Éric’s almost exemplary disciplinary record demonstrated his eagerness to be accepted into the fold, as did his work rate, which was in evidence again when Leeds brought a 1–1 draw back from Villa Park in the second game of the season. Wilkinson had by then opted for a policy of turnover which resulted in Rocastle, Strachan and Hodge being left out of the starting eleven. Only thus, he thought, could Leeds make the most of their slim chance to keep the championship trophy at Eiland Road. Reporters questioned the wisdom of this approach. Had not Leeds’ previous success been based on continuity? How would his squad accept the manager’s constant chopping and changing? ‘Players will have to get used to that disappointment,’ he grumbled. Wilkinson’s already perceptible doubts about his team’s qualities deepened into gloom on the occasion of Leeds’s next sortie, a stinging 4–1 defeat at Middlesbrough that marked Éric’s fourth consecutive start since his brilliant display in the Charity Shield. Cantona had been the best of a very poor bunch on Teesside, and deserved the fine consolation goal he scored late in the game. Somewhat to his surprise, Wilkinson realized that Éric could sustain a high level of performance despite the strenuous schedule he was subjected to. The visit of Tottenham would be his fourth game in ten days and, by all accounts, the high watermark of his nine months in Yorkshire.
The game was played late in the evening, on Tuesday 25 August, and the floodlights added to the majesty of Cantona’s masterclass. Spurs were swept away from kick-off. Éric could have scored as early as the sixth minute, when his bicycle kick nearly eluded Tottenham’s ’keeper Éric Thorstvedt. It fell to Rod Wallace to open the floodgates a quarter of an hour later. Spurs panicked. Justin Edinburgh fumbled, Éric pounced, 2–0 to the hosts; then 3–0, when David Batty’s clever chip allowed Cantona to place a header into Tottenham’s net. The pattern of the game remained unchanged after the interval. Both teams had barely restarted play when Éric was on hand to show his poacher’s instinct after a goal-bound Lee Chapman header had been half-cleared by the Spurs defence. This was his second hat-trick for Leeds in less than three weeks – but also, ironically, the last of his career. Éric hadn’t quite finished with Tottenham yet, however. Put through by Batty, he squared the ball to Chapman for a training-ground tap-in.
No one was calling him ‘the King’ just yet, but the Eiland Road crowd could justifiably claim to have witnessed a coronation, and the Post published a suitably ecstatic panegyric about France’s ‘greatest entertainer since Maurice Chevalier trod the boards’, a footballer who had ‘more time than a clock when the ball comes to him’. Gary McAllister extolled his friend’s qualities in more sober terms: ‘When Éric first came, there was a suggestion that he was more of a provider than a goalscorer, but he has slung that one aside in no uncertain manner.’ Even Wilkinson allowed himself to drop his guard – by an inch or so – and added his tuppenceworth to the praise lavished on his striker ‘who feels at home now’ and ‘is coming to terms with English football’, though the Eeyoreish manager couldn’t help but qualify his judgement thus: ‘Hopefully he will make the transition complete because he has a lot to offer.’
In fairness, Wilkinson’s appreciation of Éric’s contribution may have been tainted by his frustration at having to release his striker immediately after Tottenham’s rout. Bizarrely, Cantona was to fly to Paris the very next morning to join the French national team, which was playing against Brazil that very same day. Cantona’s call-up was pointless to the point of absurdity. He could not be expected to figure in the game, and his presence in Paris could only be explained by the desire of new French manager Gérard Houllier25 to have the whole of his squad by his side when he took his bow. Éric reluctantly agreed to travel to France, only to change his mind at the very last minute – and change it again, after he had missed the flight he had been booked on originally. He took his seat at the Parc des Princes seconds before Careca and Bebeto kicked off, wearing a sphynx-like expression that indicated that trouble was brewing. As indeed it was.
