For Cantona, this game marked the beginning of one of the most astonishing purple patches enjoyed by a player in the history of English football, to which, in all honesty, I have been unable to find any equivalent. It’s not only that the 1–0 win on Tyneside was the first in a series of six games in which he never failed to score. In terms of statistics, others have done better, Thierry Henry and Cristiano Ronaldo among them recently. It is also that, every single time, his goals proved decisive – in the context not just of the matches themselves, but also of the progress his club made towards the second Double of its existence, and at a time when many of his teammates were experiencing a dip in their own form. On 11 March United ensured their qualification for the semi-finals of the FA Cup by beating Southampton 2–0. Éric had opened the scoring against the run of play with a goal of breathtaking beauty, in front of the biggest crowd of the English season so far (45,446 spectators): he had combined with Cole and Giggs before surging at the far post, again with deadly effect. Southampton stirred and threatened for a while, but Cantona applied the killer touch, drawing their ’keeper Dave Beasant from his line and squaring the ball for Lee Sharpe to poke in. Incredibly, Éric had yet to lose a single FA Cup tie since his arrival from France three-and-a-half years earlier, and maintained his record of scoring at least once in every round of that year’s competition. United were now 5/1 on for the Double with most bookmakers.
On the 16th, a day the British had woken up to the dreadful news of the ‘massacre of the innocents’ in Dunblane, QPR were close to halting United’s juggernaut. It looked as if most around Éric had lost the plot, some commenting that Andy Cole, who spurned chance after chance, had never grasped it to start with. The Reds looked set to suffer their first defeat since 1 January when Cantona decided to take the matter into his own hands – but not before unleashing a verbal volley at Cole which showed that his command of the vernacular was far better than some might have thought. In the third minute of added time, Cantona looped the ball into the QPR goal and United left London with a deserved but unlikely point which ensured they stayed within touching distance of Newcastle (3–0 victors at West Ham), and kept a resurgent Liverpool (who won 2–0 at Chelsea) at arm’s length in third place.
Four days later, when Arsenal, who had gone six games undefeated, visited Old Trafford, it was up to Cantona to compensate for his teammates’ wastefulness once more, Andy Cole doing nothing that would elevate him in his striking partner’s estimation. Éric exploited a misunderstanding between Andy Linighan and David Seaman, chested the ball, took two steps forwards and struck a dipping volley under the bar. ‘It had to be a special goal, and we got one,’ Ferguson said. ‘The most thrilling part was the way he advanced, it was sheer class – like a ballet dancer.’ Newcastle, meanwhile, were shedding points like a team destined for relegation. When Arsenal beat them 2–0 at Highbury on the 23rd, they had only earned four out of fifteen in their last five outings, and United took full advantage of this slip-up a day later. Another ‘Cantona special’ was enough for them to prevail 1–0 over Tottenham, the last team to have beaten them, fifteen games previously. Michael Henderson hit the nail on the head in his match report for The Times. ‘Day by day,’ he wrote, ‘piece by piece, the picture is becoming clearer. When the championship jigsaw is complete, it will surely reveal a central image. Éric Cantona, of course, for the brilliant Frenchman seems determined to bring the trophy back to Old Trafford on his own.’ Andy Cole had failed again, and been substituted. Éric stepped up to the crease. With 50 minutes gone, he picked up the ball well within the Spurs half, brushed off two challenges, drifted into an inside-left position, and drilled a shot to the opposite side of the goal from 20 yards. He had found the net for the fifteenth time that season – a season, it should be remembered, that had only started for him on 1 October. His failure to find the target in his club’s next game – a 2–1 victory over Chelsea that gave them their third straight appearance in an FA Cup final at Wembley – was jokingly seen as an aberration, and so it proved to be. He opened the scoring against Manchester City with a penalty (3–2), three days after Newcastle had famously surrendered a 3–1 lead at Anfield to lose 4–3, and guaranteed all three points against Coventry with a forty-seventh-minute strike two days later, on 8 April. He had now scored in six consecutive league games.
