific striker, Andy Cole, who was suffering from exhaustion. United had now climbed to third place in the table, only four points away from the Magpies, and two behind a surprisingly chirpy Nottingham Forest. But whatever satisfaction Ferguson could derive from this success was swept away in the Camp Nou on 2 November.

  Barça too had played only three days beforehand, having to satisfy themselves with a lacklustre draw at Real Sociedad. In truth, United were destroyed that night, their chief tormentor being Johann Cruyff’s son Jordi, whose performance so entranced the beaten manager that he brought him to Manchester two years hence on the strength of that game. Ferguson had gambled again, but failed this time. In that age of quotas, he had sacrificed Peter Schmeichel (whom Bobby Charlton had described as ‘the best goalkeeper in the world’ shortly before the game) in order to accommodate another ‘foreigner’ in Ryan Giggs. The Dane’s replacement, Gary Walsh, had to pick the ball out of his net four times. With the suspended Cantona still sidelined, United created next to nothing on the rare occasions when they had the ball in their possession. ‘We were well and truly slaughtered,’ Ferguson admitted. As IFK had won in Turkey, he knew that, barring a miracle, his team was condemned to a sickeningly early exit of the premier tournament in European football, and this after having opened their campaign so promisingly. Éric’s own frustration was two-fold: he had missed out on the opportunity to show his worth on one of the grandest stages of them all, Barcelona’s home ground; and the doubts that he and many others had about Manchester United’s ability to bridge the technical and tactical chasm that separated them from Europe’s best clubs had received a merciless vindication. Didn’t he deserve better?

  Consolations could be found on the domestic front, of course, though Aston Villa were unfortunate to be beaten 2–1 in early November when, in truth, they had dominated throughout the game. This didn’t prevent the Villa coach Ron Atkinson from being sacked less than a week after this cruel defeat against his old club. Cantona, playing behind Paul Scholes for the first time, had had more productive afternoons, but luckily for his side, Gary Walsh put the Catalan debacle behind him with a succession of match-saving stops. United – and Éric – remained enigmas. Uncertainty seeped through the team and the player who had made such a telling contribution to the previous season’s triumphs. It seemed at times that he and they were victims of their own arrogance, as if they didn’t really care about the outcome of a match, as if they were too good to be true to themselves. On better days, they could rediscover their swagger and appear unbeatable. They thrashed their City neighbours 5–0 on 10 November, their biggest win in a century of Manchester derbies. Éric provided three assists and a goal of quite breathtaking quality. He flicked a fine cross-field ball from Kanchelskis with the outside of his right boot and dr
ove it past the City ’keeper with his left, all in one glorious movement. He was unable to carry that new-found form into France’s Euro qualifier in Poland, where Les Bleus recorded their third consecutive scoreless draw, but shone again when Crystal Palace capitulated 3–0 at Old Trafford in mid-November, a result that took United to the top of the table for the first time that season. For Cantona, a seventh goal in eleven Premiership matches; for United, an eighth victory in as many home league games, despite a number of injuries (Sharpe, Parker, Schmeichel, Keane and Giggs) which had struck them just before the game that would surely decide whether they had a future in Europe or not.

  Cantona’s return to the Champions League against IFK provided columnists with an easy 1,000 words to deliver. It was all about Éric, again, in the papers as on television. Commercial networks carried a new advertisement for Eurostar, in which the most famous of cross-Channel imports dreamily delivered a line many think (wrongly) he came up with himself: ‘Does a bird who sings in a cage sing as sweetly as a bird who is free?’ But the pre-match hype fell flat, as United were destroyed by the pace of Jesper Blomquist, another player who would later be brought to Old Trafford by Alex Ferguson. The Scot’s team had spent the previous night in the hotel where he had celebrated his Aberdeen side’s remarkable victory over Real Madrid in the 1983 Cup Winners Cup final. It didn’t bring his new charges any luck. Even with Barcelona losing 2–1 away to Galatasaray, United were as good as out. Their defending had ‘disgusted’ Ferguson, who stopped short of making comments on the cards that had been shown to three of his players, one yellow each for Hughes and Cantona (for an ugly challenge on Jonas Bjorklund) and a red for Paul Ince. For all his indiscipline, however, Éric had also been his team’s most potent weapon – not that it amounted to much: his assist for Hughes’s goal came too late to alter the course of the game.

