Cantona: The Rebel Who Would Be King

by Philippe Auclair

  As The Times’s football correspondent implied, the idea of a life ban appealed to some diehards within the FA. It was in the disciplinary committee’s statutory powers to impose such a sanction and, as we’ve seen, previous instances of behaviour comparable to Cantona’s had never been investigated or incurred punishment. The lack of jurisprudence therefore gave the FA judges a free hand in choosing whichever sentence they thought appropriate. Manchester United could lose their player whether they wanted to or not. Martin Edwards weighed into the game of cat-and-mouse that was developing between club and governing body: ‘If Éric was to repeat his actions of the other night, we would have no option but to dispense with his services. Éric has accepted the suspension. If he hadn’t, we would have put him on the transfer list.’ He was not being firm, merely cautious. In the absence of any statement from the player’s side, Éric’s ‘acceptance’ was as close as United could get to an act of contrition.

  Given the tornado into which he had been sucked, it is not surprising that Cantona decided to bury himself in silence. The French journalists who had enjoyed remarkable access to Éric since his arrival in England suddenly found it impossible to establish any line of communication with him or his entourage, which had obviously been instructed to shoo away anyone who carried a press card. A brief incident witnessed by Erik Bielderman a week or so after the Crystal Palace game suggests that Alex Ferguson himself was having trouble gauging Éric’s state of mind at the time. The Manchester United manager was approached by a BBC television crew, and flew into a frightful rage that couldn’t be explained only by his well-known reluctance to talk to the media. Erik enjoyed (and still enjoys) a very close relationship with Ferguson, who felt he had to tell the French reporter why he had reacted so aggressively. It was all about Cantona. ‘I don’t think we can keep him,’ he said, ‘I think he’s going to go.’ This contrasted markedly with the assurances Ferguson had given in the good-humoured press conference that followed a comfortable 5–2 FA Cup win over second division Wrexham on Saturday the 28th (a game which saw the first mass demonstration of support for Éric, in the shape of a few placards appearing here and there in the Old Trafford crowd; a petition would soon follow), and which he reiterated in more detail in a Mail on Sunday column a day later. In it, he described Éric’s kung-fu kick as ‘diabolical’ (in Managing My Life, the expression he used was ‘a lamentable act of folly’), but also confirmed that he would not go back on his decision to keep Cantona within the Manchester United family. ‘I intend to keep working on him and with him,’ he said. ‘He is a joy to watch in training, but when things go wrong on the pitch and he doesn’t feel referees are protecting him, he feels a sense of injustice. I have to impress upon him that there will be players and teams who will set out to wind him up. He simply has to be prepared for it and accept it. I still believe he could have an important role at Manchester United.’ He also added: ‘I sometimes think that he is too quiet and unemotional, that maybe he bottles up things to the point where they are able to burst out disastrously in matches.’

  Éric’s silence did not mean he was keeping his own counsel. His thoughts, and the thoughts of his closest advisers, such as his solicitor Jean-Jacques Bertrand, were already focused on the fights that lay ahead. He turned to the Professional Footballers’ Association chairman, Gordon Taylor, for advice, and asked his union’s boss to represent him at the forthcoming hearing, almost a month after the event. It wasn’t just an automatic choice dictated by the structure of the game in England, and the necessity to play ‘by the book’, respecting the arcane hierarchies that had been established by decades of mistrust and often vicious antagonism between the pros and their masters. Taylor felt genuine sympathy for Cantona. Thirteen years later, he told me: ‘It was a lynch mob atmosphere at the time. He’d already been heavily punished. United had done what they had to do.’ Like most footballers past or present, Taylor was scandalized that one of his peers could be thrown to the dogs pour encourager les autres. He could have used the words chosen by the football correspondent of the Manchester Evening News, David Meek, who pointed out that ‘there are mitigating factors. [ . . .] I am also a little bit surprised at the eagerness of the FA to throw the book at the player. I hope they don’t make him pay the price for all the other ills in the game. It would be wrong to make an example of Éric Cantona, just because he is an obvious, easy and soft target.’ The vindictive nature of the attacks this target had been subjected to could yet turn out to be Cantona’s strongest line of defence.