As Leeds were to play one of the title favourites – Liverpool – over the coming weekend, Éric immediately returned to England, wondering why on earth the French FA had thought it necessary to disrupt his preparation for such a crucial encounter. He had to vent his anger somehow, and decided to do it as spectacularly as he could, by granting an interview to Erik Bielderman of L’Équipe. Fortunately for him, this interview was never published, at least not in its original form. As we know, Cantona had been dismayed by Michel Platini’s removal from the position of national manager after the debacle of Euro 92 (‘Platini has gone, and the disappointment of what happened in Sweden was particularly difficult to accept’), so much so that he told Bielderman that he would rather make himself unavailable for selection than associate himself with those who (in his opinion) had masterminded the coup. ‘Take your pen and write,’ he told Erik, pompously enunciating every syllable like a schoolteacher addressing a class of five-year-olds, ‘“E-ric Can-to-na says: ‘I’m through with Les Bleus.’”’ A shocked Bielderman retired to his hotel room to file the story. This was dynamite. L’Équipe would be flying off the shelves with a headline like this one. But Erik could not bring himself to do it. He called Cantona and tried to make him understand what the repercussions of his decision would be. A long pause ensued. Then Éric broke the silence. ‘Take your pen, and write: ‘“E-ric Can-to-na says: ‘I’m through with Les Bleus . . . for the time being.’”’ The old Cantona was back, but as a comedian this time. Maybe the Post had been right to liken him to Maurice Chevalier after all?
Houllier himself had some explaining to do. Éric’s ‘retirement’ had been taken with a large pinch of salt in France. His newfound popularity there was based on his success in England, naturally, but also on the general public’s appreciation of Cantona’s public gesture of loyalty towards Platini. Its very awkwardness highlighted its sincerity; in short, France was at last warming to the rebel, which put the new national manager in a delicate situation, as Houllier himself held his ‘difficult’ player in great esteem. ‘Éric is mentally tired,’ he said, which was the truth. As Cantona explained, ‘Things are different [in England]. I play in a different team, in a different context. With the French team, I am someone else. At Leeds, I am English in my soul, whereas when I am in France, my memories take over. I’ve talked it over with Gérard [note the use of Houllier’s first name – no such affection was ever shown for ‘Monsieur Wilkinson’]. It would be easy to play badly [for France]. No, I’m really not sure I can give 100 per cent of myself for my country [in the circumstances].’ France’s loss should be Leeds’ gain, at least in theory. And for a while it was.
Cantona excelled against Liverpool (2–2, on 29 August), drawing three superb saves from a young David James, and bettered that display with a brace of goals at Oldham (2–2 again) three days later, Leeds’ sixth league game in eighteen days. The sustained quality of his performances made a return to the bench unthinkable to anyone: anyone, that is, but Howard Wilkinson, who could see his side sliding towards mid-table, but couldn’t quite fathom why this was, still less how to remedy it. Leeds were then soundly beaten at Old Trafford (0–2, on 6 September), and Aston Villa held them 1–1 at home a week later. Éric was still playing, coming off the bench to have a superb game in Manchester – a bicycle kick nearly brought him one of the finest goals of his entire career – but the very fact he stood out perversely worked against him in his manager’s mind. The togetherness of his squad was questioned in the media, who made unflattering comparisons between the ‘commando spirit’ shown during the previous season with the uncertainties of the present one. The point wasn’t lost on Wilkinson, whose hesitant acceptance of Cantona’s idiosyncrasies hardened into distrust of the striker who had scored nine goals in as many games since that glorious afternoon at Wembley.
The camel’s back started to break for good on 16 September, when Leeds surrendered 3–0 in Stuttgart. This wasn’t the triumphant return to the European Cup a whole city had been hoping f
or, seventeen years after their club’s undeserved loss to another German club – Bayern Munich – in that competition’s final. The circumstances of the rift which ensued between player and manager epitomized their incapacity to communicate. Éric first told Wilkinson that a hamstring injury would prevent him from taking any further part in that game, before assuring his bench that he had recovered. He still felt some discomfort, but, as his team’s top goalscorer, was willing to play through the pain, as his departure from the pitch would not only weaken Leeds’s attacking options, but also provide encouragement to their opponents.
