Cantona (43 page)

The lack of a major tournament enabled Éric and Isabelle to take an extended break that summer, which was spent visiting their families in France and Spain and holidaying in the Tunisian beach resort of Djerba with one of Cantona’s closest friends in football, his former Montpellier and
Espoirs
teammate Laurent Blanc. Snapshots from that trip show a remarkably relaxed Éric, able to overcome his shyness, grab a microphone and entertain fellow guests of the Club Méditerranée with a song or two. Footballers head for Dubai or Florida nowadays; but Éric had remained unaffected by his wealth and preferred the lack of pretence of that upmarket (but only just) French version of Butlins, when he could have afforded the priciest hotels on the planet. Another manifestation of having achieved some sort of peace, perhaps.

This happy parenthesis was closed in mid-July with the resumption of the international schedule; in Éric’s case, this meant heading for Clairefontaine, rather than for South Africa, where his United teammates were playing a couple of pre-season games. This was in preparation for a friendly against Russia, which would have serious consequences for his involvement with United over the first month of the new domestic season. The match, played in the small D’Ornano stadium in Caen on 28 July, pitted him for the first time against his clubmate Andreï Kanchelskis (one of three Ukrainians who, following the break-up of the Soviet Union, had pledged their future to the new Russian team). Remarkably, Cantona scored for the fifth time in a row for the French: he had found the target in every single encounter since the debacle of Euro 92, this time with a deflected strike from fifteen yards. But he also sustained a hamstring injury that prevented him from playing any part in United’s warm-up games against Benfica and Celtic, and it was a half-fit Cantona who walked up Wembley’s thirty-nine steps to collect his second successive Charity Shield winner’s medal on 8 August. He had been instrumental in United’s win over Arsenal, on penalties, after a forgettable game had ended 1–1, in stark contrast to the previous year’s scintillating season opener. As early as the eighth minute, his lobbed pass had been volleyed home by Mark Hughes. United, however, had struggled and would have walked away the losers had Ian Wright, who had previously scored a magnificent equalizing goal, not missed his kick in the penalty shoot-out. But after Bryan Robson had found the net and Peter Schmeichel kept out David Seaman’s attempt, another trophy had been added to Éric’s and United’s collection. United fans that I spoke to only remembered this Wembley win because it was the first time that Roy Keane wore their club’s shirt, having finally been prised away from Nottingham Forest under Blackburn’s nose for £3.75m, a British transfer record at the time.

Fielding Éric in the Charity Shield had been a risky, not to say rash decision, as he only lasted thirty-five minutes of United’s next game – a friendly against Danish side Brondby – before suffering a recurrence of his hamstring injury. The champions (15/8 favourites to retain the title) nevertheless managed rather well in the absence of their talisman, who was forced to sit out wins against Norwich and Sheffield United, as well as a 1–1 at the home of newly promoted Newcastle; and when Éric returned to competition, it was with France, in Sweden, where a 1–1 draw brought them within touching distance of qualification for the World Cup. Next would be a trip to Finland, followed by visits by Israel and Bulgaria. Four points would surely see
Les Bleus
achieve the redemption a whole country was praying for. Meanwhile, United were faced with a punishing schedule (four games in eight days!), earning a precious win over Aston Villa two days after bringing a point back from St James’ Park. It was only then that Éric eventually joined the fun, for fun it most certainly was.

First, Southampton were beaten 3–1 at St Mary’s on 28 August (with a majestic Cantona scoring his first Premier League goal of the new season), after which West Ham lost 3–0 at Old Trafford (Éric doubling his tally with a penalty). Liverpool, whom most observers believed would be their strongest challenger for the 1993–94 title, already trailed Manchester United by three points. It was almost too easy. The season wasn’t even a month old, yet bookmakers cut their odds to the extent that punters hardly bothered to put their money on the champions any longer. Cantona, it seemed, just had to turn up to win, be it with club or country.

On 8 September France squeezed the life out of a modest Finland team in Tampere, scored a couple of goals without reply and serenely waited for the Israelis to come to the Parc des Princes a month later, hoist the white flag and provide them with a ticket to USA 94. One point would be enough. France were already spoken of as potential World Cup winners. They had (everybody thought) all but achieved first place in one of its most awkward qualification groups, adding considerable style to a great deal of substance, and proving that the generation of players on which so much hope had been pinned when they claimed the under-21 European title in 1988 had acquired the will to win that had been conspicuously absent from their flop in Sweden six months previously. Their time, Cantona’s time, had finally come.