  The hearing was still several weeks away, and remaining in England for the time being made no sense to Éric. He had made his vow of silence, but that couldn’t suffice. The scene outside his home was reminiscent of Downing Street on days of crisis: tripods on the pavement, hangers-on stopping for a moment, satellite dishes at the ready to beam pictures of precisely nothing happening. Isabelle, by then heavily pregnant with their second child, was living like a prisoner. As Cantona later explained, ‘It was impossible to escape the press or the pressure’ so long as his family stayed in England. The couple decided to pack their bags and head for the Caribbean, where they hoped they would be granted a modicum of privacy. They were wrong. As they were sunning themselves on a beach at Sainte-Anne, on the island of Guadeloupe, up came, unannounced, ITN reporter Terry Lloyd, who instructed his cameraman to film a bikini-clad Isabelle. Éric erupted and gave Lloyd a good hiding. The reporter apparently suffered a broken rib and, this time, everyone sided with his aggressor. Even the 80-year-old Sir Bert Millichip, the fastidiously conservative chairman of the Football Association, let drop a few words of sympathy.

  Alex Ferguson expressed his disgust, saying: ‘To film, without permission, a man’s six-months-pregnant wife in her swimsuit sitting on a beach is deplorable, and any husband worth his salt would react. This ITN interviewer has got off lightly in my view’ – words that were greeted with appreciative nods of approval, including in the House of Commons, where Éric had found a staunch supporter in Terry Lewis, the Honourable Member for the Worsley constituency. Lewis had already written a footnote in parliamentary history by tabling an unusual motion to the House at the end of January, in which he called for the Manchester United striker to be allowed to return to first-team football before the end of the season. He contented himself with a question this time: ‘What is ITN doing half the way round the world tormenting a guy who has gone away for a week or ten days of peace and quiet and then, without permission, taking pictures of his pregnant wife on the beach?’ ITN issued a two-line statement, deploring the United manager’s stance on Éric’s reaction (‘We are surprised that Mr Ferguson, as one of Britain’s top football managers, believes that a non-violent action warrants a violent response’), then safely withdrew under a rock. Any justification the television network could have come up with was so flimsy that Éric turned the tables on them by instructing his lawyer Jean-Jacques Bertrand to take legal action for ‘defamation and invasion of [his] privacy’, of which I could find no further trace. Either ITN settled the matter out of court or, which is more likely, the Cantona camp satisfied itself with a gesture designed to highlight the absurdity of the situation.

  While columnists went on and on about the deeper significance of an individual player’s moment of madness, every week there were reminders of darker evils lurking in the English game. I have mentioned Joe Kinnear and Mark Bosnich, whose offences I for one would argue were of a more serious nature than Éric’s. But what of the case of referee Roger Gifford, who was assaulted by a fan after he awarded a penalty in a 1–1 draw between Blackburn and Leeds, on 1 February? Or, even more disturbingly, what of the severe crowd trouble which marred a FA Cup fourth round replay between Chelsea and Milwall seven days later? The pitch was invaded and a vicious free-for-all ensued, in which hundreds of supporters of the two most severely poisoned clubs in the country proved beyond doubt that hooliganism of the most repellent kind was alive and well in England. But when a few merchants of doom asked for metal
fencing to be re-erected at Premiership grounds, less than nine years after the Hillsborough disaster, guess which reason they gave for their request? Cantona’s kung-fu kick. English football was behaving like a neurotic patient suddenly gushing out incoherently to an absent analyst.

  Manchester United still had to defend a league title and, to start with, showed the resilience that is the stuff of champions. ‘We’ll win it for Éric’ was the message passed on by teammate after teammate, most notably by Andy Cole, who, to coin a phrase, had succeeded in creating a misunderstanding with the Frenchman in the two weeks they had spent together. Cantona seemed reluctant to pass the ball to the striker who had left Newcastle in the January transfer window, and had difficulties hiding his dismay at the hotshot’s profligacy in front of goal. But Cole toed the party line. ‘I know we are going to miss Éric,’ he said after finally scoring his first United goal, in the league game that followed Cantona’s club-imposed ban (a 1–0 victory over Villa), ‘but if the boys win the championship, we’ll do it for Éric and that’s why we are all pulling together.’ By mid-February, with Cole again on the scoresheet against Manchester City (3–0), United’s results had given weight to this statement of intent. They had edged closer to Blackburn, who could only draw 1–1 at home to Leeds and were soundly beaten 3–1 at White Hart Lane in their next game. But as the weeks went by, and Dalglish’s team regained some form, Ferguson’s stuttered, alternating majestic displays – such as a record-breaking 9–0 victory over Ipswich, in which Cole struck five times, another record – and tepid performances, particularly at home, when Cantona’s gift to find life in dead matches would have served them well.

