Cantona: The Rebel Who Would Be King

by Philippe Auclair

  It was a necessary step to have a successful France 98. Because we lived together for a month-and-a-half, because we saw the qualities of this and that player, because a style of play was emerging, because we could tell that the players who had been on the bench had the right attitude to carry on training and working seriously. Euro 96 enabled us to think we could master these elements. Éric? It was finished. He would not play centre-forward. New midfielders had emerged, like ‘Manu’ Petit. Zizou’s influence on the game kept growing. So there couldn’t be a way back, unless there was an avalanche of injuries.

  Jacquet’s preparation had gone without the slightest hiccup so far: his team, transformed by the elevation of Youri Djorkaeff and Zinédine Zidane to the role of dual playmakers, had now gone twenty games unbeaten and qualified for the final tournament at a canter. ‘A sélectionneur,’ he said, ‘is there to make choices. This group of players shares the same ideas about the game, based on rhythm, movement, “explosion”. They live well together. Why break up this rhythm, this desire to win? I didn’t have to take the English public into account. I’m only accountable to the French.’ What he didn’t add was that, according to a poll commissioned by L’Équipe, 83 per cent of his compatriots wished Cantona to be recalled. But it was also clear that, within the French camp, a number of players were unwilling to welcome him back, Djorkaeff and Zidane being two of them. ‘Why should our places be taken?’ the first asked, ‘Zizou’ nodding in the background. Marcel Desailly showed he had been raised in a family of diplomats by saying: ‘Before, we were a collection of richly talented individuals. Now we have a collective unit, each player knowing his responsibilities. The coach had to make difficult sacrifices to achieve that.’ The coach – not Éric’s former teammates.

  Other players had been left behind, David Ginola and Jean-Pierre Papin among them. But their exclusion, or that of Metz’s Cyrille Pouget, to whom Mikaël Madar had been preferred, hardly got a mention: it was all about the man who wasn’t there, Éric Cantona. Harried by the media – who had been clamouring for his return, and in whose spotlight he had never felt entirely at ease – Jacquet looked on the back foot throughout, and gave the impression that there were reasons behind his decision that he didn’t want to get into. This much was true, but the tone he adopted misled his audience into thinking that these reasons were indefensible if sporting criteria alone had formed his judgement. Not for the last time, Jacquet’s decency – and the very respect he had for the jettisoned Cantona – played against him. Later, in a more reflective mood, he admitted that the day he finally lanced the abcess ‘had been the hardest in [his] life as a national coach’. ‘I understood I couldn’t shy away [from the decision to leave Cantona out],’ he said, ‘as I was running the risk of leading everyone up a blind alley. You always believe that you’ll succeed in changing the player. You never do.’

  Cantona had not been under any illusion that he might get a reprieve at the last minute, but felt the shock no less keenly. So much had happened since that night in January. He had led a group of largely untested players to an unhoped-for Double, and established himself as the most influential footballer in the English Premier League. His on-field behaviour had been a model of sportsmanship. He now had to watch France play in the country that had adopted him, captained by a man, Didier Deschamps, who teased him during the French squad’s get-togethers by mimicking his ‘Picasso’ puppet. He had to watch France go through their semi-final against the Czech Republic without registering a single shot on target, and exit the competition on penalties at – of all places – Old Trafford. Some French players went shopping in the stadium’s megastore after their elimination, but no one knows whether they slipped one of the hundreds of replica no. 7 shirts bearing Éric’s name into their bags.

