Cantona (50 page)

Éric’s politics cannot be defined in terms of a traditional left–right opposition. Spaggiari and Mesrine were military men who had been decorated for bravery in colonial conflicts, before drifting to the extremes of the political spectrum, the former to the right, the latter to the left. Both had strong connections with the Marseillais milieu and figures like the pimp, racketeer and drugs trafficker Gaëtan Zampa or the idealistic ‘lone wolf’ Charlie Bauer, for whom robbing at gunpoint and suffering solitary confinement were stages on the path to self-discovery; Zampa, a psychotic thug, Bauer a generous revolutionary at war with hypocrisy. What united Mesrine and Spaggiari – and must have seduced Cantona – was a refusal to recognize authority, any kind of authority. Éric never aligned himself with any party, but was quite happy to stand up and be counted when he was required (by friends or circumstances) to speak against politicians or ideas he felt aversion to. The ‘system’. Racism. Miscarriages of justice (he recently expressed support for a Corsican shepherd, Yvan Colonna, who had been convicted of the murder of a high-ranking civil servant, Claude Érignac). This is him talking live in front of French television cameras twelve years after his remark to Morlino: ‘Napoleon, celebrated when he re-established slavery . . . a giant who was small and who, today, has been replaced by a Le Pen wearing a mask: [Nicolas] Sarkozy.’ Reading through some passages of Mesrine’s memoirs, I came across this sentence: ‘If you live in the shadows, you’ll never get close to the sun,’ and thought: Éric could’ve said that. The boldness of the statement, all front and no hinterland, reminded me of many one-liners he had fed to interviewers ever since he emerged as a footballer of promise at Auxerre: theatricality posturing for truth, still divulging a sense of hope and a need to be seen as a
révolté,
a word for which I can find no equivalent in English. A ‘rebel’, maybe, but whose rebellion stems from an innate thirst for justice, and who knows it cannot be quenched. Cantona’s politics cannot be translated either; it might be because they don’t necessarily make sense.

Cantona imperator.

‘There’s a fine line between freedom and chaos. To some extent I espouse the idea of anarchy. What I am really after is an anarchy of thought, a liberation of the mind from all convention.’

Cantona’s role in the 1994 World Cup was restricted to that of a pundit for French television. He sat next to his friend Didier Roustan, a charcoal-eyed, dark-haired presenter whose ‘hip’ delivery betrayed as great a desire to promote himself as to introduce a new style of sporting commentary. I remember Roustan asking Éric shortly before the the start of the final between Brazil and Italy: ‘What’s this game? A rock’n’roll final?’ Cantona, sporting superb shades, his skin tanned by the American sun, paused for what seemed an eternity, before replying, as if explaining the facts of life to a child: ‘A football final,’ to the delight of many, myself included.

Éric made a fine pundit, clear and forthright in his analysis of pivotal passages of play, rightly determined not to fake enthusiasm for what was mostly a disappointing tournament. The competition didn’t pass without incident for him. According to
The Times
, Cantona was ‘arrested’ by security guards after a scuffle with an official who had questioned the validity of his accreditation and refused him entrance to the stadium where Brazil and Sweden – one of France’s opponents in the qualifiers – were to play their semi-final. As no charges were brought, it can be assumed that it was nothing more than one of those irritating encounters with a jobsworth which are all too familiar to travelling reporters.

Of far greater importance to Éric was the fatal shooting of Colombian defender Andrés Escobar, who had scored an own goal in a group game against the USA on 22 June, and was murdered outside a bar in Medellin ten days later, apparently on the orders of a gambling syndicate. The assassin, a bodyguard named Humberto Muñoz Castro, pumped twelve bullets into the body of ‘the gentleman of football’, as he was known in his native country, allegedly shouting ‘Gooooooooooooooal!’ when he fled from the scene. For Cantona, this, and nothing else, certainly not the victory of a functional
Seleçao
, was what this World Cup should be remembered for. He often mentioned this tragedy to his wife Isabelle and to his closest friends. Was that all there was to football? Violence?