  In the end, United missed out on a second consecutive Double by the smallest of margins. A single point separated them from Rovers, after Czech goalkeeper Ludk Mikloško played the game of his life to earn West Ham a miraculous 1–1 draw on the last day of the season, while Everton scraped a 1–0 victory in one of the most mediocre Cup finals ever staged at Wembley. To the United manager, the most infuriating aspect of this trophy-less campaign must have been that Blackburn repeatedly threw lifelines that his team did not take advantage of: between 15 and 30 April, Rovers dropped no fewer than eight points out of twelve, but the champions failed to capitalize on those slip-ups. A series of 0–0 draws, all of them at home, against Spurs, Leeds and Chelsea, especially grated with the Scotsman. As he maintains to this day, ‘No one’s going to tell me, or even try to convince me that he [Cantona] would not have made one goal or scored a goal in one of these three games.’ Even when he was banned from playing, Éric still determined United’s fate, while his own was taking the most unexpected shape.

  He was due to appear in front of the FA disciplinary committee on 24 February, together with Paul Ince, who had allegedly shouted: ‘Come on then, we’ll take you all!’ to the Selhurst Park crowd, and punched a spectator or two when scalding tea had been thrown over his head in the ensuing fracas. His Caribbean holiday had prevented Cantona from accompanying the self-styled ‘Guv’nor’ to South Norwood police station on the 7 February. Both men were supposed to help the police with their inquiries about the allegations of assault made by a couple of spectators, and his absence was, perhaps inevitably, interpreted as a snub. The Yard did little to help dispel the misapprehension by having a spokesman regret Éric’s ‘blatant disregard’ for authority, when Cantona himself had no idea he had been summoned from his Caribbean retreat. Manchester United’s chief legal adviser Maurice Watkins, one of the directors of the club, countered that the police were in fact fully aware that the player was some 5,000 miles away, and that no date or time had been finalized for an appointment. Despite this, most papers printed yet more stories about Cantona showing the law of the land the finger and digging an ever deeper hole for himself.

  Éric must have hoped that the hysteria had abated somewhat while he was away. But disappointment was in wait when he landed at Manchester airport in the evening of 19 February. If anything, the furore had reached a crescendo as the date of his appearance in front of the FA’s ‘wise men’ drew nearer. He also discovered that the Audi he had parked in a multi-storey car park had been broken into and vandalized. Welcome back, Éric. He could at least derive some consolation from the soothing words of the Brazilian Sports Minister, then on an official fact-finding mission in Britain. Pelé, for it was he, appealed for moderation. ‘He’s a human being like everybody else,’ the greatest of all footballers said. ‘I think he’s made a mistake, [but] people try this case [sic] like it was the worst case in the world. Of course sport is not to fight, it’s to make friends. He has to be punished but not, as I understand a lot of newspapers say, banished from football.’

  Maurice Watkins, whom Éric met on the morning of the 20th, felt reasonably confident on the eve of the player’s visit to the police. Flanked by the toughest of United’s security staff, ex-SAS soldier Ned Kelly, Cantona had barely exchanged a glance with the swarm of pressmen who had reconvened in front of his Boothstown home, and not much more came out of his interview with Scotland Yard detectives, except that Éric and Paul Ince had been charged with common assault, just as everyone had predicted. The hacks would have to wait another four days to get juicier material. The scene of the tragi-comedy shifted from Greater Manchester to St Albans.

