A worried M. Delmer walked up to the OM bench to have a quick chat with Gérard Gili. Émile, who was sitting alongside Michel Hidalgo just above the dugout, could hear everything. Gili thought Cantona was ‘about to blow it’, and decided to substitute him. As others did after him, the Marseille manager found out that it was not the wisest decision to take Éric off the pitch before a game was over, whether it was a friendly or not. Cantona’s frustration with everything that surrounded him that night, the game, the referee, the icy field of play, swamped him. He took off his jersey and threw it towards his coach. Émile still pleads: ‘It was just a misunderstanding that was blown out of proportion.’ But millions were watching. Cantona was kicking a ball, or attempting to do so, to help raise money for widows and orphans. To him, however, at that moment, nothing mattered but a game of football, and an overwhelming feeling of injustice. ‘I tell you what,’ Gérard Houllier said in one of our conversations, ‘when we coaches had to referee training games, and made a wrong decision, oh my god, Éric wasn’t too pleased. In fact, we’d be looking for someone else to pass the whistle to!’
In no way did Cantona intend to demean the occasion. He had been wronged, and reacted without thinking. The image of Cantona’s shirt lying on the frozen turf would remain as potent and enduring an emblem of Cantona’s flaws to the French public as the Crystal Palace kung-fu kick would to the English.
A fidgeting Bernard Tapie, who had hoped for a better return on his FF22m investment over the first six-and-a-half months of the season, spoke of an ‘inqualifiable [indefensible]’ act, and helpfully suggested that ‘if we need to, we’ll put him in a psychiatric hospital’. The honeymoon had long been over between the two men; the chairman’s condemnation consummated the divorce. Michel Hidalgo, with some courage, went over the top to defend Éric: it was ‘neither an affair of state, nor a public affair’, he said, talking to everyone and no one in particular. The audience had already left. Where was Éric?
Cantona had disappeared. He had flown to Barcelona immediately after the game. His former Auxerre teammate Michel Pineda was playing for Espanyol and could shelter him for a few days. The wildest rumours started to circulate. He had no shirt any more? Johan Cruyff – his hero! – could provide him with one: the jersey of Barça. The French press agencies’ reporters behaved as if they were paid by Pinkerton’s. Vincent Machenaud and Didier Fèvre found themselves in the Camp Nou on match day, following a vague lead that Éric might be there. They circled the huge arena, looking at every face in the 90,000-strong crowd in the hope their eyes would meet the fierce black glare of the Marseille reprobate. Amazingly, they did.
Didier knew enough of Éric to refrain from taking any pictures of Cantona when they came across him by some miracle. The two hounds from L’Équipe had a drink with him instead. Then, when Machenaud asked Éric a question he didn’t like, ‘Canto walked out and lifted his arm,’ says Didier. ‘Just like in a movie, a taxi pulled by, and he was gone – pfft, like that!’ To Éric’s credit, when he learnt – through Paille – that the photographer had suffered a dreadful dressing-down from his employers because of his ‘failure’, he offered the hand of friendship. He and Didier would enjoy an even closer relationship over the next couple of years.
But what about OM? Éric had been excluded from the team on the spot, and fined a fortune. Insiders soon surmised that it was Marseille – Tapie – who had let it be known that an ‘arrangement’ with Barcelona could be worked upon. The Catalan club’s chairman, Joan Gaspart, wasted no time in informing Michel Hidalgo that he had no interest in Cantona. What on earth was Tapie thinking about? On 2 February Cantona was back in France, to meet the OM president in his other Xanadu, his company’s head office on the Avenue de Friedland. According to carefully leaked ‘information’, the player showed contrition, his chairman forgiveness, so much so that Hidalgo could say: ‘The incident is over and done with. Everything [has been] sorted to everyone’s best interest. There will be no further statement regarding what is [repeating himself] not an affair of state, but a plain, private issue, which needs to be solved in a confidential manner.’