  Just as they had done in 1994, the Cantona clan gathered in Manchester for the climax of the season. Albert formed the vanguard, to be rejoined by the rest of the family at the beginning of May. Éric’s parents had now moved to a mountain hideaway in the Alpes de Haute-Provence, where radio reception was so poor that they had to rely on Bernard Morlino’s match summaries to keep abreast of their son’s progress. Morlino travelled to Manchester himself, as did Isabelle’s brother Nino. In the days preceding the FA Cup final, Éric whiled away the time in the city’s bookstores in the company of his writer fiend. I was deeply moved when I learnt that one of the volumes he had picked was Yves Bonnefoy’s collection of poems Rue Traversière, whose hieratic yet sensual beauty was burnt indelibly in my own memory. Bonnefoy’s readers are few; but all of these few consider themselves blessed, and, to me, the idea that Cantona was one of them is oddly thrilling: it provides another sign that, willing as he was to hear the advice of others, as when Didier Fèvre led him to discover the films of Max Ophüls, he trusted his own instinct, and that the unsteady hand that was guiding him had a sure aim. Sprawled on the bookshop’s floor, he also read through Ezra Pound’s Drafts and Fragments, attracted, perhaps, by the punning aptness of ‘Cantos 111–117’. ‘Cantos for Cantona’ would make a sweet title in its own right, would it not?

  19

  The last game; the last shirt.

  THIS IS THE END, BEAUTIFUL FRIEND, THIS IS THE END: MANCHESTER 1996–97

  ‘I do not want any inscription on my tombstone. A blank stone, because what I would like to leave behind me is the sentiment of a great mystery.’

  ‘My dream was to live in the world of creation. In football I did that; now I have other opportunities to do that. The only thing I fear is death. Sometimes, when I take a flight I am a little afraid, because we can die in a plane crash very quickly. In cars too, but in cars you have some control. I have things in my memory stick and I never take that with me when I am flying. I say to my partner, the person I am living with, “If something happened to me, I want you to read what is on that memory stick and do what is there.” I tell her, “I want you to do these things if you can, to say to people – ‘It was Éric’s wish that this should happen.”’ If I die with the memory stick, I die with everything. I want to go with the possibility that what I haven’t achieved will be achieved by somebody else. I’ve always thought, now more than ever, that it is not how you live your life that counts, but how people will remember you.’

  Éric loved and still loves The Doors. Whether ‘The End’ rates among his favourite songs of theirs I don’t know, but it seems a good one to play as the background track to that funereal season that was 1996–97, all the more so since Francis Ford Coppola added it to the soundtrack of Apocalypse Now, and since Cantona’s physique now bore more than a passing resemblance to that of Joseph Conrad’s Captain Kurtz as portrayed by Marlon Brando.

  The 1996–97 season is not one I’ve been looking forward to writing about. It was a dull affair, grey as a November sky, a blanket of clouds heavy with unshed rain, lifeless. Manchester United won the league again, to which I’m tempted to add: so what? There wasn’t anybody to win it from. Éric had his moments of brilliance, as ever. But he also ambled from game to game like a farmer from field to field in late autumn, his boots heavy with mud. This was the year a light dimmed and was switched off, a procession of days leading to retirement – footballing death.

  I reread my notes for the month of August:

  United take part in the ‘Umbro Tournament’, which also features Ajax, Chelsea and Nottingham Forest. United has recruited Jordi Cruyff, Ronnie Johnsen and one of the stars of Euro 96, the Czech winger Karel Poborsky. Newcastle has paid £15m for Alan Shearer, a new British and world record, and are close to bringing Patrick Kluivert from Ajax. Gianluca Vialli makes his debut for Chelsea.

  Patrick Vieira, Roberto Di Matteo and Fabrizio Ravanelli also made their bow in the Premiership that season. The pioneer’s task was all but completed. The exotic colours with which Cantona had enlivened English football were fast disappearing under a flurry of brushstrokes. The time of surprise had passed.

  Selected moments of brilliance: 11 August was one. ‘Cantona steals She
arer’s show’ is how one paper put it in its report of the Charity Shield. Éric scored a goal full of poise in the 24th minute, teasing Srníek before beating him, offering another to Nicky Butt, then playing a part in the build-up to the third by producing a superb backheel which Beckham controlled expertly before firing past the Czech ’keeper. Cantona then ran 15 yards to confront Belgian defender Philippe Albert (who had just been fouled by Gary Neville) and shake him by the neck, which should have earned him a red card, but didn’t. Newcastle were eviscerated 4–0. Éric was named man of the match, as he had been in 1993 with Leeds. But Charity Shields didn’t matter much to Cantona any more: this one was his third in four years. ‘This season,’ he said, ‘everybody at United wants to win the European Cup. We want to be famous all around the world, not just in our country.’ Just as 1994–95 could be seen as a slow, inexorable march towards Crystal Palace, the true nature of 1996–97 would only be revealed when Borussia Dortmund denied United a place in the Champions League final.

