Cantona: The Rebel Who Would Be King

by Philippe Auclair

  By the end of January 1991, Éric was ready to claim back a spot in the Marseillais starting eleven. In the 73rd minute of a routine demolition of FC Nantes (final score: 6–0), Goethals waved him on. On 1 February, he was given half an hour to jog around in a low-key 1–1 draw at Bordeaux. A week later, OM won 1–0 at PSG, without Cantona; he was back on the 23rd of the month (0–0 against Cannes); and was out again when OM beat Arsène Wenger’s Monaco 1–0 on 1 March. To some footballers, the bench is purgatory. To Cantona it was hell itself.

  Goethals was toying with Cantona, while Tapie contentedly smoked his cigar in the background. The other players found themselves in an impossible situation, ‘between the hammer and the anvil’, as the French expression goes. A full-scale rebellion was unlikely. Too many had too much to lose by siding openly with the outcast, even if, as Bernard Pardo insists, ‘Éric was never ostracized from the squad by his fellow pros.’ He added: ‘Maybe, at the end of the day, it was for the better. If he hadn’t imposed himself at OM, I am not so sure that he would have done so well in England.’ It was a moot point at the time, to say the least. Goethals, for all his many flaws, knew how to organize the magnificent collection of talents put at his disposal. But it is hard to disagree with Olmeta when he says that ‘with Éric, Marseille would have won the European Cup that year. To cut him out of the team was a lamentable thing to do . . . When I think of the final in Bari [OM were held 0–0 by Red Star Belgrade and lost on penalties], and what he could have done for us that day . . . lamentable is the word.’

  What OM would miss was highlighted by the consistent quality of Cantona’s performances for the French national team, of which he remained an essential cog. While Goethals was – at best – consigning him to the bench, Platini exploited Éric’s versatility with great success, deploying him in a more withdrawn role in which he proved just as efficient as he had been as the spearhead of France’s attack. Spain, the most dangerous of their opponents in the race for a qualifying spot at Euro 92, were dispatched 3–1 on 20 February, Cantona playing the full 90 minutes, as he did again six weeks later, when Albania were torn apart 5–0 at the Parc des Princes. France now headed their group with a perfect eight points out of eight. In the meantime, his Marseillais career had effectively been brought to an acrimonious end. The media had another ‘Cantona affair’ to report.

  Incensed at being ‘forgotten’ for a crucial European Cup quarterfinal against AC Milan, Cantona let Goethals know of his frustration and anger. He had demonstrated his fitness with Les Bleus, who now ranked among the very best teams on the Continent. What is more, his club manager was denying him the right to show that his partnership with Jean-Pierre Papin, so effective at international level, could benefit Marseille as well. But Goethals would have none of it. ‘He refused to be on the bench,’ he said. ‘I don’t care if he’s on the bench or not . . . He doesn’t care whether he’s on the bench, so he won’t play in Milan . . . I don’t know how to use him against Milan. These are technical decisions. Full stop.’ Goethals’s disingenuity was plain for all to see. ‘Technical decisions’? What technical decisions? Cantona was not just out of favour. He had to be humiliated, made to grovel. One week later, with a 1–1 draw in the bag, the Belgian manager carried on in the same vein. ‘When a player comes to me and says: “I don’t want to be on the bench, ever,”’ he said, ‘I can tell you, it’s finished! Whoever you are, it’s over!’

  So Cantona was called to plead for forgiveness in front of the board; that is, Bernard Tapie and his yes-men. It must have cost him a great deal, but he complied, and asked to be ‘put at the disposal of the group’ again. Goethals threw him a couple of bones. A place in the starting line-up at St Étienne on 16 March, where Éric scored his side’s only goal (1–1), and a walk-on part in a 0–0 draw versus Sochaux the following weekend. Then the carpet was whisked from under his feet one more time, and this time for good. Milan were beaten 1–0 at the Vélodrome in a farcical encounter: the stadium’s floodlights failed in the 88th minute of the game, and the rossoneri refused to return to the field when power had been restored. UEFA awarded Marseille a 3–0 victory as a result. Cantona was nowhere to be seen. Neither was he when Strasbourg were crushed 4–1 in the French Cup. Or Dijon pushed aside 3–0 in the same competition, or Nancy atomized 6–2 on 12 April in the league.