I am aware of the repetitive, almost rebarbative nature of this account of Éric’s most prodigious spring, a litany of goals, victories and mind-boggling statistics. My defence would be that it seemed exactly that way at the time: repetitive and strangely unexciting for unaffiliated observers, magical for Manchester United fans, galling for the rest. The unwavering sense of purpose of Cantona’s crusade forced admiration and demanded a re-evaluation of his character. But it didn’t prevent a form of regret from taking hold in a substantial part of the public: Newcastle, for all their brittleness, had produced thrilling football for most of the campaign, playing with an abandon and a sense of joy that only Arsène Wenger’s best sides emulated afterwards; Peter Beardsley, in particular, had been in superb form, and put paid to the idea that England could not produce footballers as skilful and imaginative as their Continental counterparts. The relentlessness of United’s pursuit of the title was remarkable – the degree to which it was owed to a single man even more so – but it was difficult not to feel for Keegan’s Cavaliers and, for some, to think of Ferguson’s troops as Roundheads.
I remember one of these afternoons when, detained at the BBC World Service, I had lost track of a game in which United were locked in a 0–0 draw at half-time. My phone rang.
‘Guess what happened?’ my caller asked.
‘Cantona scored?’ I replied, somewhat wearily. We’re easily contemptuous of the familiar, and unfair towards what we believe to be predictable: Éric’s achievement was of colossal proportions. The magnitude of his success, perhaps inevitably but perversely all the same, lent it an air of unreality and dulled some of its sheen. But what he did in those few weeks, when his club’s hopes only gained substance through his singlemindedness and unceasing excellence, deserves to be ranked among the greatest contributions any individual footballer has made to the fortunes of an English club.
United now topped the table, but only just, and a surprising 3–1 defeat at Southampton on 13 April (with three games to go) reminded everyone how, when a trophy is in sight, its horizon can appear to recede with every step. Alex Ferguson’s team had been caught cold and conceded two goals within twenty minutes. This scenario was highly unusual: not since Tottenham had humbled United on the first day of the calendar year had their rearguard been at fault so early in a game, and not even Cantona’s endeavour could regain the lost ground. Newcastle played their part in rekindling suspense, narrowly beating Aston Villa at St James’ Park to bridge the gap to three points. What’s more, United could expect no favours from their next visitors, Leeds. In fact, while Keegan’s team showed considerable grit to edge out Southampton 1–0 at home, Ferguson’s side narrowly avoided a potentially catastrophic 0–0 draw when Roy Keane scored deep in the second half. Cantona’s obvious frustration found its usual target in Andy Cole (who was subbed again), whereas his manager’s took a subtler form when he expressed the hope that Leeds would show as much spirit against Newcastle, whom they would host a couple of weeks later, after an international break which only served to increase the tension on the domestic scene.
Kevin Keegan’s extraordinary response to his rival’s innuendo, his voice quivering with emotion, his index finger wagging at SkySports’ camera (‘I would love it if we beat them, love it!’) later became a symbol of Newcastle’s capitulation. If we give in to lazy preconceptions, the hypersensitive Keegan had let the canny Scot get under his skin, and lost it – ‘it’ being the Premier League title as well as his composure. What is often forgotten is that Keegan exploded after his team had won 1–0 at Eiland Road, where Leeds had done everything in their power to dispel the notion that they were quite happy to roll over when their o
pponents were not Manchester United. When Keegan exclaimed: ‘We’re still fighting, and he [Ferguson] has got to go to Middlesbrough and get something,’ as if each word was punctuated with an exclamation mark, it was not a defeated man who was speaking. With two games to go, the race could still go either way, even if United held the upper hand with their three-point lead and marginally superior goal difference: +20 against +18, which had been boosted by a 5–0 hammering of Nottingham Forest at Old Trafford on 28 April.