Back at the Vélodrome, most of Éric’s teammates were supportive. There really are many things which have brought Éric to this situation,’ said Klaus Allofs. ‘That’s why I can understand his reaction with a crowd that’s been tough [on him].’ Philippe Vercruysse added: ‘I might have cracked myself if I’d been in Éric’s place. Because he carries a heavy burden, and he’s young.’ Yvon Le Roux, the no-nonsense central defender: ‘Éric’s been victimized by the Marseille supporters for a few months. It’s very difficult to play in a stadium where people are booing you.’ Even Gili, the manager who couldn’t manage the unmanageable Cantona, said of this incident: ‘The playing conditions were too unusual for any lesson to be learnt.’ Publicly, even the players who had been careful to distance themselves from Éric proffered a few words of encouragement. Philippe Thys was one such: ‘What we want above all else is to be a tightly knit group of players and, in this case, I think he’s put himself apart a bit. Maybe it’s partly our fault. But no one’s got anything against him.’
One man, and one man only, took it on himself to say the unsayable: Michel Hidalgo. ‘Éric Cantona’s career in France is probably over. The crowds don’t want him any more.’
This was a sombre time for the Cantona clan. Éric’s brother Joël’s hopes to make it as a top footballer were more or less extinguished when, tired of playing for third division Meaux, he opted to sign for Belgian side Antwerp, just as his sibling was making himself scarce in Barcelona. Exile is a leitmotiv in this family’s opera.
The usual flock of vultures began to circle. Seventy-two hours after he had passed judgement on Cantona as ‘a basket case’, Claude Bez, the chairman of Bordeaux, explained: ‘My words shouldn’t be taken literally.’ The truth is that Bez, who had wooed Éric when he made plain his intention to leave Auxerre seven months beforehand, was desperate. His team was sinking like a stone, lagging in 14th position, 20 points behind leaders PSG. No one could have predicted as severe a crisis as this at the start of the season. The Girondins had one of the country’s finest coaches in Aimé Jacquet, who had given the club unprecedented success since he had become their manager in 1980. Bordeaux had no rival for the honorific title of France’s team of the decade. They had won the league on three occasions during that period (in 1984, 1985 and 1987, the year of a historic double) as well as two Coupes de France (in 1986 and 1987).
But one obsession ruled Claude Bez: to make Bordeaux the first French team to succeed where Raymond Kopa’s Reims and Jean-Michel Larqué’s St Étienne had failed: in Europe. Jacquet came very close to fulfilling his chairman’s dream, but not close enough, and paid the price for it. Bordeaux only fell 3–2 on aggregate in the semi-finals of the 1984–85 European Cup, losing out to Michel Platini’s Juventus, who would go on to win a bloodstained trophy against Liverpool at the Heysel stadium. Two years later, Bordeaux exited the European Cup Winners’ Cup at the semi-final stage again, on penalties this time, against a Lokomotiv Leipzig side which was there for the taking. A testimony to Bordeaux’s then prominence was that no other French club provided as many players as they did for the national side that shone so brightly at the 1984 European Championships and in the World Cup that took place two years later.
Cantona’s and Jacquet’s paths would of course cross again, at Montpellier and in the national side, and we’ll come to that in due course. It is not too early to say, however, that, contrary to what has been stated many times in speech and print, the two men had a great deal of respect for each other, and that their relationship was not as soured as some of Éric’s ‘friends’ purported it to be after Jacquet left Cantona out of his Euro 96 squad. When Bez lost what little patience he had with his coach and sacked him, just before Tapie offloaded his rebel to the Girondins, Cantona was among the first to call Jacquet and offer him his sympathy.
That Bez and Tapie could ‘do business’ to
gether was beyond the comprehension of most. The two men hated each other. To Bez, an old-fashioned bruiser who had made millions wheeling and dealing in property, Tapie represented the gravest threat to Bordeaux’s domination of French club football. The league title of 1986 and French Cups of 1986 and 1987 had tasted particularly sweet to Bez, as they had been won by beating OM on each occasion. To celebrate one of these triumphs, he drove his Cadillac – bearing the ‘33’ number plate of the Gironde département – up and down La Canebière, Marseilles’ answer to Les Champs-Elysées, laughing his head off at the insults of bystanders. French football didn’t want for characters in those days.
