The ninety minutes of that goalless draw between England and France must rank among the most tedious ever suffered by the fans of both teams. Platini asked his veteran midfielder Luis Fernandez to drop so deep that Les Bleus took the shape of an inverted pyramid, a grim 5-3-2 in which Cantona and Papin, with no support to speak of, watched the ball being tackled to and fro in midfield by the likes of Carlton Palmer and Didier Deschamps. Come the end of the most depressing anticlimax of the competition, Graham Taylor’s and Michel Platini’s teams found themselves with two points from two games – in other words, perilously close to the elimination their displays so far merited. And to every neutral’s satisfaction, they exited the tournament three days later, Sweden taking care of England by 2 goals to 1 and Denmark, astonishingly, seeing off France by an identical score-line. No French or English player featured in the Group 1 XI selected by the French press after three games. Cantona? Not a single goal. No assist. His only contribution of note had been in France’s equalizer against Denmark, when his cross from the right was controlled, then backheeled by Jean-Philippe Durand for the on-rushing Papin. A few hours after their defeat, a lugubrious French team boarded a private charter plane and left Sweden in silence.
What on earth could have gone so disastrously wrong? The individual qualities of the players were not in doubt. A number of them had stepped up from Marc Bourrier’s successful Espoirs (though not Stéphane Paille, by then marooned in Caen), Laurent Blanc among them, who now played in Serie A (with Napoli). Jean-Pierre Papin too had gone to Italy, where he counted Ruud Gullit and Franco Baresi as teammates in Milan. No less than seven of the thirteen players who had fired blanks against the English were in Bernard Tapie’s employment at all-conquering Marseille, who had just won their fourth consecutive championnat: Manuel Amoros, Basile Boli, Bernard Casoni, Jean-Philippe Durand, Franck Sauzée, Jocelyn Angioma and Didier Deschamps. OM, runners-up in the 1991 European Cup, which they would win two years later, now belonged to the pantheon of European club football. Other French teams such as Auxerre, PSG, Monaco and Bordeaux had recently featured in the latter stages of UEFA competitions. Never had French football been in such rude health at international level – as far as clubs were concerned. Awash with television money, they were able to attract the best talent available on the Continent and beyond, while retaining a strong French core. There was something incomprehensible, then, about the fear that had suddenly gripped the national team in Sweden. Platini was criticized for his timorous approach (with some justification) and for his eagerness to switch systems from one game to the next (a less fair charge, as tactical adaptability had been long been a strength of Les Bleus). Many also suspected that the dressing-room unity made much of beforehand by Cantona among others was a façade, and that deep faultlines ran within the camp, which was dominated – at least numerically – by Marseille players. Éric probably sensed them more acutely than any other, but only alluded to them much later on and then rather obliquely: he was aware that France’s failure was partly to be blamed on himself.
Some individuals he found difficult to relate to, particularly those who played for his former club Marseille. Reminiscing in 2007, he had damning words for Didier Deschamps in particular. ‘[He] is not a man,’ he said, ‘and the gravest thing is that there are guys who’ve won beside them [a ‘them’ by which Éric made clear he meant Didier Deschamps and Marcel Desailly] who despise them as much as I do.’ When L’Équipe Magazine pressed for more detail, Cantona replied, ‘I don’t hold anything against them. To each his own.’ Then: ‘Honestly, would these people save you if you were drowning?’
