Cantona: The Rebel Who Would Be King
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34 Pete Boyle, the unofficial ‘bard of Manchester United’ (and Cantona’s most passionate fan), reminded me that his most famous creation, ‘Éric the King’ (which is still sung at Old Trafford), was based on an earlier chant, ‘Denis the King’. Both borrow their tune from The Scaffold’s ‘Lily the Pink’, a huge hit in the winter of 1968–69.
35 The UEFA dispensed with Mr Roethlisberger altogether in 1997, striking him with a life ban when it was established he had approached Grasshoppers Zurich in 1996 to ‘sell’ them the referee of a forthcoming European game against Auxerre. The referee in question, Vadim Zhuk, happened to be a friend of his, and the price would be Sw.F100,000. The ban was upheld on appeal. Mr Roethlisberger’s performance on the night Cantona was sent off had been the subject of a number of rumours immediately after the game.
36 Alex Ferguson had initially decided to rest Cantona for that tie, but changed his mind when he saw the look on his player’s face when the news was broken to him. ‘If I left him out,’ the manager said, ‘I would probably never see him again.’ Some were fooled by the jocular tone of Ferguson’s remark. Éric, typically, responded by scoring his 15th goal of the season.
37 This incident marked the beginning of the long feud between Sir Alex Ferguson and the BBC, which eventually led to his boycotting the public broadcaster.
38 Éric’s brother Joël – a frequent visitor to Old Trafford – had made his debut for Stockport County a day earlier. According to an eyewitness, he featured for fifteen ‘not very good minutes’ in a home defeat by Bournemouth. The younger Cantona, who’d also played without much success for Marseille, Rennes, Antwerp, Angers and Ujpest, had already been rejected by Peterborough, and rumours were rife at the time that Éric had offered to pay Joël’s wages in order to conclude the deal. In any case, within a few months, Cantona junior was back plying his trade in the Hungarian championship.
39 The ‘miracle’ was witnessed by Éric’s father Albert, who had got round his notorious phobia of flying by driving his Citroën for 48 hours to be there. Éric’s younger brother Joël was there too to see his ‘God’ (Albert dixit), but had a far shorter distance to cover, as he had been awarded a short-term contract by third division Stockport County a month or so beforehand, as we have seen.
40 Preston North End (1889), Aston Villa (1897), Tottenham Hotspur (1961), Arsenal (1971) and Liverpool (1986).
41 After the Charity Shield wins of 1992 and 1993 and the 1994 League Cup final, as well as England’s 2–0 defeat of France in February 1992.
42 This single, a reworking of Status Quo’s ‘Burning Bridges’, a Top 5 hit in 1988, was recorded by the Manchester United squad with the band, but without Éric Cantona (who nevertheless featured prominently in the accompanying video).
43 France, captained by Éric, won the two games they played in the so-called ‘Keirin Cup’ on 25 and 29 May. Australia were beaten 1–0, thanks to Cantona’s goal, and Japan 4–1 in the final.
44 Known as ‘Vaseline’ to Manchester United players after his first attempt at getting hold of Cantona failed. Davies made sure to keep the No. 7 shirt Éric was wearing on that night, and passed it on to the curator of the Old Trafford museum.
45 Le Graët, currently Gringamps’ chairman, had shown great personal courage in instigating the inquiry that had led to Tapie’s indictment, following the already mentioned ‘OM-VA’ scandal in 1993.
46 According to former FA executive David Davies, who published his memoirs, FA Confidential, in 2008, Éric’s statement to the commission could have landed him in even deeper trouble. ‘I would like to apologise to the chairman of the commission,’ Éric began in ‘perfect English’, according to Davies. ‘I would like to apologise to Manchester United, Maurice Watkins and Alex Ferguson. I would like to apologise to my teammates. I want to apologise to the FA. And I would like to apologise to the prostitute who shared my bed last night.’ Fortunately for Cantona, if one is to believe this version of events, at least two of his judges didn’t understand what he’d said.
47 This is the full text of the FA’s judgement: ‘The members of the FA Commission are satisfied that the actions of Éric Cantona following his sending-off at Crystal Palace in the Manchester United match on January 25 brought the game into disrepute. Éric Cantona has therefore been in breach of FA rules. After taking into consideration the previous misconduct of Éric Cantona, the provocation he suffered, the prompt action taken by Manchester United, Éric Cantona’s expression of regret to the Commission, the apologies he conveyed to those affected and the assurances he gave to his future conduct, the members of the Commission decided that Éric Cantona should be suspended forthwith from all football activities up to and including 30th September 1995 and in addition fined pounds 10,000.’