Unfortunately, one of his trademark cross-field passes was intercepted; Stuttgart counter-attacked and scored their opening goal. Two more followed without answer. Leeds’ prospects were grim: no English side had ever recovered from a three-goal deficit in Europe. For Wilkinson, Cantona had committed the cardinal sin of making his team pay for an individual error of judgement. Éric himself believed he had acted in the best interests of his club. The truth lay somewhere in between, but neither man had it in him to accept it. It didn’t help that Cantona’s injury prevented him from taking part in Leeds’s next two games, a colourless draw at Southampton (1–1) and an anodyne 4–1 victory over lower-division Scunthorpe in the League Cup. The adulation that the fans lavished on Éric didn’t assuage his coach’s discontent; in fact, it played to Wilkinson’s increasing wariness of his striker. For the manager’s allies, the supporters were deluded; they were forgetting that the title they had craved for nearly two decades had been won by harnessing ‘traditional’ British virtues (doggedness, stamina, aggression and so on), not thanks to the exotic tricks and flicks of a Continental import. But Wilkinson was also aware that, should he decide not to call on Cantona, he would incur the wrath of an uncomprehending crowd – another irritant for the proud Yorkshireman.
In fairness, Wilkinson’s head was still ruling his heart at this stage, and Éric rejoined the squad as soon as he had regained fitness, to help Leeds gain their first victory in six games, against Everton on 26 September (2–0). Four days later, it was Stuttgart’s turn to visit Eiland Road, in a game that was billed as ‘Mission Impossible’ by the national press. This pessimism was shared by the Leeds fans: only 20,457 of them passed the turnstiles, far less than the stadium could contain; there couldn’t be a starker indication of their disenchantment with the team they had feted in May. But the doom-mongers missed an unforgettable night. If the 5–0 win over Spurs had marked Cantona’s most accomplished display for Leeds, this 4–1 triumph over the German champions rivalled – and not just for the intensity of the drama – the greatest displays of the Revie era. No fire burnt more brightly than Gary McAllister’s at the heart of this collective incandescence. Within 15 minutes of kick-off, the Scottish midfielder had produced three fizzing strikes at goal. Stuttgart held on as best they could until two minutes later, when Cantona and Strachan combined to set up Gary Speed, whose sweet left-foot volley found the target. They couldn’t do it, could they? But just as belief started to swell the crowd’s hearts, Andreas Buck equalized in the 34th minute. The away-goals rule meant that Leeds would have to score four more to qualify, and over a third of the game had already been played. But Strachan and his teammates carried on battering the Stuttgart defence, and were rewarded with a penalty shortly before half-time. Gary McAllister stepped up to the spot and made it 2–1. A host of chances had come and gone for Leeds when they doubled their advantage in the 66th minute; Strachan, again, lofted the ball towards Éric, whose looping shot could only be deflected into the net by defender Gunther Schafer. Ten minutes before the final whistle, Lee Chapman, who had led the line with even more vigour and purpose than usual, surged at the near post and beat the German ’keeper with a header. One more goal and Leeds, incredibly, would be through.
But Stuttgart, overpowered as they had been for so long, regrouped and were not breached again. And as the curtain fell on one of the greatest games ever played by an English side in Europe, the Germans collapsed in a heap on the Eiland Road turf. Buck’s goal had sent them to the next round. A defiant Gordon Strachan told a Post journalist: ‘You can talk all you like about Italian and Spanish football, but there is no better spectacle than a British team, going at it as we did against Stuttgart.’ The bittersweet chord of gallant failure strikes the British heart more poignantly than any other, of course, but Strachan wasn’t fooling anyone with his noble speech. Wilkinson was truer to the emotions felt by his players when he said: ‘Most of them would wake up feeling that their stomach was eight feet deep and that they had a pain somewhere near the bottom of it.’
Leeds were out – or so they thought until the following morning, when the phone rang in the Post’s office. A German voice asked to be put through to someone on the sports desk of the paper. Their football correspondent Don Warters picked up the phone and very nearly dropped it when he heard what the caller, a journalist himself, had to say. Fans of a rival German club had watched the game on television and spotted that Stuttgart’s coach, Christoph Daum, had fielded four ‘foreign’ players in total, rather than the three then allowed by UEFA regulations. VfB could be thrown out of the tournament! This astonishing development was relayed to the club, which immediately contacted the organization’s headquarters.