Éric could hold a grudge, as we know, but why would he focus his anger on someone – Deschamps – who had only arrived at OM after he himself had left for Nîmes? DD, or Dédé, represented everything that jarred with Cantona’s belief in the primacy of self-expression on the football field. Deschamps seldom ventured beyond the halfway line, and revelled in the functionality of his own role. It was easy, not to say convenient, to feel that he had ultimately placed the game at the service of his career. That he was an apparatchik, a civil servant looking for promotion after promotion, in short, a water-carrier (porteur d’eau). This expression was in common usage in French football parlance before Cantona made it his own a few years later, but it only acquired its derogatory connotation once Éric had directed it at Deschamps.24 That the holding midfielder was remarkably good at what he did, and won everything a footballer of his day and age could have won, including the Champions League, European Championships and World Cup titles that all eluded Éric, undoubtedly struck him as an injustice. But there may have been another, simpler explanation for the dislike that Cantona expressed in such forceful terms over the years. At the time of Euro 92, Deschamps was only twenty-three and keenly aware of the seniority of other squad members, Cantona among them. The problems would arise later, and would only be proposed as an explanation for the 1992 failure in hindsight, when Aimé Jacquet, who enjoyed a close relationship with his defensive midfielder, made Deschamps his captain in 1995. This was little over three months after Éric had been stripped of the armband, in the wake of the infamous Crystal Palace ‘kung-fu kick’. Jealousy there may have been at the usurper’s elevation, as well as a feeling – shared by many Cantona supporters – that Deschamps actively campaigned against Éric’s reinstatement to the national team once he’d served his ban, and deprived him of a chance to take part in the 1996 European Championships and the 1998 World Cup. DD vehemently denied that this was the case, and, in the view of what would happen in January 1996 (the time of Éric’s second ‘suicide’, as we’ll see), if he’d tried to undermine Cantona’s position within the French camp, he’d failed. When I contacted him to get his side of the story, his reply was courteous but firm: he had no wish to revisit that part of their common past. Many of the dark corners in Cantona’s career become even darker when you try to shine a light on them.
The unravelling of France’s aspirations in Sweden is only alluded to in Cantona’s autobiography. All that can be found is an eight-line paragraph which lists ‘bad luck’ and ‘inexperience’ as reasons for the desperately poor performances of Platini’s team. Neither explanation holds water. Les Bleus created very few chances, and were punished for their timidity; referees had officiated fairly; no injuries had disrupted the team’s preparation; and it was the same group of players who had torn through the opposition all through the qualification phase. Éric must have realized that Platini had failed to galvanize his charges when it most mattered, but couldn’t bring himself to admit that responsibility could be laid at his manager’s door. How could he condemn the ‘big brother’ who had shown so much faith in him when everyone else had abandoned any hope of a future for Cantona? The gratitude and loyalty he felt towards his saviour forbade him to side with those who, quite reasonably, believed that Platini should resign his position. And when the time came for the manager to step down later in the summer, Éric would make himself a target for ridicule with one of the most quixotic decisions of his whole career. He announced his retirement from international football at the age of twenty-six, and was fortunate that no one was prepared to take his words seriously.
Éric and Isabelle could only enjoy a few weeks’ rest away from football before the Leeds squad set off to Ireland in the penultimate week of July, a trip which passed without incident – unless some late-night high jinks can be considered ‘incidents’ in the life of a professional footballer. On one occasion, while Wilkinson slept in his Dublin hotel room, Cantona and one of his teammates broke the curfew, slid down a drainpipe in the small hours of the morning, and went in search of entertainment in the centre of the city. According to my source, their search was not unsuccessful. His integration was proceeding apace, and proving to be fun, too. Not for the first (or last time), English football in its many guises would provide Éric with a welcome break from the vicissitudes he endured serving his country.
This Irish interlude was brief, dominated b
y the news of David Rocastle’s arrival at Eiland Road. Many observers were baffled by Wilkinson’s willingness to pay £2m (twice Cantona’s transfer fee) for an attacking midfielder who had suffered a serious knee injury two seasons previously at Arsenal, and scored a goal only every nine games or so for the London club. ‘Rocky’ Rocastle, adored as he was by the Highbury crowd, had never established himself at international level. It was later felt that George Graham had exploited the midfielder’s selflessness, bravery and enthusiasm with a degree of callousness, and sacrificed the most naturally gifted player at his disposal to serve a vision of the game in which endeavour, organization and ruthlessness must prevail over fluency and skill. Rocastle’s reward had been a right knee reduced to pulp, and what amounted to a summary dismissal. Heartbroken at the idea of leaving the club he had played for since leaving school at the age of 16, the player never settled in Yorkshire.
