He might have been in his early thirties but, to this day, I think it was a mistake letting Mark Hughes go. Just ask Chelsea supporters. Mark went to Stamford Bridge and they’ll tell you what a great player he was for them. I have to admit that I’m biased. I was a fan back then and I’m a fan now that he’s manager of Wales. If it was up to me, Mark Hughes would probably still be playing for Manchester United. After Bryan Robson, he was my big hero when I was a teenager and that was still true when I had a chance to play alongside him. I was really disappointed he left: how were we going to win anything without Sparky in the team?
I still remember how upset I was when I found out that Mark, in particular, was leaving. I was surprised, too: like most United supporters my first reaction was to wonder what the manager was doing. You knew there had to be something going on for him to be letting such important senior players go. But the boss wasn’t saying anything. Then the penny dropped: Andrei Kanchelskis was a right-sided attacking player. And so was David Beckham. What had Eric Harrison always told the young players before we sat down at Old Trafford to watch the first team play? Watch the man playing in your position. One day, you’re going to take his place. When Andrei left Old Trafford, I couldn’t help wondering, could I?
When we joined up for pre-season training, most of the younger players were waiting to see who the boss would sign to replace the big names who’d left. A couple of months later, with us all in the side, we were still assuming he’d have to bring in new players. How could he stick with just us young boys? Manchester United are a massive club, and you can understand that the fans expect success straight away. At the back of our minds, though, there was the hope that we’d get the chance to prove ourselves. Nowadays young players are different: they’re more confident in themselves. In the situation we were in, you’d expect someone to say it straight out: ‘Are we going to get a game here, or what?’ Myself, the Neville brothers, Nicky Butt and Paul Scholes weren’t like that. None of us asked and the boss didn’t tell us. He just went ahead and started the new season with the youngest United side anybody could remember since the Busby Babes.
First game of the season, away to Aston Villa, we got hammered. I was on the bench and by the time I got on in the second half we were already 3–0 down. I scored: Denis Irwin chipped the ball forward for me. I got a good first touch on my instep, let the ball run forwards a little and then shot from the edge of the box. A slight deflection took it past Mark Bosnich, who was in goal for them. I remember celebrating almost on my own. We were still a couple of goals down, of course, and John O’Kane, who’d also come on as a sub, was about the only player who came over and hugged me.
For the remainder of the game I ran around all over the place trying to make a difference. I was quite pleased with myself afterwards. But the gaffer wasn’t. I was devastated. He had a right go at me in the dressing room, telling me how important it was for the team that I stay in my position. After that defeat at Villa Park, the media were ready to write off United’s season. The manager seemed to be putting his faith in a group of youngsters and the pundits weren’t having any of it. They were all saying the same thing. Unluckily for him, Alan Hansen was the one who said it on Match of the Day:
‘You’ll win nothing with kids.’
I was sitting in front of the television that night. I’m sure the other lads were, too. Coming back from Birmingham there might have been doubts in some minds. As a group, we had risen to any challenge put in front of us. But on the coach that evening I think there were a few of us wondering if this was too big a step up and too soon. There were probably a few thousand United supporters headed back from the game who’d been wondering the same thing. But by the time we’d all got home and were hearing the experts write us off, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one getting riled by the criticism. It had just been one game, after all. What if we go out and prove the lot of you wrong?
The next game was at home to West Ham and, for all that he’d criticised me after the Villa match, the gaffer named me in the team. Plenty of things rushed through my head, especially the realisation that starting the game meant I would be lining up opposite Julian Dicks. I don’t know why but I found myself remembering a boy I’d been friendly with at Chingford High, Danny Fisher, who was a mad, mad West Ham fan. I’d always looked out for their results, too, even though I was a Manchester United supporter, and the two of us talked and argued about football all the time. What would Danny be thinking now when he saw me lining up against West Ham and against Julian Dicks? I knew what I was thinking: this bloke’s a really hard player.
