The bizarre circumstances of his move to Bordeaux meant that, on 20 May, the day the Girondins were beaten 3–2 at home by Caen (with Cantona scoring his team’s first goal), Éric won the first major title of his career . . . as a Marseille player. It meant nothing to him. As he said later, ‘I’ve never played at Marseille. Just the beginning of two seasons.’ But he was still contracted to OM, and Tapie – who, entertaining a posse of journalists on the Phocéa, didn’t mention Éric’s name once when he talked about the forthcoming season – wouldn’t let him go for less than FF19m. Very few French clubs could afford a sum that, taking football’s peculiar rate of inflation into account, should be multiplied by ten to be compared to 2009 prices: close to £20m, a king’s ransom, when Éric’s throne would be built for a fraction of that in Manchester. One such wealthy club was the still-formidable Bordeaux, that was sucked ever deeper in a spiral of financial scandals, but clung on to its ambitions with the energy of a drowning man.
Bez had been impressed by Éric’s professionalism and tried his luck, with the player’s assent. Cantona had been in constant touch with his Espoirs teammate Stéphane Paille over a number of weeks, if not months, to discuss a future the two friends saw as a shared adventure. Both of them wanted a move away from their present club, for very different reasons: Éric wished to put as much distance as he could between the Tapie regime and himself; Stéphane – the reigning French player of the year, no less – believed he had outgrown FC Sochaux-Montbéliard, even if the Lionceaux (the Lion Cubs) were on their way to achieve a very creditable fourth place in the championship. They were confident that, wearing the same jersey, they could rekindle the flame that had burnt so brightly under Marc Bourrier, and agreed that the Girondins could be that club. But Tapie wouldn’t hear of it. It was one thing to get rid of a hot potato for a few months, quite another to enable his arch-enemy to field, game after game, and for heaven knows how many seasons, the striking partnership which had served the French under-21s so well and which most observers hoped would serve the seniors for years to come. Bordeaux conceded defeat.
This left Paris Saint-Germain as the only other potential suitor of the pair among the heavyweights of French football. Their urbane chairman, silver-haired Francis Borelli, who, as you will remember, had already wooed Éric in 1988, used his considerable charm to try to attract the two young men to the capital. PSG, the 1985–86 champions (under Gérard Houllier), still harboured the hope of another title at the time.11 Paille and Cantona liked Borelli, and could see that his interest in them derived from a genuine appreciation of their talent, and not from a desire to cock a snook at Bernard Tapie. But the Parisian president failed to give them guarantees about the identity of the manager who would succeed the Yugoslav Tomislav Ivi, whose contract had come to an end. Was it because he had already chosen Henri Michel, and feared that Éric would turn his nose up at the idea of working for ‘one of the most incompetent national team managers in world football’? In any case, Borelli’s advances came to nothing. Another door had been slammed shut in the faces of the two friends. Nobody could have guessed which one would suddenly open wide to welcome them: Montpellier.
6
Two brothers: Stéphane Paille and Éric Cantona.
THE VAGABOND 2:
MONTPELLIER
‘I have this passion inside that I can’t handle. It’s like a fire inside which has to get out and which you let out. Sometimes it wants to get out and do harm. I do myself harm. It worries me when I do harm, especially to others. But I can’t be what I am without these other things to my character.’
You could almost hear a collective gasp from the French footballing community when, on Sunday 28 May 1989, it was announced that Stéphane Paille and Éric Cantona had joined Montpellier-Hérault Sport Club, Stéphane on a three-year deal, Éric on a season-long loan from OM. Both the club and the players were felt to have taken a huge gamble. Despite its size – a quarter of a million inhabitants – Montpellier didn’t have a record as a sporting town. Its old football team had only played a supporting role in the years following the Second World War, and its steady decline towards amateurism and near-oblivion had been viewed with indifference by the locals. It had regained professional status in 1978 under the colourful tutelage of Louis Nicollin, universally known as ‘Loulou’, who had assumed the chairmanship four years previously; but its team still struggled to fill the tiny, creaking Stade de la Mosson despite the club’s promotion to the elite in May 1988. If one would have had to paint a picture of the Sport Club at the time, the arrival of the two celebrated internationals would have been the first brushstroke on a blank canvas.