Wilkinson saw Rocastle as a long-term replacement for Gordon Strachan, who, as it happens, would still be playing at the top level after he had passed his 40th birthday, by which time the Londoner was rotting in the Chelsea reserves, having played a single season at Eiland Road. The Leeds manager was right in one respect: far too many of his players were on the wrong side of thirty to sustain another title-chasing campaign. No team had successfully retained the trophy since Liverpool in 1983–84, and the bookmakers agreed with the pessimistic appraisals of most columnists: Arsenal, the 1989 and 1991 champions, were 9/4 favourites, ahead of Liverpool (7/2), with Manchester United and Leeds both quoted at 4/1. Wilkinson’s thin squad would also feel the strain of taking part in the European Cup, and Éric, like all around him, anxiously waited for reinforcements – which never came, with dire consequences for his relationship with the Leeds supremo.
For the time being, all was still sweetness and light in Yorkshire. The champions were fitted with new suits for the forthcoming Charity Shield, a far bigger occasion back then, and rounded off their preseason with warm-up games against Nottingham Forest, VfB Stuttgart (their future opponents in the European Cup) and the Genoan club Sampdoria in the so-called ‘Makita Tournament’. This competition, if that’s the word, was organized over a single weekend at the start of August, and was the first occasion on which the new FIFA ‘no back-pass’ rule was implemented. Éric, who only played nine minutes of Leeds’s 2–1 victory over Stuttgart, replaced the newly arrived Rocastle at the interval of the tournament’s final (against Sampdoria), and missed three decent chances before Leeds were beaten 1–0 in front of 15,000 spectators who didn’t seem to care much more than himself for the game. Two days later, he looked far sharper in a 2–0 defeat of Norway’s 1991 champions Strømsgodset IF, scoring a virtuoso goal that gave a better indication of what was to follow at Wembley, when Leeds would face FA Cup holders Liverpool in the Charity Shield.
No fewer than five Liverpool first-teamers – John Barnes, Michael Thomas, Steve McManaman, Rob Jones and Jan Molby – were missing from Graeme Souness’s squad through injury, while a full-strength Leeds United could be assembled by Wilkinson, with Cantona wearing the no. 7 shirt for the first time in a competitive match. With 26 minutes of the game played, Rod Wallace found himself in acres of space on the left wing, and had all the time in the world to cut the ball back to Éric who, from the penalty spot, drilled the ball between two Liverpool defenders, high into Grobbelaar’s net. An Ian Rush header cancelled out the advantage, but not for long: as half-time loomed, a deflection put Tony Dorigo’s free kick out of the Liverpool goalie’s reach. Dean Saunders brought the scores level in the 67th minute, only for Cantona, again, to score a sumptuous goal. He first leapt to claim a Gary McAllister free kick, the ball falling into Rod Wallace’s path in the box. The winger, by accident as much as on purpose, laid it back to the Frenchman, who thumped a glorious angled shot across Grobbelaar, and celebrated by kissing his shirt in front of delirious Leeds supporters. That was 3–2 to United – then 4–2 four minutes from time when Wallace, claiming his third assist of one of the best and most competitive Charity Shields ever staged at Wembley, chased a ball that was kept in play after bouncing off the corner flag on the left flank. His deep, floated cross found Éric, who outjumped his marker at the far post. Grobbelaar had left his line, and heading the ball beyond him was an easy task for Cantona. There was still time for a comical own goal by Gordon Strachan, who took no less than three touches to ensure Mark Wright’s shot crossed the line, but not enough to deny Leeds United the second Charity Shield in their history.
No one had scored a hat-trick in the season’s curtain-raiser since Tommy Taylor (who lost his life in the Munich air crash) helped Manchester United demolish Aston Villa 4–0 in 1957. Cantona had registered a number of firsts on that glorious summer afternoon. He was the first Frenchman to feature and score for an English club at Wembley, the first to be named man of the match in England, earning his highest-ever rating to that point in his career (9/10) in the Post; he was also the first Leeds player to score three goals in a single game in the old stadium. The significance of these achievements didn’t escape him. Could there be a greater contrast to the destruction of France in Sweden eight weeks previously? As he walked up the thiry-nine steps to Wembley’s Royal Box, the voices of tens of thousands of fans chanting his name told him that he wasn’t an exile any more.