  The cruel crowd of the Vélodrome turned against the pariah. A few months previously, they had been singing ‘Canto! Canto!’ and now . . . ‘They worshipped him,’ Olmeta told me, ‘but that’s the nature of French supporters. In France, a player is a piece of meat. People chew them up and spit them out.’ Crucially, Tapie had the local pressmen eating out of his hand. The champagne they were offered on the Phocéa went to their heads. There could only be one side to the Cantona story. In a nutshell: disgruntled player, successful manager, visionary chairman. There, you have it. Marseille won without Éric, Éric must be wrong.

  The national dailies showed more understanding, which wasn’t difficult. Cantona, who had kept a very low profile since he had been ‘spat out’ by his club, finally opened up in mid-April to L’Équipe. He needed to be trusted, he said, he wanted to be treated like a man first, a footballer second, he craved respect as a human being – and he was getting none of these things. ‘I am sensitive,’ he had said while at Montpellier. ‘I need to feel warmth around me to be efficient in my job. I will not change.’ He hadn’t. He was not courting controversy, merely issuing a plea for understanding. For the first time in his life, he was losing heart, ‘like a child who’s been dreaming, and sees this dream taken away from him’, as Olmeta put it to me.

  Goethals ignored him. Marseille won surprisingly easily in Moscow, where Spartak were routed 3–0 in the semi-finals of the European Cup. Éric hadn’t even been on the plane to the USSR, nor did he figure on the bench when the Soviet champions were beaten 1–0 in the return leg. OM were easing towards a third consecutive title in the championnat, and Tapie revelled in the plaudits he was receiving for his all-conquering team. French football, which had invented European competitions,16 hungered for international recognition to such an extent that Tapie’s shortcomings could be airbrushed in the name of expediency. PSG folded in the Cup (2–0 to Marseille), and Cantona’s absence went unnoticed in the Te Deum which the media sang in near unison. Further Cup wins against Nantes and second division Rodez saw OM through to the final in June. A 1–0 victory over Auxerre ensured that the championship trophy stayed at the Vélodrome – then it was time to prepare for the coronation proper, in Europe this time. The crown was the 8-kilo silver trophy which the Spanish call La Orejona (‘the big-eared cup’). Bari, at the top of Italy’s boot heel, had been chosen as the venue to hold the final of the competition on 29 May, which would pit OM against rank outsiders Red Star Belgrade. Éric was invited to attend – but as a spectator only. Not unsurprisingly, he chose to remain at home, and watched a dreary game surrounded by his family. The Yugoslav side boasted a magnificently balanced midfield (the names roll off the tongue of any connaisseur: Jugovi, Mihaijlovi, Prosineki, Savievi) and possessed in Darko Panev one of the greatest strikers of his generation, but opted to channel this exceptional talent towards destroying Marseille’s football rather than expressing their own. They rode their luck to reach a penalty shoot-out in which OM’s world-renowned stars, deflated by their failure to engineer the expected triumph, would present Red Star with the trophy on a plate. This is precisely what they did that night, with arguably their most creative player 2,000 miles away, which is as close as he would ever get to lifting the ‘Big Cup’ in his entire career.

  Ten days later, Marseille missed another appointment with what Tapie believed to be their destiny. Monaco prevailed 1–0 in the final game of the season, and it was Arsène Wenger, not Raymond Goethals, who left the Parc des Princes with the Coupe de France. I couldn’t determine whether Éric watched the game or not. By then, he had retreated to Joseph and Lucienne’s cabanon on the Côte Bleue, having added another title to his coll
ection. He had played eighteen games in the championship, scoring eight goals along the way. Without him, OM wouldn’t have had such a bright start to the season. Without him, there mightn’t have been a medal around the neck of the teammates who said nothing when he was left to rot away for the best part of six months.

  Cantona was kicked off the stage after the opening act, but had taken on one of the lead roles until then. His reluctance to associate himself with the successes of a man he despised, and despised perhaps more than any other he’d ever met, played into the hands of those who claim that he ‘failed’ at Marseille. His name has all but been erased from the club’s history; that he himself wouldn’t wish it to be different doesn’t mean that his critics’ verdict is fair.