  United flew back to England on flight LEI9586 in silence, and landed at 2.30 a.m. in Manchester. Chairman Martin Edwards, one of the passengers on that plane, would have to address his shareholders at the club’s AGM later that day. He had much to ponder: that defeat alone had cost his club an estimated £7m. And there was the question that Rob Hughes – without a doubt the most penetrating contemporary chronicler of Éric’s English career – dared ask in The Times: ‘Is it time to say au revoir to Cantona?’ ‘I submit that the Frenchman is at the root of Manchester United’s problems,’ he wrote, ‘as well as being the catalyst for their recent glories. There is the question of Cantona’s effect on United’s discipline, or rather their indiscipline. His manager has too often indulged the spiteful side of Cantona’s nature.’

  As the great Manchester City manager Joe Mercer said in December 1972, on the occasion of one of George Best’s regular walk-outs from Old Trafford, ‘The foundation of success is the strength of the weakest players. Genius is great when it is on song. It’s more than a nuisance when it goes bad because it contaminates what is around it.’ And the rot was spreading fast, as was shown in a rancorous 0–0 draw between Arsenal and United on 26 November. Seven players were booked, Mark Hughes sent off. Not that Arsenal were models of good behaviour themselves: their tearful playmaker Paul Merson had revealed his cocaine and alcohol addictions (twelve pints a night) a few days before this game. But there seemed to be a wild undercurrent to United’s progress that couldn’t be attributed only to the brutality then prevalent in the English game. Still, they could be superb when the red mist didn’t descend on them, and deserved the luck that often came to their assistance: when Norwich, a fine footballing side, were beaten 1–0 in early December, United had achieved the remarkable feat of a ninth consecutive league victory at home, and without conceding a single goal. Questionable refereeing decisions had considerably eased their task that day, however: the visitors had a valid goal cancelled for a non-existent offside, and should have been awarded a penalty for a blatant foul by Gary Neville in the box. Cantona played with assurance and wit, scoring the decisive goal after combining with Brian McClair.

  At no other time in his footballing life did Éric display more sharply the quasi-schizoid nature of his character on the pitch than during these months that led to the Crystal Palace explosion. He delivered another brilliant performance when Galatasaray were pulverized 4–0 in Manchester on 7 December. I should add that the Turkish champions were already out of the competition, and that the 1–1 draw that Barcelona and IFK agreed to in the Camp Nou made this game an irrelevance. The pressure was off, and Cantona’s critics would argue that this was why it was one of the very few occasions when Europe saw him at his best; at his worst too, when he petulantly hacked at the legs of his man-marker Bulent, who had dispossessed him quite legally. The referee put his name in the book.

  This hiccuping season next saw him head for Trabzon in Turkey, where Azerbaijan were hosting France for a Euro qualifier, as the political situation in their country made the staging of the match there far too dangerous in UEFA’s eyes. Les Bleus won 2–0, a mere parenthesis in the chaos that was engulfing Manchester United, who lost at home for the first time since 3 March 1994. Stan Collymore inspired Nottingham Forest to a 2–1 victory that was, again, marred by a flurry of cautions, eight in all, with Ince and Stuart Pearce lucky to escape dismissal in an ugly confrontation. Cantona also scored his ninth goal of the campaign, to no avail: Blackburn now led the Premiership by two points. Éric, ‘his touch as delicate, his presence as forceful as ever’, added a tenth on Boxing Day, when Chelsea were beaten 3–2 at Stamford Bridge; but he also added another booking to his collection, for time-wasting this time. A bad-tempered 1–1 draw with Leicester followed, then a shockingly violent 2–2 in Southampton on New Year’s Eve, where an incensed Ferguson instructed his players to ‘go for their fucking throats’ at half-time, a recommendation that Cantona followed to the letter, flailing with his hands at Ken Monkou, then slapping Francis Benali (no angel he) to earn yet another caution, all this on the day Alex Ferguson had been awarded a CBE. It looked as if he had washed his hands of his players’ uncontrollable behaviour.