‘In just two months in England [Éric was referring to the signing of his permanent transfer contract in May], I feel more at home than I ever did in France,’ he said. ‘Now that I have mastered the perils of driving on the wrong side of the road, I can cope with everything.’ He struggled to express how much it meant to him, a Frenchman, to have taken part in ‘such a big occasion’, but fared better when his future was discussed. ‘Right now,’ he said, ‘I’m like a singer who goes to number one in the charts but has only one hit. I can’t say I’ve arrived yet. I’ve got to go on now and prove myself every weekend and convince everyone I can play in English football. It’s a completely different style and it has been every bit as hard as I thought it would be to adapt – but I have always been convinced I could get used to it.’ He also had kind, measured, respectful words for his beaming manager, words which must, however, be understood in the context of Éric’s own appreciation of his progress. He believed that his apprenticeship had ended, and that he had earned the right to start Leeds games instead of having to wait on the bench for an hour to go by before removing his tracksuit. Moreover, as Gary McAllister assured me, the majority of his teammates were of the same opinion. ‘I must take my hat off to Howard Wilkinson for helping me to integrate,’ Éric said. ‘He could have played me after I arrived last season, but it would have been very difficult for me to get used to it. But he made me wait. He told me I had to think about the English game and observe it, study it. I have done that, and I have worked hard in pre-season training because my target now is to get a regular first-team place.’
Wilkinson concurred with the latter part of this statement. ‘The hallmark of a good player is to consistently produce the level of which he is capable, week in week out,’ he said. His cautiousness was understandable. The Charity Shield remained a glorified exhibition game, and Leeds had had their share of good fortune against a severely depleted Liverpool side. Some of Wilkinson’s words nonetheless revealed more than prudence, betraying a deep-seated suspicion of a footballer whose qualities he could see, but whom he still doubted possessed the steel necessary to achieve greatness. In his twenty years in the game, he conceded, he had never dealt with a player of comparable ability, with the exception of John Barnes and Glenn Hoddle. But he couldn’t help but add a rider to his praise. ‘Éric was always the sort of player that you would step back from signing,’ he said. ‘I knew that and people kept telling me “non, non, non” when I was looking at him. They said you couldn’t trust him. They may be right yet.’ The italics are mine, of course, but the words were Wilkinson’s; not only that: he spoke them as Leeds fans were still making their way back to Wembley Park tube station. The Yorkshi
reman’s call-a-spade-a-blooming-shovel approach had its virtues. Cantona knew where he stood in his manager’s estimation, and could accept it, but only for as long as it was obvious to him that he also had his trust. Éric’s elevation to the rank of demigod at Eiland Road jarred with Wilkinson’s team ethos.
It was all about the Frenchman as far as the Post and its readers were concerned. When their customary pre-season supplement was published on 10 August, a photograph of Éric holding the Shield aloft occupied most of its front page. ‘The best [of Cantona] is yet to come!’ proclaimed the paper. The Post was right – but the best wouldn’t come at Leeds, despite the hopes of a whole city.
The champions started their title defence with a nervous win over Wimbledon (2–1) on 15 August, with Cantona starting alongside Chapman and Wallace in an attacking set-up. He didn’t repeat his Wembley heroics, and only played a modest role in his team’s success. One of his crosses should have brought Lee Chapman a goal in the first half, but the Dons’ goalkeeper, Hans Segers, saved well from the tall centre-forward. This undistinguished performance – his seventeenth appearance for Leeds United – also saw him earn his first caution in English football for a clumsy foul on John Scales. The ‘wild man of French football’ had shown remarkable self-control until then. As Gary McAllister told me, ‘He never got in trouble with referees, really. Occasionally, we’d see he could be touchy.’ And intimidating: ‘People who don’t know Éric Cantona are always surprised by the size of the guy when they first meet him. For somebody who’s got such a lovely feel for the game of football, he’s a giant man! Six foot plus, and close to 90 kilos . . . But we didn’t see the ‘bad boy’. We were aware of some of his tackles back in France, but we never saw anything like that at Leeds United.’
Cantona: The Rebel Who Would Be King Page 24