There was still one more game to play in the championnat (in which Éric would shine, providing yet another assist for Clive Allen in a 1–1 draw at Auxerre), when Paille and Cantona had lunch with Nicollin and his sports director Michel Mézy on 22 May. Just as when Cantona was farmed out to Bordeaux, the operation was concluded with bewildering speed. A mere twenty-four hours later, all parties had finalized the small print of the contracts. Paille, in particular, had made a substantial sacrifice in order to play alongside his friend: Bayern Munich had sounded him out – but were not keen on Cantona. Fired up (blinded?) by the prospect of scoring for fun with Éric, Stéphane said ‘no’ to the German giants, and agreed to wages vastly inferior to what the Bavarian club (and quite a few others) was willing to offer him. As a player, he had reached the apex of his career at the age of twenty-four, and, tragically, didn’t realize that he, the quick-witted, quick-footed matinee idol of French football, would be shot down in mid-flight as a result of following his instinct. Cantona himself saw his salary ‘divided by two’. But, as he said, ‘Some things are worth living for. You don’t take your money to Heaven when you die.’
Nicollin was so besotted with his two young recruits – whose combined age was forty-seven – that he effectively gave them licence to run his sweet shop. Didier Fèvre was, again, a privileged witness to the surreal scenes which unfolded at the chairman’s home. ‘Stéphane was the originator of the move,’ he told me, ‘on the line of: “Either you take us both, or I’m not coming, as I have other proposals.”’ Didier boarded the plane with the two players and their agent Alain Migliaccio, who were then taken to Nicollin’s house. ‘Michel Mézy was there too,’ he recalls. ‘Éric and Stéphane recruited the team! Jacquet [now manager at Montpellier] didn’t say a word, Mézy was just saying, “Yes, that guy’s pretty good, yes, yes” . . . I’ll always remember how Stéphane called Vincent Guérin – who was then at Brest – in front of Nicollin. “Hé, Vincent, ça va? We’re in Montpellier, would you join us?” And Guérin did.’ No wonder Nicollin called Paille a ‘very determined young man’.
Since Cantona was still on OM’s books, Tapie could have nipped Nicollin’s quixotic plan in the bud; instead of which he did his utmost to encourage ‘Loulou’, reportedly telling him, ‘Go for it!’ when the Montpellier chairman showed his hand. For once, the OM boss was acting out of friendship – a little mutual back-scratching in accordance with his own idiosyncratic moral code. The French call this ‘renvoyer l’ascenseur’: to send the lift back. The previous season, Nicollin had helped Tapie by giving him one of his players – midfielder Gérard Bernardet – on loan, for nothing. This was a chance for Nanard to thank Loulou, and he took it. Tapie always had had a soft spot anyway for the (much) larger-than-life Montpellier chairman, who described himself as ‘a prick’, drank like a fish, ate as if more than his life depended on it, and had an almost poetic way with language of the more robust kind.
For once, Tapie’s and Cantona’s wishes coincided. Montpellier agreed to pay the equivalent of £300,000 in compensation to OM, while Sochaux received four times that amount for Paille. For a club like Montpellier, this represented a massive investment, on top of the huge sums which had already been siphoned out of its coffers to recruit stars like 1984 Olympic gold medal winner Daniel Xuereb, Colombian fantasista Carlos Valderrama (the most famous hairdo in wor
ld football at the time), and, as a manager, none other than Aimé Jacquet, who, as we’ve seen, had been sacked by Bordeaux just before Éric joined Girondins.12
Nicollin wasn’t coy about his ambitions for Montpellier. ‘We’ll finish in the top three,’ he predicted at the end of June, somewhat rashly. ‘With Jacquet, I thought we could build a good little “average” team, and then this crazy Tapie called me, and told me I should take Cantona and pair him with Paille. I was in Brides-les-Bains [French papers cheekily reported on the number of kilos the famously rotund chairman was losing every week at the spa], I had nothing to think about except football, and, little by little, the idea made its way . . . I came back to Montpellier, talked to Michel [Mézy], to Jacquet. We didn’t know then, but our mayor and MP, M. Fréche, was happy with this idea.’ He then assured reporters: ‘Both the boys have made an excellent impression on us from the very first time we met.’ Everything was fine, then.