48 Cantona had granted a number of interviews to French journalists until that point, but had been deeply hurt by the headline of L’Équipe on the day they reported the Crystal Palace kung-fu kick: ‘INDÉFENDABLE’ (Indefensible). How hurt he had been was revealed in March 2001, when he launched a furious verbal attack on two of the paper’s leading writers, Christian Ollivier and Patrick Urbini (now my colleague at France Football), live on a popular TV programme, Côté Tribune. ‘I piss on your arses,’ he said, and repeated, with such fury in his voice that Patrick, fearing that blows might be exchanged, chose to leave the set fifteen minutes before the end of the transmission. To Éric – who said he had been bottling up his anger ‘for ten [sic] years’ – ‘indéfendable’ meant that all he deserved was to be cast out in the wilderness and never allowed to return. He also hinted at the pain his close family had had to endure because of this, but stopped short of recognizing his own culpability in the incident, referring to his attack on Matthew Simmons as ‘a small assault on a small supporter’ which could be forgiven.
49 This film, directed by Etienne Chatillez and shot in the late spring of 1995, marked Cantona’s acting debut. His brother Joël was also given a small speaking part. Both attracted decent if slightly condescending reviews for their performances.
50 A non-exhaustive list would include: Bic razors, Sharp camcorders, Partouche casinos and online betting facilities, the Irish Lottery, Eurostar, Lipton’s iced tea, as well as Nike. In 1996 the Canadian brewing company Molson also recreated the Crystal Palace ‘kung-fu kick for an advertisement – with a Cantona lookalike. Éric was not amused. The ad was subsequently withdrawn.
51 France drew 0–0 with Slovakia, Romania and Poland, and beat Azerbaijan 2–0, between September and December 1994.
52 They did, going out 6–5 in a penalty shoot-out against the Czechs in the semifinal after the game had finished scoreless after extra time.
53 Cantona was the third foreign footballer to be distinguished by the FWA, after Dutchman Frans Thijssen (Ipswich, 1981) and German striker Jürgen Klinsmann (Tottenham, 1995). The trophy was presented to him – as tradition demands – on the Thursday evening preceding the FA Cup final, in this case on 9 May, in London.
54 Each Manchester United player stood to earn a £100,000 bonus if they won the FA Cup, a fifth of which had been earmarked for the Dunblane appeal.
55 Said to be worth £1m a year. The Bank of Scotland advertised a new mortgage product with a picture of the beaming manager accompanied with the tagline: ‘Even he couldn’t set up a better transfer deal than this’, referring, of course, to Cantona’s capture from Leeds United.
56 Éric had been aware of Browne’s project ever since the two men had met by chance in a Castlefield bar named BarCa in the summer of 1996. To help the artist, he agreed to pose for a series of photographic studies, and was so taken by this work that he purchased it before it was completed. ‘I felt that Éric was a very private man,’ Browne told me. ‘But he is also incredibly warm and generous once you get to know him.’ The two men met regularly in Manchester and, ten months later, once in Paris, where Éric was signing reproductions of The Art of the Game. Browne hasn’t forgotten how the superstar helped him carry the crate
of prints along the street and up a staircase, a far cry from the diva he was supposed to be. Contrary to legend, Cantona never asked for visitors to leave the gallery when the work was first exhibited, in order to be alone with his painted self: another of those factual distortions which show him, wrongly, in an unfavourable light.
57 In France, L’Équipe, L’Équipe Magazine and my own paper, France Football; in England, The Times, the Guardian, the Observer, the Telegraph and, for obvious reasons, the Yorkshire Evening Post and the Manchester Evening News. I also dipped into the British tabloid press, the Sun and the Mirror in particular, though not with the same ferocity.
Table of Contents
FOREWORD
1. I AM THE KING! I AM THE KING!
2. AUXERRE: THE APPRENTICE
3. AUXERRE: THE PROFESSIONAL
4. FAREWELL TO AUXERRE
5. THE VAGABOND 1: MARSEILLES AND BORDEAUX
6. THE VAGABOND 2: MONTPELLIER
7. THE VAGABOND 3: MARSEILLES, AGAIN, AND NÎMES
8. DECEMBER 1991: THE FIRST SUICIDE ATTEMPT
9. A STRANGE KIND OF GLORY: LEEDS, 1992
10. FAREWELL TO DREAMS: EURO 92 AND EXIT FROM LEEDS
11. MANCHESTER UNITED, AT LAST
12. THE HOMECOMING: 1992–93
13. THE WORST NIGHT OF ÉRIC’S LIFE
14. THE CONSECRATION: 1994
15. THE ROAD TO SELHURST PARK: JUNE 1994 TO JANUARY 1995
16. SELHURST PARK
17. THE AFTERMATH AND THE RETURN OF THE KING: APRIL–DECEMBER 1995
18. THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE: JANUARY–MAY 1996
19. THIS IS THE END, BEAUTIFUL FRIEND, THIS IS THE END: MANCHESTER 1996–97
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
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