  Éric had changed, physically; there was the hint of a double chin on the face of the United captain, and a certain regal (not Falstaffian) portliness about him. It was as if Cantona had been poured into a new, bigger shell. Inspirational against Newcastle in the Charity Shield, he conducted another masterclass in the season’s first properly competitive game, a 3–0 victory at Selhurst Park against Wimbledon, a game that is remembered for David Beckham spotting that the Dons’ goalkeeper Neil Sullivan had strayed off his line and beating him from inside his own half. Éric scored himself, controlling an awkward ball with his left foot and propelling it into the net with his right, making it look the easiest thing imaginable. He was also booked – his second caution in two games. I hope I’ll be forgiven, though, for not sticking to the day-to-day account of Cantona’s progress in the Premiership as I’ve done up to this point. As it soon became apparent, something was broken: his club’s progress and his own had become disjointed. Until then, recounting one was akin to describing the other. The supreme effort he had produced all through the previous spring for United had brought them another Double. It had been his gift, his offering to the club and the manager who had rescued him. But what else was there to prove, now that international success was no longer an option? What life could be found after committing suicide? Europe, and only Europe could provide him with a life worth living.

  I turn to my notes again.

  21 August: United and Cantona struggled against the ruggedness and physical power of Everton. A 2–2 draw was a just reflection of what deserved to be called a ‘battle’. 25 August: Man U-B’burn, 2–2. Blackburn had been cheeky enough to send a fax requesting the purchase of Éric Cantona during the summer (ha-ha). Alex Ferguson recognized that Rovers had been superb; for the second game in a row, both at home, the visitors’ doggedness had been rewarded with a point, and Éric had failed to shine, a sign, maybe, that his idle summer had left him somewhat short of fitness. Ole-Gunnar Solskjær, then 23 years of age, provided the most inspiring performance of a compelling afternoon, despite featuring for fewer than 30 minutes in the game. 4 September: Derby–Man U, 1–1. Man United are 7th in the league after this result, 6 points behind Sheffield Wednesday. Their third draw in a row, and a lucky one at that, rescued by a David Beckham thunderbolt under the eyes of the spies sent by Juventus, who were hosting United in the Champions League a week later. Cantona, physically well short of peak condition, only glimmered intermittently – a flick here, a pass on the turn there, a beautifully executed overhead kick, but to little effect.

  A litany, sometimes broken by an unexpected reminder that every weekend, Éric Cantona had to do his job, and that, regardless of his increasing disaffection with football, he couldn’t just clock on and clock off. On 7 September he missed a penalty. Éric Cantona missed a penalty! United had crushed Leeds 4–0 at Eiland Road, but space was found to mention his failure in the headlines, and Simon Barnes would remember it months later, when Éric’s decision to retire was made public. ‘When Cantona missed that penalty,’ he wrote, ‘he was forced to come face to face with the fact that he was, after all, like everybody else. His doctrine of personal infallibility had been shattered, his notion of his own perfection was forever flawed, his myth was spoiled. Nothing could ever be quite the same again.’ But he had also scored his side’s fourth goal, and produced a majestic performance in a position he was not accustomed to – as a lone centre-forward, in a dress rehearsal of the game plan that Alex Ferguson had prepared to counter Juventus. In January 1996 Aimé Jacquet had failed to convince Cantona that he could have a future with France if he took on that role; but Éric had refused, as you will recall. Only a handful of people were aware of the poignancy of the situation – all eyes were already trained on the Stadio delle Alpi. In the words of a contemporary reporter, when Cantona scored in Leeds, ‘he turned, raised his arm to the taunting crowd like a gladiator, and turned again, his face turned towards Turin’. This celebration consummated a revenge as well: by leading United’s demolition of his former club, he had hammered the final nail into Howard Wilkinson’s coffin: the manager who had given him his first taste of competitive football in England was dismissed after the weekend.