  At long last, on Friday the 24th, a black limousine glided into the courtyard of Sopwell House, a smart country hotel which had long been a popular haunt of Tottenham and Arsenal footballers. Alex Ferguson was first to climb out of the car, playing the valet for Éric, who was also accompanied by Gordon Taylor and Maurice Watkins, with Ned Kelly keeping the pack of journalists at bay. Inside the building, three men were waiting in a committee room: Geoffrey Thompson, a Justice of the Peace from the amateur county game in Sheffield, who would later become the manager of Doncaster Rovers and rise to the position of chairman of the Football Association; Ian Stott, chairman of Oldham Athletic; and Gordon McKeag, former chairman of Newcastle United and president of the Football League. The trio of establishment mandarins listened to the player’s representation and expressions of regret,46 then retired for three hours of deliberation. A life ban was considered and, according to Graham Kelly, set aside as ‘we have to bear in mind that the footballer’s life is shorter than in other careers’, an odd statement if looked at more carefully. For if a footballer’s career is shorter than others, a life ban would surely affect him less severely than it would, say, a doctor or a fireman. Regardless of Kelly’s muddled logic, note had been taken that, within the past four weeks, Cantona had been suspended by his club, fined a considerable sum of money, and lost the captaincy of his national team. But the clemency of the FA stopped at these considerations.

  To Watkins’ surprise, Cantona’s bemusement and Ferguson’s barely concealed fury, the disciplinary commission doubled the length of the ban imposed by United to six months, extended it worldwide, and added a £10,000 fine of its own.47 A measure of satisfaction was given to those who, like Pat Crerand and Jimmy Greaves, believed that the scandal was as much about the trivialization of verbal violence in football grounds as about the frenzied reaction of a footballer who had been subjected to it. The FA had got in touch with various MPs as well as with the Commission for Racial Equality ‘in an effort to limit the level of abuse directed at players by supporters’. Visitors to twenty-first-century Premiership grounds will be able to judge for themselves whether these efforts were successful or not. As for Éric, if his misconduct had not been unprecedented, its punishment surely was. Manchester United, however, immediately waived their right to appeal. The club had approached the whole affair in as conciliatory a mood as it could muster, up to the smart suit and tie Cantona was wearing for his hearing and at the press conference that followed, in which he said not a single word, in French, English or any other language. Watkins described the FA’s sanctions as ‘a bit harsh’ and himself as ‘disappointed’. Ferguson fumed in silence, and waited a few weeks to say what he really felt: ‘I don’t
think any player in the history of football will get the sentence he got unless they had killed Bert Millichip’s dog. When someone is doing well we have to knock him down. We don’t do it with horses. Red Rum is more loved than anyone I know but he must have lost one race.’

  Cantona’s arms had remained folded throughout the press conference. As Henri Émile told me, ‘I felt that Éric had put a carapace around him. He hardly ever read the papers. He couldn’t care less about what was written about him in the press. He didn’t suffer, [so long as he] felt at ease with the people he loved.’ Reminiscing about another famous football incident, Émile continued: ‘Some time after Zizou [Zinédine Zidane] headbutted [Marco] Materazzi in the final of the 2006 World Cup, Éric and I were in Tignes, and a journalist asked him: “Don’t you think Zizou will have lost many fans?” “That doesn’t matter,” he replied. “He’ll win others, and these will be sincere.”’ But what he had done and its consequences, which staggered him, as well as the profound gratitude he felt for the protection Manchester United provided him with, triggered soul-searching of a kind he had never felt the need for previously. ‘Before that night [in Selhurst Park], I was behaving like a child,’ he confided later. ‘I was prepared to repeat the same mistake again and again. After it, I realized that it was an irresponsible habit.’

  Éric set out to change with a doggedness he hadn’t always shown in the past when things didn’t quite go his way. He acted out of personal necessity, but also because he had been shamed into remembering his duty by the kindness and understanding of others, and especially of his manager. This would be his gift to Alex Ferguson, just as, six-and-a-half years earlier, he had literally defied the elements to present Auxerre with an unhoped-for victory at Le Havre, almost bringing tears to the eyes of his mentor Guy Roux. This eagerness to please those who trusted him most points up an essential sincerity at the heart of Éric’s character, which should be properly weighed against its perceived flaws. There is true poignancy in his admission: ‘I was behaving like a child’. When deciding to mend his ways, wasn’t he behaving like one again? And by succeeding in doing so, wasn’t he proving himself worthy of the love he craved?