But violence was to be the leitmotiv of Éric’s and Manchester United’s season, long before 25 January, when he jumped feet first over the advertising boards at Crystal Palace; so much so that it is tempting to see the months that passed until then as a slow build-up to an unavoidable explosion. Many United fans have told me that their 1994–95 side was perhaps the strongest their club had assembled since the heyday of Law, Best and Charlton. It was certainly the most ill-disciplined. Looking back, it is hard not to suggest that they literally ‘ran riot’ until the consequences of their constant infringement of the rules endangered the very aim of their manager’s project.

Éric set the tone with a three-game ban after elbowing an opponent in the last but one of a string of five pre-season friendlies, on 6 August. He had already been shown a yellow card in the same match (against Rangers) for turning his back on referee Andrew Waddell, when the official had intended to issue him with a final warning after a shocking lunge on Stephen Pressley, which thankfully missed its target. His ban wouldn’t come into effect until after the Charity Shield, in which he scored a penalty: a routine 2–0 victory over Blackburn which proved nothing except that United were so far ahead of their domestic rivals that they could stroll to a win against one of their supposedly strongest challengers. After which an Éric-less United negotiated their first three Premiership games with a mixture of confidence, slickness and luck: seven points out of nine was a more than decent return, but as Kevin McCarra put it, ‘Cantona may be a work of art, but he is of no use to his manager as a still life.’

Éric then left England again, this time to join the French national team, which he captained to a 2–2 draw against the Czech Republic on 17 August, a game that had looked all but lost until the introduction on the hour of the young Bordeaux playmaker Zinédine Zidane, making his debut, who scored twice in the last five minutes. This was to be one of only two games that the two most iconic French players of their era would play together, the other being a goalless draw against Slovakia on 7 September, when ‘Zizou’ once more came off the bench. Aimé Jacquet already felt that fielding both
registas
in the same line-up would unbalance his team; for the time being, Cantona held the better hand, as he would until he surrendered it through an act of folly, and refused to be dealt a new one in January 1996, as we’ll see.

It was a strange season. At times, United only had to show up to turn their opponents over, as when Wimbledon visited Old Trafford on the last day of August. Éric was back, made a joke of Vinnie Jones’s attentions, and scored a stupendous header from a Ryan Giggs cross. At others, the Double winners fell victim to their delusions of innate superiority. Leeds beat them 2–1 on 11 September, the first time they had prevailed in that fixture at Eiland Road since 1980. Éric scored his side’s only goal, and was very close to adding a second when he flicked the ball over Carlton Palmer’s head and, while Palmer stood there, bemused, did the trick again, only to volley the ball wide of the post, inches away from reproducing the masterpiece he had created against Chelsea – for Leeds – two years before.

Stop, start, stop, start again. He missed United’s European curtain-raiser (a 4–2 demolition of IFK Gothenburg on 14 September) through another suspension: UEFA had banned him for four games after his surreal sending-off in Istanbul. But three days later, it was he who orchestrated a crucial 2–0 defeat of Liverpool, playing a decisive part in the build-up to his team’s second goal. Neil Ruddock had decided to spice things up by putting his own collar up, and trying to pull Éric’s down every time he was close enough. He also elbowed him, which the referee didn’t spot. Almost inevitably, Éric retaliated late in the game, and was booked for a foul on his aggressor. Cantona’s reaction? According to Alex Ferguson, who could barely disguise his amusement when he told the story to Erik Bielderman, ‘Éric warned Ruddock that he would be waiting for an explanation, “man-to-man”, in the tunnel at the end of the game. Once the game was over, Ruddock must have done at least three laps of honour and spent ten minutes saluting the Liverpool fans . . . but Éric was waiting, Ruddock knew it. And I, down there, I was trying to push Éric towards the dressing-room. Fucking hell! He was one tough guy!’

Somehow the team that had defeated Liverpool so convincingly lost 2–3 at Ipswich, a team that had yet to win at home that season – despite United registering twenty-five shots on goal, and Éric scoring his fourth goal in six games, this time from a cross by Roy Keane. His ongoing ban in European competitions prevented Cantona from settling into a consistent rhythm. However, Alex Ferguson believed his team could hang on until the player he had nicknamed ‘The Can-opener’ made his return in the Champions League: a 0–0 draw in Galatasaray’s Ali Sami Yen Stadium gave United top spot in their group in late September, ahead of Barcelona. The Red Devils had returned to hell and come back with a point.