The Manchester United juggernaut was checked at Stamford Bridge three days after the French stroll in Finland. With the score still tied at 0–0, Éric nearly produced what would have been one of the most spectacular goals of his entire career. It started with a long pass-cum-clearance from Gary Pallister. Had Roy Keane collected this hopeful ball, the Irishman would have found himself one-on-one with Chelsea’s ’keeper, Dimitri Kharine. The Russian, playing as a sweeper, rushed from his line and bravely headed the ball back towards the halfway line. Danger averted? No. The ball fell to Éric who, with his back to goal, swivelled and hit it on the volley from fully 40 yards as Kharine was still frantically trying to get back to his line. The ball dropped a couple of yards shy of the goal, bounced and rebounded off the crossbar, to end up in the arms of a relieved goalkeeper. The BBC commentator John Motson exclaimed: ‘Fantastic! . . . Ha! Who needs Pelé?’ This ‘goal’ would have, he said, ‘been etched, I think, in Stamford Bridge history’. But it was a match of near-misses for Éric, who was constantly harried by Dennis Wise and relentlessly barracked by the crowd. Chelsea took the lead through Gavin Peacock in the first half, and seemed destined to keep it through sheer determination when a glorious move involving Bryan Robson, Dennis Irwin and Lee Sharpe should have been finished off by Cantona’s diving header – instead of which the ball missed the open goal by a couple of inches, and United had suffered their first defeat since 9 March. But as Liverpool fell at home to Blackburn a day later, it could be brushed away as an inconsequential blip.

A far more significant occasion was fast approaching: United’s return to the European Cup, or, to give it its proper name at the time, the European Champion Clubs’ Cup, the trophy that had brought George Best a
Ballon d’Or
in 1968 and had helped lay the ghosts of Munich to rest. Manchester United, who had become the first club from England to win the trophy on that occasion, had been envious bystanders when their domestic rivals Liverpool, Nottingham Forest and Aston Villa had crushed Continental competition from 1977 to 1984, Hamburg (in 1983) being the only non-English side to claim the title during that period. Alex Ferguson’s self-proclaimed aim was, famously, to ‘knock Liverpool off their fucking perch’ – a wish that could only be fulfilled if a European trophy (and one weightier than the Cup Winners Cup won in 1991) was added to the Mancunian roll of honour.

Éric too had some unfinished business to take care of. In 1991, still a Marseille player, at least nominally, he had been robbed of a final by his manager Raymond Goethals. Two years later, the same OM had finally won the trophy – now called the Champions League – and it can euphemistically be said that Cantona derived no particular satisfaction from seeing his home-town team give France its first success in a competition Frenchmen had invented thirty-seven years previously.

English representatives had performed dismally in the past season’s international competitions,
³²
their failure giving a lurid illustration of how far behind they had fallen since the Heysel ban. UEFA regulations, which specified that any one team could not field more than three ‘foreigners’ and two ‘assimilated’ players (i.e. players who had lived in the country for five years and been part of that club’s youth squad), had a disproportionately hampering effect on English clubs,
³³
as Irish, Scottish and Welsh ‘foreigners’ naturally gravitated towards the more prestigious (and more lucrative) Premier League. Andreï Kanchelskis told me that, had it not been for the imposition of this quota, it was his conviction that ‘we would have gone to the semi-finals [in 1993–94], maybe the final, even’. Manchester United’s first XI sometimes contained no less than eight ‘foreign’ or ‘assimilated’ players: Schmeichel (Denmark), Kanchelskis (Ukraine/Russia), Cantona (France), plus Hughes, Giggs (both of them Welsh, at least as far as football affiliation was concerned), Irwin, Keane (Ireland) and Brian McClair (Scotland). Alex Ferguson would have some tough choices to make in the following months, starting with United’s first European Cup tie for twenty-five years, an admittedly undemanding trip to the Hungarian champions Kispest Honvéd FC, who were but a distant echo of their magnificent former selves. The old army club of Ferenc Puskas, Sándor Kocsis, József Bozsik and Zoltán Czibor had enjoyed a resurgence in the late 1980s, but their failure to hold on to their best players prevented them from asserting themselves on the international scene as they did in domestic competitions.