In my early United career, I think there were doubts about whether I’d ever be physically tough enough to cope with first-team football. As an eight-year-old playing Sunday League football, I believed I was good enough then to have been playing for United. I know other people were concerned that, even at seventeen and eighteen, I hadn’t really grown: It was talked about at the club and I also remember talking about it with Dad. I worked with weights to make me stronger but the spurt that took me up to six foot didn’t happen until much later. But, whatever anyone else said, I wasn’t worried about my size. I was determined it wouldn’t hold me back, anyway. I’d always played football against people who were bigger and stronger than me. Julian Dicks, though? The manager had a word with me in the dressing room before kick off:
‘When you get your chance, run at him or get your cross in. But watch yourself. If he can whack you, he will.’
And he did early on, down by the corner flag. But Dicks could play, too, and I knew I needed to keep going because, if he got the better of me, he was the best passer of the ball in West Ham’s team. The United fans were fantastic that night. They might have been nervous about the stars who’d left in the summer. But I think they loved watching homegrown talent doing well for the club. Gary and Phil Neville, Paul Scholes and Nicky Butt were all Manchester boys, which gave the fans an extra sense of pride. I still wonder now whether the Old Trafford crowd had the same feeling towards me, a Londoner rather than a local lad like the others. I’d like to think they did. Against West Ham, and all that season, it certainly felt like it. And that made a big difference. We won our first home game of the season 2–1; and I don’t think I lost my own battle with West Ham’s left-back.
For a young team, every game meant that we would find out more about ourselves, about what we could and couldn’t do. We believed in our own ability but that didn’t mean we didn’t have a lot to learn from week to week. Ten days after the West Ham game, we went up to Ewood Park for one of the biggest fixtures of the season. Three months earlier, Blackburn had won their first Premiership title, finishing one point ahead of us despite losing at Anfield on the last day of the season. If we had won at Upton Park instead of drawing that day, we would have been champions. It had been that close. They had a strong, experienced team, with Chris Sutton and Alan Shearer up front. Going there, so early in the season, made it a very big night: the boss didn’t say it, but I think it was a match we thought we couldn’t afford to lose.
I remember two incidents really clearly. Early on, I tried a long ball that didn’t come off – a Hollywood pass, probably – and Roy Keane had a go at me about it; in fact he absolutely ripped me apart. Before I knew it, I was having a go back at him. Sometimes the passion of the moment can take you by surprise. Roy does it to his team-mates all the time. It’s part of his game and what people need to understand is that there’s nothing personal about it. It doesn’t matter to Roy if you’ve been playing for United for ten years or just ten games; if he thinks he needs to, he’ll hammer you. It’s all about wanting to win. That night at Ewood Park was the first time I’d been on the end of one of those volleys. It worked. It always works: Keano having a go fires you up because you know he’s doing it for a reason, not just for the sake of losing his rag. Whether he’s right or wrong, he always gets a reaction.
Later on, with the score at 1–1, I remember Lee Sharpe went into a challenge on the edge of their
penalty area. The ball rolled out towards me and I swivelled to line myself up and then curled a shot into the top right-hand corner. That goal was the winner. To do something like that, in a game as important as that, was a really big thing for me. And the goal and the result were just as big for the club. That game was in the middle of a run of five straight wins that followed us getting beaten at Villa. Win nothing with kids? I think United supporters, at least, were starting to wonder if maybe we could.
Not that anyone got carried away by my goal up at Blackburn, or by anything else. Personally, I still couldn’t quite believe I was playing for the first team. I was just as excited by that as I was by scoring. As a group of young players, we weren’t the kind of characters to go round shouting the odds. In fact, the dressing room during that season was probably as quiet as a United dressing room has ever been. Aside from Gary Neville, none of us young lads were great talkers before and after a game. The older players weren’t shouters even when they were saying what they needed to say. It was just the gaffer who, every now and again, would make us all sit up and listen. The atmosphere did change, though, as the season wore on and our confidence grew.