Bez doubled up as ‘superintendent’ of the national squad, a supervising position which carried few duties and practical responsibilities, but gave him influence at the highest level of the game. It had been created especially for him a few months previously, and he used it to facilitate Platini’s elevation to the post of France’s manager when Henri Michel’s time finally was up, in November 1988. But he could sense that the grip he had on French football was loosening, despite the financial resources and the political leverage at his disposal. To hold on to his power (which also protected him from a number of investigations that would eventually precipitate his fall), he needed a strong, all-conquering Bordeaux, and what had he got? An admittedly superb collection of talents punching well below their weight. Shock therapy was required. Aimé Jacquet was replaced by the club’s directeur sportif (and local boy) Didier Couécou, who had held his position since 1977, and enjoyed his chairman’s absolute confidence.
The expression ‘thick as thieves’ might be used literally in their case. Gigantic holes would soon be discovered in Bordeaux’s accounts, and, after a protracted court action, Couécou was finally sentenced in April 1999 to two years’ imprisonment (eighteen months suspended) for his part in the embezzlement of Ff40m in a murky transfer operation. Bez had escaped punishment by dropping dead two months previously. If French football wasn’t lacking in characters, it certainly didn’t want for crooks either, which is well worth keeping in mind when assessing Cantona’s condemnations of the ‘milieu’ at the time. Many thought him foolish then, or never forgave his breaking the prevalent rule of omerta: ‘play, pick up your wages and shut up’. As Bez and Tapie still have their defenders in their old fiefs, it is worth repeating that Éric was right, and not just that: he also showed bravery of a kind that was all too rare then. In fact, no other active footballer dared to speak out as Cantona did. The ‘chronic instability’ that the English public would be reminded of constantly (four clubs in three seasons from 1988 to 1991, for goodness sake!) whenever he fell foul of authority at Leeds or Manchester United should also be seen in the light of the rejection he suffered from his employers when he denounced the compromises of French football. They would seize any opportunity he would give them to cut him down to size, none more so than Bernard Tapie, the very antithesis of the father figure Éric never ceased to look for.
But Cantona still had to do his job and, in February 1989, found himself under the aegis of a man he had worshipped as a child; for Couécou, whatever his faults may be, had been an abrasive but prolific forward for Marseille in the 1970–71 and 1971–72 seasons, in which OM had won the championship (he was also a member of the FC Nantes team which took the title in 1972–73, making it three titles in a row for himself). That he had won only one cap with Les Bleus, and that in 1967 against Luxembourg, was a mystery to the habitués of the Vélodrome, of which Éric’s father Albert was one. As a manager, though, Couécou was at best unproven. One typical admission of his was: ‘I have no tactics.’
He wouldn’t last long – four months. Nobody would have in the mess that Bordeaux had created for themselves. The more Tapie needled Bez (which he did incessantly), the more erratic and vindictive the Bordeaux chairman’s behaviour became. In the summer of 1986, OM had convinced Alain Giresse, a one-club man if ever there was one, to leave Bordeaux’s Parc Lescure for the Vélodrome. No other player had exerted a more blessed influence on Bordeaux’s game throughout the glory years of the Jacquet regime than he, and, at the age of thirty-four, the pint-sized playmaker could still dictate the play with his vision and the sublime range of his passing. Bez, however, recruited no less than three attacking midfielders of great promise, who would compete directly with the adored ‘Gigi’ for a place in the starting eleven: Jean-Marc Ferreri, Philippe Vercruysse and José Touré. Giresse, who had been at Bordeaux since 1970, was heartbroken, but felt he had to leave before he was pushed aside. One factor proved decisive. Michel Hidalgo, the national side’s manager, had been named Marseille’s sports director immediately after the 1986 World Cup. The international rejoined his mentor, sending Bez into an incontrollable fury; and when the ‘traitor’ came back to visit his former club, in March 1987, his name was replaced in the match programme with a question mark. Far worse, express orders were given from above to hack him from the first blow of the whistle. His man-marker, Gemot Rohr, was dismissed as early as the 22nd minute. Bez couldn’t care less. He had made his point. He then decided to bring Giresse back into the family in the role of sporting director when Jacquet was fired – a position the player accepted. And Claude Bez was the man who would now sign Cantona’s pay cheques. Éric had jumped from the frying-pan into a furnace.