Two thousand Manchester United fans – over a fifth of the total attendance – took their seats in the Boszik stadium and witnessed an untidy performance by their team, who could thank an on-fire Roy Keane for their 3–2 win. The twenty-three-year-old midfielder scored a brace of goals, while Cantona notched one with the easiest of tap-ins; it hadn’t quite been the glorious night of football that had been hoped for, but a 3–2 victory away from home would certainly suffice to ensure qualification for the next round. In any case, there was hardly time to reflect before coming face to face with the Premier League’s inform team, a reinvigorated Arsenal, who had strung together a series of five wins and a draw since capitulating 3–0 at home to Coventry on the opening day of the season. George Graham’s Gunners were now right behind United at the top of the league table.

A bruising encounter was guaranteed, in which the foul count would greatly exceed the number of chances, and it was no surprise that a single goal decided the issue of the game. But what a goal it was: a shot from 28 yards by Éric, hit from an indirect free kick which Paul Ince put in his path. The ferociousness of the strike – no swerve, no bend, just a rocket of a ball – left David Seaman bewildered. But the brutal beauty of that goal was not the only thing that struck me when I watched it again and again on my video. Cantona’s hand was bandaged, a reminder of the fractured wrist that was still causing him pain. And could it be? . . . yes, the collar was up, for the very first time.

‘It happened by chance,’ he told
L’Équipe Magazine
in 2007. ‘One day, I put on my jersey and the collar stayed up. The game must have been a decent one. But I can’t remember when it took place.’ Was it on 19 September 1993, then? Very possibly, even if images of the matches that took place immediately afterwards are inconclusive. Sometimes it is up, sometimes it is not, because of the wind, possibly, or of material that was not rigid enough. It is only from the Manchester derby which took place eight weeks later that the collar remained defiantly up for good. As Cantona told his friend Bernard Morlino, ‘Nature made me stiff. My neck and my lower back often give me pain. But I haven’t suffered as much of a stiff neck since I began to play with an upright collar.’

His United shirt, still emblazoned with the number 12 while Bryan Robson, bruised by a decade-and-a-half of selfless sacrifice for club and country, was fit to play, was now a part of King Éric’s regalia. ‘It became a superstition,’ he said in the same interview. ‘It wasn’t part of a marketing ploy, or to make me stand apart from the others. Many people wondered why I did it. Some said: “He’s pretending to be the King, he thinks he’s Elvis Presley.” One day, a Liverpool player even tried to provoke me, to make fun of me: Neil Ruddock. He put his collar up and did a dance step
à la
Elvis. But he was the only one who found it funny.’

Some United fans still believe that the actual reason for Cantona’s mannerism was to ensure that cameras caught the sponsored ‘swoosh’ that had been embroidered on the back of his collar (wrongly: Umbro, not Nike, were United’s kit manufacturers at the time). Others spread the mischievous rumour that Éric had had ‘I LOVE LEEDS’ tattooed on his neck and understandably wished to hide it (in fact, the only time Cantona visited a tattooist’s studio was to have the head of a Native American chief drawn above his left breast). Sifting through the history books, it is difficult to think of other players who claimed part of their equipment as an extension of their individuality (which Éric must have known it was), and turned the customization of a piece of kit into a trademark. Johann Cruyff teased defenders with the sight of his padless shins and rolled-down socks, inviting the challenge he would skip like a
torero –
but so did the great Juve forward and playmaker Omar Sivori long before him. George Best let his red shirt hang over his shorts in an era when the proper thing was to wear it neatly tucked in – but many players of the 1920s and 1930s had done exactly that without anyone taking notice. Denis Law, the first ‘King’ of Manchester United,
³⁴
made sure his cuffs were buttoned before he walked on the pitch, and clasped them with his middle fingers when he raised his arm in celebration. (‘Don’t know why I did that,’ he told me a couple of days after Cristiano Ronaldo had been given his
Ballon d’Or
in December 2008. ‘I hated playing in short sleeves, that’s all.’) But other, less celebrated footballers of his era shared this affectation: it was Law’s genius on the field of play that drew attention to this eccentricity – whereas Éric appropriated one of the most emblematic jerseys of world football with the simplest of gestures, one which was familiar to the
blousons noirs
(leather-clad ‘black jackets’) of his generation and mine, instantly identifying you as a ‘bad boy’ in France. There was more defiance than met the eye in the iconic upturned collar. Cantona had also, by luck more than by design, added a brick of gold to the wall that his sponsors were busily building around him.