As well as the manager, the senior players kept us going. The likes of Steve Bruce and Gary Pallister had been through all this before. Peter Schmeichel was a huge influence, quite apart from the fact that he was the best goalkeeper in the world back then. Peter was the kind of person you could talk to any time, about your game, about opponents or about what was going on in your life. And he was merciless in training. Score past him and you could score past anyone. You could only improve. At the end of every training session, we used to practise crossing, which meant Gary Neville and I would be out on the right, Ryan Giggs and Denis Irwin would be out on the left. Peter used to give Gary a really hard time. His crossing wasn’t as good then as it is now and some of the improvement, at least, must have been down to those sessions. Peter would knock Gary and then knock him again. Gary would get his head down, work harder and fight back. And when he did send over a decent cross, Peter’s praise really counted for something.
Every good team needs a strong leader. We’d had Bryan Robson at United in the past. More recently we had Roy Keane. That season, though, the man who made us tick didn’t come back into the side until early October. Eric Cantona had been signed from Leeds in November 1992 after he’d won the championship with them the previous season. I’d watched him play a couple of times and you could see he was a good player then but, once he arrived at Old Trafford, something more started to happen. In no time at all, Eric had become this player that the rest of us wanted to be. As a person, he had an aura about him: when Eric walked into a room, everything stopped. He was a presence. And he brought that same quality to being a Manchester United player.
In all the time we played together and trained together, I don’t think I ever had a conversation with Eric about football. To be honest, beyond a few words here and there, I never had a conversation with him about anything. I don’t think many people did, he was that private about his life. After training, and after games, he’d just disappear. We accepted that he had his own life and his own way of doing things. He’d turn up for training, driving this little Vauxhall Nova, and lever all six foot four of himself out from behind the steering wheel. He’d do his work. Then, when we’d finished, he’d squeeze himself back into the thing and be gone. Amazing, really, when you think about the impact he had not just on me and the rest of the players but on the whole club. We didn’t talk to him but we talked about him almost all the time.
Eric could do no wrong in my eyes. And I think the gaffer was a bit in awe of him as well. One evening we were at a premiere of one of the Batman films. It was a club invitation so we were all supposed to turn up in black tie. Eric arrived wearing a white suit and his bright red Nike trainers. I laugh about it now, after the ear bashings I used to get from the boss about the clothes I chose to wear. Eric was special, though. The gaffer knew that and so did all the players. We never begrudged him being treated differently to the rest of us.
Eric was a class apart. If anyone tried it on, he made sure you knew that. Not that people risked it very often. There was one evening, after a game, when we’d arranged a ‘team meeting’: it was just a night out with the lads but calling it that meant you knew everybody had to be there. We’d planned to meet at a place in Manchester called the Four Seasons at 6.45 and then go on from there. By 7 o’clock, only Eric was missing. He eventually strolled up and Giggsy pointed to his watch:
‘Seven o’clock, Eric.’
Ryan was doing his best to sound like the gaffer if you were late for training. Eric looked over:
‘Six forty-five.’
Giggsy looked at his watch but, before he could say another word, Eric hitched up his sleeve and showed us the face of the most beautiful Rolex watch any of us had ever seen:
‘Six forty-five,’ he smiled.
End of argument. How could that watch, or the bloke wearing it, possibly be wrong about the time?
Watching Eric was a football education, especially in the way he used to practise. Every day, after training, he would be out there on a pitch at the Cliff, working on his own. He’d be taking free-kicks, doing his turns and little tricks, just as you might expect. But most of the time he’d be practising the simplest things. He’d kick the ball up in the air as high as he could and then bring it under control as it dropped. He’d kick the ball against a wall, right foot then left foot. Eric was one of the best players in Europe and he was doing the same stuff I’d done with Dad in Chase Lane Park when I was seven years old.