Tapie’s reasoning in setting a loan deal in motion made sense. If Cantona was the ‘basket case’ Bez had referred to, Marseille’s boss could do worse than adding a rotten apple to his biggest rivals’ already festering bushel. If – as OM’s technical staff and his teammates believed – Éric only needed to cool down for a few months, a straight sale couldn’t be envisaged: he was far too precious for that. But the manner in which an agreement was reached between the two clubs still defied belief. On the Monday, Éric had been brought back in Gili’s group, and was supposed to play for Marseille against Laval at the weekend. On Tuesday night, Cantona was on a flight to Bordeaux, where he was welcomed by another ‘child of Les Caillols’, Jean Tigana. On Wednesday, he was training with Couécou’s squad for the first time. On Saturday 18 February 1989, Cantona played his first game for the Girondins, a 2–3 defeat at Strasbourg.
During the warm-up, a few spectators shouted, ‘Cantona, pourri [scum]!’ at him; all of them booed his name when it was announced on the tannoy; and some sang, ‘Your shirt, Cantona!’ They could abuse him as much as they wanted to: Bordeaux lost, but Éric was magnificent, in France Football’s report, the ‘maestro at the heart of a team of stars’: Jean-Marc Ferreri, Clive Allen and Yannick Stopyra were in the Girondins’ line-up, the criminally underused Enzo Scifo on the bench, while a young Basque left-back still named Vincent Lizarazu, the future ‘Bizente’, world and European champion, crossed the ball that Éric volleyed for his side’s first goal. The names of Jean Tigana and Jesper Olsen could be added to the list. What an almighty waste.
The three-and-a-half months Éric spent at Bordeaux, the 1,110 minutes of football he played there, the six goals he scored (twice as many as in his first season with Leeds) are not even alluded to in the autobiography he lent his name to in 1993. When you look at the list of ‘past notable players’ the club has posted on its website, his name is not deemed to be worth a mention. But Éric didn’t sleepwalk to the end of the 1989–90 season. He missed training only once – on the morning he found his beloved dog Balrine dying of a seizure on his balcony. This was on 8 May, a bank holiday in France, and no vet could be found. But a distraught Éric was still at the afternoon session held at the luxurious Château du Haillan complex.
His teammates appreciated him, and would have liked him to stay beyond the end of the season. Clive Allen, whose excellent statistics during that campaign had a lot to do with the assists he got from Cantona, told reporters how Éric ‘brings us his flair, his inspiration, the quality of his passing. He’s already the conductor of our orchestra, and when we know each other better, he’ll be an even greater asset for the club.’ Couécou spoke of his rec
ruit’s ‘huge influence on the team’. French fans had made their minds up, though. Cantona was there to be baited, regardless of his performance, giving weight to Michel Hidalgo’s sombre prognosis that ‘Éric Cantona’s career in France [was] probably over’, thanks to the same crowds who had been jumping out of their armchairs when, ten months earlier, Éric’s two goals had taken the French Espoirs to a European final.
Proof of that disaffection was given on 25 February, when Bordeaux were eliminated from the French Cup by second division Beauvais. Cantona had been superb throughout the game, and could not be held responsible for the score being tied at 1–1 at the end of extra time. But he was one of two Bordeaux players to miss his penalty kick. He had tried a ‘Panenka’ with a cheeky chip down the middle but the Beauvais goalkeeper Eddy Caullery stood his ground and saved the shot. Cue boos, whistles, insults. Alain Giresse confessed his helplessness: ‘He’s blamed for everything and anything. He’s an exutory. Maybe that’s how people keep themselves warm?’ Gigi left the journalists with these words: ‘Why, we can talk about it as much as we want, it won’t change a thing’.’
Cantona bore this admittedly well-paid walk to Calvary with commendable dignity and professionalism. He didn’t demur when Couécou switched him from a centre-forward position to the role of playmaker, before changing his mind again. Bordeaux slowly, painfully, climbed up the table. By mid-April, they had reached ninth position in the championnat, after a splendid 4–1 victory over Metz, in which Éric was given a perfect 5 out of 5 by watching reporters. When his club faltered, as it did at Monaco (2–4) exactly a month later, on 12 May, he still shone, smothering the ball on his chest before hitting it on the turn with his right foot, bringing the score to 2–3, and being chosen as his side’s best performer – 4 out of 5 this time. He cared. Few others did.
Cantona: The Rebel Who Would Be King Page 12