Loulou was not the only one to get carried away with his coup. As Stéphane Paille told me, ‘The problem was that, immediately, it became the Paille and Cantona show. One month before the season started, every piece the papers printed about Montpellier was about us! That’s why we decided we’d stop talking to the press. It was becoming detrimental to the group. There were many other wonderful players at Montpellier, who didn’t get a mention. [Brazilian international] Julio César was a fantastic defender, for example. We knew [the focus on us] would create frictions within the team.’ It most certainly did.
In late June, however, the mood was one of wild optimism, understandably so. Éric shared it: ‘I believe in this city, in this region and in this club. And I think that Montpellier is the best place to do great things. With Stéphane, there is a connection, sensations which we have in common. This goes back to the goal against England with the Espoirs, in London. What we felt then was really strong, and we promised ourselves to live it again as soon as the chance presented itself.’
The Montpellier squad had gathered in Aix-les-Bains, at the foot of the Alps, to prepare for the next season. No fewer than four of Marc Bourrier’s heroes were there: Guérin, who hadn’t wasted any time after the phone call mentioned above, Paille, Cantona (who, curiously, turned up for training sessions in a Tottenham shirt), and the supremely elegant Laurent Blanc, who could play in any position on the field with equal grace and efficiency. Wouldn’t it be beautiful if these young men captured the country’s imagination with their club as they had done with the Espoirs? French football, hobbling from scandal to scandal, desperately looked for some kind, any kind of redemption. The Paille– Cantona brotherhood provided journalists and supporters with a promise to focus on. Most of the hype was well meant, but both players were aware of the destabilizing effect it was having on the team as a whole, and attempted to deflect as much of the media attention as they could. ‘I’d rather play pétanque [Provençal bowls] than answer your questions,’ Éric retorted to a reporter who had been chasing him. Stéphane, who had roomed with his friend for the past two weeks, was more diplomatic in his answers. ‘My role is not to “stabilize” [Cantona],’ he said. ‘I’m not his father. But I believe that it can only benefit everybody – him and me. For the moment, everything’s OK.’ On one of the rare occasions when Cantona agreed to talk to the press, his message conveyed a hint of the difficulties to come. ‘[Stéphane and I] don’t think [our relationship] is incongruous, or surprising. What we find shocking is that people talk so much about it,’ he said. ‘We’ve all got friends. I have a friend in Marseilles who is a fishmonger. That doesn’t mean he’s going to play with me. [ . . .] We get on well on the pitch, we get on well in life. That’s all. Now, the ball is the priority.’
Still, the pressure increased. St Étienne were beaten 2–1 in a warm-up match. On 6 July Montpellier disposed of FC Porto in another friendly, in a Parc des Princes where Éric was barracked from the first minute to the last. Middle finger raised, he let the Parisian crowd know his feelings. The league championship had not started, but both Cantona’s and Paille’s unease was increasingly palpable. ‘We’re upset that people talk so much about us,’ Stéphane said. ‘We fear that it’s going to ruin everything,’ Éric added. ‘I have travelled a bit; and I notice that when something works well, journalists aim to ruin it. Why should that be? Because you sell far fewer articles about trains when they arrive on time than when they come off the rails.’ Cantona could feel what was in store for them. ‘What I want people to understand is that we get on perfectly together. We have fun wearing the same kit, but we’ve got to stop talking about it. Because if people keep repeating the same thing, everybody’s eyes will be on us, and it’ll only take a mediocre game to be cut to pieces.’ Such a game hadn’t been played yet, but there was already a sense that nostalgia had proved stronger than common sense when the duo had listened to their hearts and chosen Montpellier. There could be, would be, no second ‘miracle of Highbury’.