Éric was majestic that afternoon; his best moment, perhaps, a magnificent reverse pass which switched play from one wing to the other, and brought on United’s third goal via the boot of David Beckham. In the 89th minute, as a young boy wearing a no. 7 shirt on which had been printed ‘Dieu’ was about to leave the ground, ‘God’ scored the fifth and last of United’s goals with a crisp strike from 12 yards. He had already shaken a post from three times that distance with the outside of his right boot.
No one could be in any doubt that the Football Writers Association had chosen the right man to be its footballer of the year a week earlier.53 Alex Ferguson hailed the pressmen’s choice as ‘a triumph for British justice’, Cantona himself as ‘an honour for me and my country [and a] wonderful tribute to the rest of my colleagues at United’. Paroles de circonstance, maybe. But there was no denying the poignancy of this award. Many of the journalists who cast their vote in favour of the Frenchman had censured him pitilessly fifteen months previously, in some instances to the point of mindlessness. The violence of their comments had prepared the ground for the FA and the law of the realm to hit the renegade footballer with all their might. It was more than a symbolic pardon, it was also a crucial step in Cantona’s journey of redemption, a theme he had become obsessed with, and not without reason. A French journalist had once asked him to name the three novels that carried the deepest resonance for him. Éric chose A Picture of Dorian Gray, The Monk (as revised by French ‘mad genius’ Antonin Artaud) and Herman Hesse’s Narcisse and Golmund, the selection of a well-read man who could also read well. All three, he explained, explored the fateful transitions from temptation to culpability and, ultimately, redemption. To him, a book was also a mirror.
The rehabilitation of Éric Cantona took a farcical turn when an editorial in The Times suggested that President of the French Republic Jacques Chirac could do worse than making him his ambassador during his forthcoming state visit. This apparently caused quite a lot of head-scratching in staff meetings of France’s Foreign Office. How was Chirac supposed to add a footballer to his retinue at such an occasion? No provisions of that kind could be found in the official protocol. Fortunately, Cantona eased the civil servants’ headache by letting it be known that he had no wish to be seen in his president’s company. Chirac had not quite finished with Cantona, however. The Speaker of the House of Commons, the Rt. Hon. Betty Boothroyd, greeted him with these words: ‘I’m so glad to meet the second most famous Frenchman in Britain.’ No prize for guessing how Boothroyd responded when the statesman asked her who could be the first.
The hopes Kevin Keegan had placed in Middlesbrough stopping his rival evaporated as early as the fifteenth minute of United’s last game of the league season, when David May scored for the visitors. That in itself suggests a measure of their superiority: May found the net nine times in as many seasons at Old Trafford. In any case, it would have taken a small miracle for Newcastle to leapfrog United at the last: Boro had to win, and so had the Magpies – by two goals – against Tottenham at St James’ Park. The groan that went round the stadium when news of United’s first goal reached the fans effectively drained Keegan’s players of what little energy they had left. Forty-five miles away, a quiet Cantona let Ryan Giggs run the show in his stead, then steal it with a virtuoso finish to seal a 3–0 win, United’s 16th in their last 17 games in all competitions. The game was truly up: 36,000 disconsolate Geordies applauded their heartbroken team at the conclusion of an anticlimactic 1–1 draw, and for the fourth time in five years, Éric finished the season as a national champion; for the second in three, the Double54 was six days – or 90 minutes – away. Only Liverpool now stood in his way.