Stop, start, stop, start again. Everton lost 2–0 at Old Trafford in a passionless encounter, Cantona hardly stirring himself. Kevin Keegan’s Newcastle, meanwhile, had scored twenty-five goals in eight games so far, to United’s fourteen. Then Éric left once more, to play for France in Romania, while Sheffield Wednesday beat his club by the only goal. Their reliance on his gift for conjuring up space was costing them dearly, to the extent that bookmakers no longer considered them favourites to retain the championship. As one of them said at the time, ‘In our view, they’re more likely to win nothing rather than something.’ Come October, there wasn’t a single player of Ferguson’s in the list of the top ten goalscorers in the league. ‘All we’re doing at the moment is hanging in there,’ the manager said. That meant scrapping for a 1–0 win against West Ham, in which Cantona scored the decider at the very end of a scruffy, confused and confusing game, very much in the image of his club’s season. Perhaps minds were already turning to the impending challenge of Johann Cruyff’s Barcelona in the Champions League.

Confronted with the ‘dream team’ of Koeman, Stoichkov and Romário, United responded with the best performance of their season so far, fully deserving of a 2–2 draw which ensured they held on to first place in Group A, with the same number of points as IFK Gothenburg. In their talisman’s absence – Cantona still had one game to go before the end of his ban – Ince, Keane and Sharpe proved determined deputies, and United passed the most arduous test they had been presented with so far, raising hopes that they would really kick on once Éric had been restored to the side. More encouragement came their way when Blackburn were outclassed 4–2 at Ewood Park. Rovers hadn’t lost at home for thirteen months, while United hadn’t earned a single point from their last three away games; but, helped by Henning Berg’s harsh dismissal on the stroke of half-time and Cantona’s ensuing penalty, United came back within seven points of leaders Newcastle, who would be their next opponents – both in the League Cup and the Premiership.

This double-header was scheduled to take place over seventy-two hours and provided Alex Ferguson with the chance to gain the psychological ascendancy over Kevin Keegan, provided the gamble he had in mind paid off. Mindful of the physical demands that the Champions League and, later, the FA Cup would exert on his squad, he decided to squander the League Cup (which he had already won in 1992), fielding a team of youngsters such as Paul Scholes, Keith Gillespie, Nicky Butt and David Beckham, who were outclassed 2–0 at St James’ Park. Three days later, however, the apprentices were back in the reserves, and Cantona reinstated in United’s starting line-up for the league encounter. The score was repeated, but at the expense of Newcastle this time, who had turned up without their most prolific striker, Andy Cole, who was suffering from exhaustion. United had now climbed to third place in the table, only four points away from the Magpies, and two behind a surprisingly chirpy Nottingham Forest. But whatever satisfaction Ferguson could derive from this success was swept away in the Camp Nou on 2 November.

Barça too had played only three days beforehand, having to satisfy themselves with a lacklustre draw at Real Sociedad. In truth, United were destroyed that night, their chief tormentor being Johann Cruyff’s son Jordi, whose performance so entranced the beaten manager that he brought him to Manchester two years hence on the strength of that game. Ferguson had gambled again, but failed this time. In that age of quotas, he had sacrificed Peter Schmeichel (whom Bobby Charlton had described as ‘the best goalkeeper in the world’ shortly before the game) in order to accommodate another ‘foreigner’ in Ryan Giggs. The Dane’s replacement, Gary Walsh, had to pick the ball out of his net four times. With the suspended Cantona still sidelined, United created next to nothing on the rare occasions when they had the ball in their possession. ‘We were well and truly slaughtered,’ Ferguson admitted. As IFK had won in Turkey, he knew that, barring a miracle, his team was condemned to a sickeningly early exit of the premier tournament in European football, and this after having opened their campaign so promisingly. Éric’s own frustration was two-fold: he had missed out on the opportunity to show his worth on one of the grandest stages of them all, Barcelona’s home ground; and the doubts that he and many others had about Manchester United’s ability to bridge the technical and tactical chasm that separated them from Europe’s best clubs had received a merciless vindication. Didn’t he deserve better?