  January 1995 followed a similar pattern. There were plenty of flowing moves, spectacular goals (Éric scored another three, bringing his tally to a barely credible fourteen in twenty-two domestic games) and controversial incidents – with Cantona in the role of the victim for once, when he was punched by a Sheffield United player in the third round of the FA Cup. United rolled on with growing authority. Lesser teams (Coventry and Sheffield United) were dispatched without fuss, contenders for the title (Newcastle and Blackburn) were dealt with with vim, verve and (sometimes mindless) aggression. Newcastle were fortunate to escape with a 1–1 draw at a torrid St James’ Park when Éric uncharacteristically missed two chances to wrap the game up in the final minutes. He was less generous with Rovers, the Premiership leaders, who succumbed to one of the most exhilarating goals of that English season. Ryan Giggs danced his way through Blackburn’s defence on the left flank, lost the ball, then, through sheer force of will, regained it inches from the corner flag, and sent a cross to the far post which caught ’keeper Tim Flowers and everyone else by surprise. Everyone, that is, except Cantona, who had timed his run from deep to perfection. Without once breaking his stride, he met the ball with a ferocious header that crashed into the roof of the net. This was not just a magnificent goal, but also a statement. The lead Blackburn still had in the Premiership – two points, with a game in hand – seemed insignificant in the face of United’s mighty performance. Give the champions a few more weeks, allow Éric to strike the same rapport with newcomer Andy Cole that he enjoyed with Ryan Giggs, and natural order would be restored. Cantona would see to it. He had always been a slow starter, a luxury car running on diesel. The more he played, the better he became. He was now tantalizingly close to his best, be it with Manchester United or with France, which he captained to an impressive 1–0 victory in the Netherlands.

  No one could have guessed he would never hear ‘La Marseillaise’ again in a football ground – unless English fans sa
ng it in his honour. He would bow out of international football with a record of 20 goals in 45 games that, in terms of efficiency, is proportionally superior to that of Zinédine Zidane (31 in 108). I’ll come back to the prevalent notion that Éric failed in his national team (‘in’ could be removed from that sentence, in the eyes of many). For the time being, it should be enough to recall these remarkable figures, and be reminded that all but one of these goals were scored from open play, and this when his managers often deployed him in a withdrawn position, as the lower base of an attacking triangle. Many injustices befell Éric Cantona throughout his career; few were less deserved.

  On 22 January, an hour or so after Blackburn had been beaten thanks to his goal, Éric met Gary King in the players’ car park. The faithful gopher passed him the keys to the Audi; Cantona silently took the wheel and drove back to the Novotel. His solicitor Jean-Jacques Bertrand was due to fly from Paris the very next day to discuss the terms of a new three-year contract with Manchester United. Its terms would be finalized immediately after they had played an away game that shouldn’t tax them too much, as their opponents had only won one of their last ten Premiership matches. The champions had no reason to fear Crystal Palace.

  Cantona songs still ring around Old Trafford in 2009. In this age when fans have shorter memories than those who filled the (much smaller) stands fifteen years ago, very few players warrant celebration of that kind so long after they’ve gone. You’ll occasionally hear ‘Rocky, Rocky, Rocky Rocastle’ at Arsenal games – but that is a mourning song for a cult hero whose life was claimed by a dreadful disease before he’d reached the age of 40. Who else? I’ve heard Peter Osgood’s name chanted at Stamford Bridge, but on one occasion only, and that was at the game that followed his death. Cantona is different. There is no tragic undertone to his songs. Singing them is another way of saying ‘We are Manchester United’, because, to the thousands who join in, Éric was and still is the spirit of the club.