It is hard to say which was the poorer of the two: Manchester United’s FA Cup final song or the game itself. Thankfully for his club, Cantona wasn’t as discreet on the Wembley pitch as he had been in the recording studio, miming ‘Move, Move, Move’ with the smile of someone who’s just realized he’s gatecrashed the wrong birthday party. United shaded a first half of misplaced passes and spurned chances, the best of which fell to Andy Cole, who let them pass him by. The game hardly improved afterwards. Éric forced David James to save smartly when his volley looked set to sneak in at the foot of a post. The biggest cheer of the afternoon greeted the substitution of the hapless Cole after 63 minutes; more celebration ensued 11 minutes later when it was Stan Collymore’s turn to make way for Ian Rush, who was playing his last competitive game for Liverpool before leaving on a free transfer. The match seemed destined for two periods of extra time that nobody was looking forward to when Cantona produced a goal worthy of his contribution to United’s season, if not of what was supposed to be the most prestigious event on the footballing calendar. James, hitherto imperious in the air, had a rush of blood and raced from his line to clear a David Beckham corner, colliding with two players on the way. As he lay on the ground, the ball came to Éric, who had positioned himself on the edge of the penalty area, took three quick steps back and volleyed the rebound from the centre of the ‘D’, his movement and execution a study in poise and elegance. Sixteen players were encamped in the box at this point, most of them directly in his line of vision – but the ball travelled through a forest of chests and legs to lodge itself in the net. The whole phase of play had lasted less than four seconds, but so pure was Cantona’s strike that time appeared to slow down to a halt. His father Albert turned towards his neighbour and said: ‘The locksmith has found the key, yet again! And heaven knows the hole was small!’ Isabelle fell sobbing into her brother’s arms. Aimé Jacquet left the ground without a word.
Liverpool, who had had a shocking afternoon anyway, spent the few remaining minutes in a stupor. The clamour saluting Cantona’s wondergoal had scarcely died down when referee Dermot Gallagher signalled the game was at an end. The BBC commentator got it right when he said: ‘The FA Cup goes to Cantona and to Manchester United,’ in that order, as the trophy was presented to the stand-in captain by the Duchess of Kent. Back on the pitch, United’s skipper Steve Bruce, who had been deprived of this final by a hamstring injury, clapped with his customary generosity. When Éric had suggested it should be he who walked up the thirty-nine steps, Bruce had waved the Frenchman away with a gentle smile, as if to say: ‘This is your day, enjoy it to the full.’ But it was also Alex Ferguson’s day. Back in August, his decision to part with Mark Hughes, Paul Ince and Andreï Kanchelskis and replace them with untried youngsters from the club’s academy had been deemed an act of folly, and not just by Alan Hansen on the BBC. Cantona was still serving his suspension, and when Aston Villa beat his ‘kids’ 3–1, no one gave a chance to a side in which the Neville brothers, Nicky Butt, Paul Scholes and David Beckham were to be found. No one predicted they would go on to collect a total of 355 England caps (and counting, in Beckham’s case) between them. No one had any inkling that a second Double was in the offing. But in truth, none of this would have ever happened without Éric Cantona’s astonishing resurgence, which started with a goal against Liverpool in the league on 1 October and ended with another at Wembley on 11 May. During that period, he scored nineteen times in thirty-seven appearances. He was also a mentor to a new generation, a prolific provider and, most importantly, a credit to himself, demonstrating powers of renewal that astonished his harshest critics. But he wouldn’t take part in the European Championships.
On 19 May, three days after Alex Ferguson had signed a new, vastly improved four-year deal with Manchester United,55 Aimé Jacquet addressed journalists at a packed
press conference organized at the French FA’s headquarters. Just as everyone expected, Cantona’s name didn’t appear in the list of twenty-two players he had selected for Euro 96. As early as 21 February, on the occasion of a friendly against Greece, the manager, not mentioning the private meeting he had had with Éric in Manchester, had made clear that he ‘didn’t think that [Cantona] could bring something to the team at the moment. [ . . .] His presence would force me to re-evaluate everything, and this time has passed, I believe.’ Three months on, he explained that Éric had been left aside ‘for purely sporting reasons’. ‘Something happened which everybody is aware of,’ he added, ‘which it is not for me to comment upon. And I took the decision not to select him because, since then [the Crystal Palace incident and Cantona’s subsequent suspension], the French team has made progress.’ It was clear from Jacquet’s presentation that Euro 96 represented a springboard towards the World Cup that was to take place in France two years afterwards, in which he was proved right. ‘The problem is that Euro 96 taught us we were on to something on the way to the World Cup,’ Henri Émile told me.
Cantona: The Rebel Who Would Be King Page 48