  ‘Me, I don’t give a toss whether I’m playing for Marseille [or not],’ he said in 2007. ‘What I love is the game. There are people who want to win at any price, because their pleasure is not in the winning itself, but in showing off after the victory. My pleasure is in the moment. I’ve never understood that some people could be proud of winning after having cheated.’

  Cantona may have been many things, not all of them laudable. But a cheat? Never.

  A departure from OM was now a certainty, with Lyon and PSG two possible destinations. But neither could satisfy Éric, who had been suffocating in the goldfish bowl of Marseille. He would go where he could breathe again, as far away from the noxious environment of football as possible, but without endangering his place in the national team, the only place he felt he could play the game as it ought to be played. Unsurprisingly, he chose to listen to his heart, and made a choice that was simultaneously logical and disastrous.

  Upon leaving Montpellier, Michel Mézy had taken over the ailing club of his home town, Nîmes Olympique, which had spent the previous decade in the second division. Mézy, the Crocodiles’ key player in their golden age – the early 1970s, when they twice took part in the UEFA Cup – proved an astute manager in his first season at the newly built Stade des Costières. The Nîmois finished the 1990–91 campaign as champions of division 2A, which gave them promotion back to the elite. Mézy had achieved this success with largely homegrown talent, but knew he needed reinforcements if Nîmes were to retain their status, and naturally turned to some of the players he had won the French Cup with when at Montpellier. Éric was the first name on his list. Once he had secured him, Mézy contacted William Ayache and Jean-Claude Lemoult, who accepted his offer, while another Marseille outcast, Philippe Vercruysse, followed Cantona to the ancient Roman city.

  Nîmes clearly had no chance to challenge for major honours, but honours were not paramount in Éric’s mind at the time. He had just won a bauble that meant nothing to him. He craved fresh air, he longed for football played without compromise, and Nîmes could provide him with both. Moreover, it held other significant attractions. As Didier Fèvre put it to me, ‘Canto liked the louche appeal of that place.’ Nestled between the Mediterranean Sea and the hills of the Cévennes, this medium-sized town punched well above its weight, not least because of the efforts of its charismatic mayor (a role which, in France, combines the power of a council leader and the prestige of a lord mayor) and MP, Jean Bousquet, the owner of the Cacharel fashion house, with whom Éric felt an immediate affinity. Nîmes’ past could be felt at every corner of its stark, sun-drenched streets. The Tour Magne, the Maison Carrée, the Temple of Diana – no other French city boasted such an astonishingly well-preserved architectural heritage from the time of the Caesars. The jewel in that crown was the Arânes de Nîmes, built in the first century AD, in which aficionados gathered in their thousands to watch the ferias, the corridas on horseback of which Cantona was a devoted follower.17 Bousquet had also invested considerable funds into a number of cultural initiatives, which had made Nîmes a leading centre of the contemporary arts scene in the south of France. Cantona could tick all the boxes on his wishlist.

  Relating to the Nîmois was easy for Éric; like him, they were both exuberant and reserved, their natural warmth still checked by the rigours of Calvinism. In fact, when the football club had been created in 1901 under the name of Sporting Club Nîmois, its founder, Henri Monnier, had specified that only Protestants could wear its colours; the adoption of professionalism in the mid-1930s had caused much hand-wringing among the traditionalists, who feared the club might lose its God-fearing identity (which it did, but without altering many idiosyncrasies which can be felt to this day). Cantona sought to consummate his divorce from everything Marseille now represented for him; Nîmes, with its sparse crowds, humble ambitions and kind-hearted manager, could never compete with OM on equal terms, but this suited Éric to the hilt.

  Goethals had mocked him; Tapie had suggested he should be sent to a psychiatric hospital. Mézy said: ‘As a man, Éric has never disappointed me . . . as a player, he hasn’t got the right to! But I’ll always be here to support him.’ Convincing Cantona to join the club had been easy. ‘Maybe it is because he identifies himself so strongly with Nîmes,’ Mézy explained, ‘which is a passionate city, with passionate people.’ He would give Éric ‘the means to express himself fully and freely; he will have more responsabilities within the team than he’s ever had before and will have to be an example to follow for our youngsters.’ This was said without the least trace of irony – which is precisely how Cantona wanted it to be.