  Marcello Lippi looked after a formidably well-organized Juventus team which was renowned for its miserliness in defence, but also possessed almost unrivalled riches in attack, as could be expected of any side counting Zidane, Bokši, Del Piero and Vieri in its ranks. Ferguson feared Juve’s creativity with good reason; the last time United had met a European team of similar pedigree in Europe, they had been swept away: Barcelona had murdered them 4–0 in the Nou Camp, a memory seared into the Scot’s brain. To avoid a repetition of that catastrophe, he deployed a thick midfield curtain, with Cantona his single target man. The absence of the injured Roy Keane partly accounted for this cautiousness but in truth, as he later admitted, Ferguson didn’t know what his best team was.

  For Éric, these considerations came a distant second to the excitement he felt at playing ‘what is already a final’. Milan and Inter had both been close to taking him away from first French, then English football, but he had never played on Italian soil before. There was the added spice of coming across a fellow Bleu, a footballer he didn’t rate and a man he despised, midfielder Didier Deschamps. Cantona, who had refused to talk to journalists for close to two years, broke his silence for an interview with La Gazzetta dello Sport, in which he took the gloves off and slipped on a knuckleduster. ‘Deschamps,’ he said ‘is there because he always gives 100 per cent of himself, but he’ll always be a water-carrier [a phrase that stuck, as you know]. You find players like him on every street corner.’ Anger simmered behind the scorn. ‘Today, Didier speaks as if he were a monk. He gives moral lessons, but he’ll end up succumbing to all the vices of the world.’ What he was hinting at can only be guessed; but I remember feeling at the time that he could only be alluding to the rumours that had been sullying Marseille’s reputation when Deschamps was in Bernard Tapie’s employment – which, in Éric’s estimation, automatically made him one of the OM chairman’s ‘creatures’.

  But his appetite for revenge, sharp as it was, went unsated. A change in the UEFA rulebook allowed the United manager to field as many ‘foreigners’ as he liked, for the very first time, and it was hoped that his players could now give a truer account of themselves. Judging by what they did on that night of 11 September, they weren’t very good. United were outplayed, out-thought, outpaced, and ultimately fortunate to escape with the narrowest of defeats, by a single goal scored by Zinédine Zidane. Cantona, with the fearsome Uruguayan Paolo Montero on his coat-tails, could not find an inch of space, whereas the Leeds defenders had left him with acres four days beforehand. He was barely seen. The lone-striker experiment had failed. Ferguson singled out Éric for praise, though, blaming the severity of his team’s defeat (in manner if not according to the scoreline) on their inexperience. ‘We have the players to improve,’ he said, ‘but they must take the lesson from Éric
Cantona. He never gave the ball away once.’ In truth, he had seen very little of it.

  How far United still had to go (and how long Éric would have to wait) before they were able to compete with, let alone beat the best of Continental opposition was demonstrated a contrario when they destroyed Nottingham Forest 4–1 three days after their humbling in Turin. Forest hadn’t yet lost all of the football Brian Clough and Peter Taylor had taught them, but couldn’t contain a side that had regained its exuberance when it returned to its default setting, a 4-4-1-1 formation in which Cantona had the freedom to roam behind Ole-Gunnar Solskjær. Were United’s shortcomings Éric’s as well? With no Deschamps to cut the supply from midfield and no Montero to spoil it, Cantona created two goals and scored a brace himself, the eighth double of his United career. In the next game, though, a scoreless draw at Villa Park, he drifted into anonymity, nor did he shine in the 2–0 victory over Rapid Vienna that followed – Roy Keane, in his second game since coming back from a knee operation, was United’s catalyst in this unremarkable success against feeble opposition.

  Blowing hot and cold on the field, Éric remained a prize asset off it. Nike presented him with an improved contract, rumoured to be worth £500,000 a year, which tied him to the American company for a further four years.