UEFA hummed and hawed. They knew, as everyone did, that Daum’s mistake was not part of a sinister plan to rob Leeds of victory. His oversight could easily be explained by the chaotic nature of the game. Nonetheless, Stuttgart had derived an unfair advantage from their infringement of the rules; whether inadvertently or not should have been beside the point. But the wise men of European football decided against excluding the German club from the competition, and awarded Leeds a 3–0 win instead (the customary punishment for teams forfeiting a game). As Wilkinson’s team had been beaten by the same margin in the first leg, it would be necessary to play a third match, which UEFA wished to stage in a neutral venue: Barcelona’s Camp Nou. Leeds fans didn’t quite know whether they should feel relieved or hard done by. But by the time the decider took place on 9 October, they were too worried to bother.
Wilkinson’s exhausted team had sunk 4–2 at Ipswich four days after that splendid hurrah at Eiland Road, adding substance to the fear that his squad was too thin, and too old, to be seriously involved in more than one competition. The champions had yet to register a single victory away from home when the leaves had long turned in Roundhay Park. Drained as much by emotion as by physical exertion, Cantona saw his form dip for the first time since he had joined Leeds United. Never had he played so many games on the trot, even allowing for his injury. A return to France’s national team also beckoned. More importantly, he found it more difficult by the day to decipher Howard Wilkinson’s attitude towards him on a personal level. He still enjoyed his manager’s trust when it came to representing Leeds’ colours on the field, but could not gauge how firmly rooted this trust was from their exchanges off it.
A friend recently told me about a line he had found in an unpublished diary of novelist B. S. Johnson: ‘It’s not so much that I am thin-skinned; I have no skin at all.’ The writer’s confession could easily pass as a comment on Cantona the footballer-artist. And, as ever, Éric’s uncertainties translated into a (probably unconscious) weakening of his commitment to the club, imperceptible at first, and a degradation of his play which grew clearer as the weeks went by. There were rumours of late arrivals (and even no-shows) at training sessions, and of less than fulsome comments made by Wilkinson in private about his star player. I have been unable to ascertain whether the gossip had a basis in fact or was nothing more than extrapolation made in hindsight, once the squabble had degenerated into open conflict. Judging by Éric’s performance in Barcelona, however, Wilkinson’s frustration had more objective roots than the ill-matching words and deeds of two men.
Leeds overcame Stuttgart 2–1 in their winner-takes-all decider but, for once, Éric had been a mere passenger on someone else’s train. It fell to the unsung journeyman
Carl Shutt to deliver the blow that ensured the Yorkshire club’s passage into the next round. The eerie atmosphere in which the game was played might have accounted – at least in part – for Cantona’s ineffectual showing. Only 7,400 spectators were dotted around the gigantic arena. Cantona ‘lost himself in the empty space’, to paraphrase what he had said earlier that year. Celebrations were strangely muted back in England, as if too much energy had been exhausted in the useless victory earned nine days previously, and while all Leeds supporters can recall with tellling precision what happened on 30 September, what followed on 9 October has all but faded from their collective memory.
In an ironic reversal of the situation Éric had found himself in after Euro 92, Les Bleus brought him the solace he needed. The deepening sense of malaise that permeated his club evaporated once he slipped on the blue jersey for the first time since Denmark had kicked France out of the European championships on 17 June. Houllier’s team waltzed past Austria 2–0 thanks to strikes by Papin and Cantona, a scoreline that would have been more emphatic had not four French goals been disallowed, and JPP not missed a penalty.26 France had ended a dismal nine-game winless sequence in emphatic fashion.
Éric brought back some of his revived form to England, where he made a solid contribution to a rare Leeds victory (3–1 against Sheffield United) in mid-October. But this result failed to spark the reaction Wilkinson had been hoping for. Cantona would never find himself in a winning Leeds side again and, within a month, would sit beside Alex Ferguson in Manchester United’s press conference room. The next round of the European Cup would act as the detonator of a full-blown crisis that could only be resolved by a parting of ways, as no unhappy marriage can end otherwise in football.
Cantona: The Rebel Who Would Be King Page 25