An ankle injury prevented Éric from featuring in Montpellier’s first competitive match of the season, which his side won 4–1 against AS Cannes on 22 July, thanks in part to a brace of goals by Laurent Blanc, whom Jacquet then thought of as a number 10. Cantona also missed the next game, which proved more of a harbinger of things to come, when his side surrendered 2–0 at Mulhouse. A blip, nothing more, was the verdict given at the time. For who could have guessed what a shambles the season of all hopes would turn into? The media, predictably, made much of Éric’s comeback from injury, with headlines such as ‘The Return of Hope’ on the day he finally lined up alongside Paille on 1 August. Not for the last time, whoever wrote Éric’s scripts showed a genuine feel for drama; for his opponents were none other than Bordeaux, the club which he and Stéphane had been so close to joining less than three months previously. Truth be told, Cantona had a superb game, but his teammates, Paille included, did not. Bordeaux left the Stade de la Mosson with a 2–1 victory, and when this scoreline was repeated in the following game, against a shockingly brutal PSG, Montpellier, everyone’s outsiders for the title, found themselves last but one in the division. Éric had scored his first goal for the club that evening, but this didn’t prevent those who wished him to fail from pointing the finger at the negative influence he and Paille allegedly exerted on Jacquet’s team.
Their coach unwittingly gave ammunition to their critics by saying: ‘Our idea was to create a group, a “club” with players who come from the area. Then we had the opportunity to get Paille and Cantona . . . Can you imagine me refusing Paille or Cantona? So we changed everything! We built the team around this duo. Their presence is a bit stress-inducing . . . but it is because of them in particular that [the team is] difficult to manage.’
Jacquet was right, especially as far as Paille was concerned. Stéphane’s international career had taken off after Éric’s scathing attack on Henri Michel had made the Marseille striker a pariah in Les Bleus set-up. Paille had been selected seven times on the trot since, giving so-so performances that didn’t make the watching public forget what (or rather who) they were missing. Michel’s team had floundered dreadfully against Cyprus (1–1) in October of the previous year, a game in which the Sochaux forward had been conspicuous by his absence, and which triggered the replacement of the French manager by Michel Platini a few days later. The triple Ballon d’Or stuck with Paille, while saying quite openly that he couldn’t wait to bring Cantona back into his lineup, a move that would effectively push Stéphane to the sidelines. As of 1 July 1989, the date when Éric’s suspension would come to an end, the two spiritual brothers would be direct competitors for a place in the French team, as dropping Jean-Pierre Papin to the bench was highly unlikely. After the festival to which Cantona and JPP treated French supporters on 16 August, when they roasted Sweden 4–2 in Malmö, pairing Cantona and Paille became unthinkable.
France hadn’t won away from home for five seasons, and the Swedes were no mugs. But Cantona, who had been fasting for well over a year – he hadn’t played for his country since a 2�
��1 victory over Spain in March 1988 – seemed intent on delivering the most perfect ninety minutes of football he was capable of.
He characteristically said afterwards: ‘I didn’t miss the French team. I was following all its games, as a supporter. I was preparing for my return. That’s it: I was getting used to my return [to the team]. I hadn’t forgotten anything. I like les gens rancuniers [people who hold a grudge], it’s a form of pride. I was thinking about the day when I’d come back.’
The game’s last goal – Éric’s second of the day – summed up his contribution to what was unanimously celebrated as the beginning of a new era. His astonishing flick, fully extended, wrong-footed one of the world’s most experienced goalkeepers, Thomas Ravelli. Minutes earlier, one of his crosses, which Papin dispatched with his customary flamboyance, had prompted exclamations of ‘Genius!’ in the press box. Paille was watching this beautiful slaughter from the dugout. He didn’t know it then, but not a single cap would be added to the eight he had won to date, partly because of his best friend’s performances. Football can be a cruel game.
Paille, Blanc and Cantona flew back from Malmö in the private plane that Louis Nicollin had chartered for them. It was not a soft landing. Éric could revel in the praise that was bestowed on him. Platini gushed about the ‘talent and the character’ of the prodigal son. Henri Michel, who now assumed the function of National Technical Director of the French FA, nodded magnanimously in approval. The England manager Bobby Robson enthused about the ‘awful lot of good’ Cantona’s return had done to Les Bleus. On the other hand, the glow Éric felt dissipated in a matter of precisely seventy-two hours. Montpellier travelled to Marseille, and fell 2–0 at the Vélodrome, leaving them with a haul of just four points after six games. The over-hyped fight for the title had turned into a struggle against relegation.
Cantona: The Rebel Who Would Be King Page 13