  Money was a problem, as Éric wouldn’t come cheap. Tapie asked for FF10m; fortunately, the club’s chairman and the mayor of the city were one and the same person, Jean Bousquet, who released public funds to finance the acquisition of the player (again, entirely legitimate at the time). This arrangement did no favours to Cantona, whose purchase quickly became a political hot potato. The flamboyant Bousquet didn’t want for enemies, who seized upon this opportunity to ask their electorate whether it was sensible to pay a fortune for a footballer when cash was needed to improve the city’s sewage system. Should success prove elusive, Éric would be the first to feel the backlash.

  Despite the controversy, the deal went through, and on 27 July Nîmes’s new skipper made his debut at home, having missed the season’s first game because of a slight knee injury. Les Crocodiles had drawn at Sochaux (1–1), and drew again – 2–2 against Toulouse – in front of little more than 10,000 paying spectators. Michel Platini had taken a seat in the stands, and left the ground a reassured man. Éric had coolly dispatched a penalty, looked fit and sharp, and pronounced himself ‘fully satisfied’ with his young team. He wouldn’t be ‘satisfied’ for long. Two defeats and two 0–0 draws followed, in which Nîmes had created hardly any chances, and failed to score on each occasion. When they finally did, it was in a 4–2 drubbing by OM, of all clubs, a match Cantona missed because of a thigh injury which kept him out of competitive football for almost a month, from 17 August to mid-September. Nîmes now occupied 19th place (out of 20) in le championnat, which many believed was their rightful position.

  Platini never lost faith in Cantona throughout this dreadful summer, and invited him to join the national squad for a crucial European qualifier against Czechoslovakia on 4 September, which France won 2–1 in some style, thanks to a magnificent brace by Papin. Platini’s gesture touched Cantona a great deal. ‘An international player is also a man,’ he said, ‘and, psychologically, it’s comforting to know you haven’t been forgotten, especially when you’re not playing.’

  Nîmes finally woke up in the eighth league game of the season. Cannes, for whom a certain Zinédine Zidane – then 19 years of age – was playing, were beaten 2–1. Still Cantona-less, Mézy’s players fought out a precious 3–2 victory in Nancy. Fine results both, but not the kind that would stop tongues wagging in the provincial town. Nîmes, it seemed, were doing better without their star player – the striker who didn’t strike, and who failed to do so again on his return when Le Havre were added to their victims (1–0) on 14 September.

  When his team went through a purple patch of sorts in the autumn, remaining undefeated until late October,
few attributed the club’s newfound confidence to the influence of its skipper. In fact, Éric applied himself to the task of captaining a group of unproven youngsters with great diligence, despite his reluctance to take on the mantle of leader, for rousing speeches meant little to him. You only used your voice when you had failed to share information and feelings in a different, more profound way – instinctively, by exchanging a look, or by passing a ball.

  Listen to Cantona speak. His delivery is halting, almost stuttering, in French as in English. He’ll stop mid-sentence, swallow, pause again – unless he’s acting, of course. What will eventually come out will read wonderfully off the page, but were you to transcribe faithfully what he said, the punctuation mark you’d use most often would be ‘. . .’, as if verbal expression were an obstacle to communication. I’m wondering: for him, are poets the blessed few who have managed to go ‘beyond words’, something he was incapable of? Can it be what he admires so in them?

  Cantona didn’t lead by giving orders, but by example. He ran, and ran, and ran. He ‘drenched the jersey’, as the French say. This most selfless of egotists genuinely couldn’t care less if another player came up with the goals. (‘If I have a 49 per cent chance of scoring, against my teammate’s 51 per cent, I’ll pass the ball to him. That’s normal.’) Nîmes climbed up the table, at one stage coming within seven points of leaders Marseille, when Éric’s penalty (his second and last goal for Les Crocodiles, for whom he never scored from open play) gave them a 1–0 win over Lille on 19 October. Michel Mézy had by now taken over from Bousquet as chairman of the Olympique, and France had won 2–1 in Spain (with Éric) and guaranteed Les Bleus’ presence at the forthcoming European Championship of Nations, with seven wins in seven games in the qualification phase.