Once you’re playing football as a professional, you have to spend most of your time preparing for two games a week. It doesn’t leave much opportunity for the basics: controlling and striking the ball. My dad had always tried to make sure I understood that control was the most important skill of all. It didn’t matter what else you learnt, a good first touch was the key. Which was why Eric, an established international, always made sure he found time to work on that. If you’re comfortable receiving the ball, it gives you the room in your game to see what you need to do next. The gaffer has told this story about Eric on the eve of the 1994 FA Cup Final. He saw him outside in the hotel grounds, just practising on his own, and realised then that Eric was a player who set his own standards higher than anybody else could set them for him. He was an example to all of us, the boss included.
It wasn’t that he set himself up as a leader. Before he came to England and while he was at Leeds, I don’t think that part of Eric’s character particularly stood out. Once he got to United, everything changed. It was as if he’d found the place he belonged and the stage he thought he deserved. In a United shirt, what he did was amazing right from the start. It was Eric’s arrival three months into the season that was the key to United winning the League in 1992/ 93, putting an end to all those years of waiting for the club. Then the following season, he helped United to our first Double.
I didn’t play in the first team during those two seasons, but when we did eventually play together, I could tell Eric must have been the spark that made it all happen. He led. The rest of us followed. It’s a rare quality: a born captain, who hardly needed to say anything, to us or anybody else. You didn’t hear Eric leading the team. Just seeing him on the pitch, standing there with his collar turned up, ready to take on the world, was enough.
When people talk about Eric, they’ll always refer to the sendings off, and worse, during his career. The way I see it, though, all great players have an edge to their character and to their football. That edge is what makes them more than the ordinary. And if you go through a whole career with that quality, you’re bound to have trouble with the authorities sooner or later. It may sound strange but despite the bookings, sendings off, bans or whatever, it would never have occurred to me to criticise Eric. We played football together and that was what my relationship with him was all about. I’d think about him, about what he brought to the dr
essing room and the team: his ability, his passion and his commitment. Nothing else bothered me. He played the game and lived his life the way he was driven to and he made things special for the rest of us by doing that. How could I have even started to think badly of Eric Cantona or anything he did? David Beckham owed him a lot and Manchester United owed him even more.
I was at Selhurst Park that night in 1995 when Eric jumped into the crowd. I wasn’t on the bench but was in the stands, with a couple of the other lads, watching the game. I don’t remember much about the game itself against Crystal Palace, but I remember the incident. Eric got sent off after a tackle on Richard Shaw and, as he was walking along the touchline, you could see this bloke force his way down to the front of the crowd. He was goading Eric, shouting things at him. And next thing, Eric was in the crowd, kicking and punching: the whole thing flashed by in a couple of seconds and then Eric was being hurried towards the dressing room. I think it was just an instinctive reaction, a natural thing to do. Anybody getting that sort of abuse in the street would have reacted in the same way. Just because Eric was a professional footballer, in the spotlight, didn’t stop him behaving like anybody else might have done. I’m not saying what Eric did was right but you have to remember that, in any other circumstances, if someone was screaming that stuff at another person, you’d be surprised if there wasn’t trouble.
There was no big fuss about what had happened in the dressing room after the game. It was quiet and the boss was really calm about it all. He just said that none of us should speak to the press. Obviously, nobody realised then what the consequences would be: Eric was banned from football for the best part of eight months. We ended up not winning anything that season; others can probably decide what effect losing Eric had on the team. As a player, you just had to get on with your job. Eric went home to France for a few weeks but then came back to Old Trafford and we would work and train with him every day, although he couldn’t be involved in the games. He was still very much part of everything at the club but we wanted him playing. After the community service and the FA suspension, he was back in the side a month and a half into the 1995/96 season. From that October onwards, you couldn’t quite say that Eric Cantona went on and did the Double on his own. But I’m absolutely certain the rest of us felt that we wouldn’t have done it without him.
David Beckham: My Side Page 7
