Éric, however, claimed not to be one of those footballers who are slaves to what the England goalkeeper David James has called a ‘mental machinery’ of preparation – players like John Terry, who inserted the same battered shin-pads in his stockings for ten years before mislaying them in the Nou Camp (Chelsea were beaten on that night). But, if Cantona didn’t stick to obsessive routines (except maybe when exchanging passes with Steve Bruce in the warm-up, which he invariably did), he developed a quasi-mystical affinity with the number printed on his shirt. He had good reason to do so, as this number – 7, of course – had a unique resonance in Manchester United’s history. Its stewardship imbued the recipient with a unparalleled sense of responsibility: in Éric’s case, it represented the passing of the baton from one great no. 7 – Bryan Robson – to himself. In truth, Cantona probably did more than any other to give a magical aura to that number at Old Trafford.
Éric’s timing was perfect, as that season – 1993–94 – saw the introduction of squad numbers at Manchester United. Before that, a player’s position on the pitch dictated which number he was given, according to strict rules that had been in place since the days of the old 2-3-5 and had survived the abandonment of this system in favour of the ‘WM’ formation in the 1930s. This explains why, to the great confusion of Continentals, the no. 6 is associated with central defenders like Bobby Moore and Tony Adams in England, whereas it conjures up images of hard-tackling midfielders and precursors of the ‘Makelele role’ in France and Italy. For the English, a no. 7 played on the right wing and, later, in midfield, when it was surmised that the right-winger had dropped from the front line to the engine-room of the team – one of the more curious legacies of Alf Ramsey’s reshaping of the English game. This makes it all the more surprising that George Best could be considered to be the founder of United’s quasi-biblical genealogy of number 7s: Best begat Robson who begat Cantona who begat Beckham who begat Cristiano Ronaldo. In fact, Best, who wore that jersey for the first five years of his career at Old Trafford, passed it on to Willie Morgan in 1968 and played two-thirds of his games with United wearing the no. 11 shirt – as befitted a left-sided winger. It has been all but forgotten that Steve Coppell, a distinguished recipient of the no. 7 between 1975 and 1984, wore the number he had inherited from Morgan on 236 occasions in league matches, more than twice as many as the Irishman, and that Cantona himself only comes in eleventh position in the all-time appearances chart of United number 7s (143 games). And who remembers that Andreï Kanchelskis had the honour of donning the legendary jersey on twenty-five occasions in the early 1990s? The legend was constructed a posteriori, once Cantona had imbued the sacred digit with an aura that only grew with his retirement, to the extent that it acquired fetishistic qualities for his successors David Beckham and Cristiano Ronaldo, who tattooed, etched, marquetted and embroidered it wherever possible, on their skin, coffee tables, bed cushions and lines of ready-to-wear. Their obsession can be understood as a desire to inhabit a myth at the so-called ‘Theatre of Dreams’, but it primarily remains, consciously or not, an hommage to the myth-maker himself – Éric Cantona.
With Arsenal beaten, Cantona could project himself four weeks ahead, to 13 October, the date of Israel’s visit to Paris, as United’s schedule mostly comprised games they were expected to win with some ease: Honvéd never threatened to halt United’s progression to the next round of the European Cup, despite a frustrating performance at Old Trafford in which Steve Bruce had to provide both goals in a 2–1 victory.
When Sheffield Wednesday were beaten 3–2 at Hillsborough on 2 October, Arsenal were now trailing by five points, and most bookmakers had installed United as odds-on favourites to retain their title, with a growing number of punters gambling on a domestic treble. Wednesday’s manager Trevor Francis went so far as to say that ‘United [were] the best team in Europe’ after seeing Éric craft the visitors’ second and third goals with perfectly weighed passes. Such hyperbole had no justification other than United’s dominance of the English game and, in hindsight, seems slightly ludicrous; but it was felt by many at the time that Alex Ferguson – in no small part thanks to Éric Cantona – was drawing ever closer to solving this conundrum: how to reconcile the sophistication of the Continental game with the intensity and physicality for which English football was renowned. Increasingly, United offered a template for other ambitious Premiership clubs, who were shown week after week that it was not just possible, but also desirable to graft the artistry of a Cantona to the still robust spine of predominantly British teams.
Éric, the pioneer, the trailblazer, rejoined his French teammates in the second week of October. With two games to go before the end of the qualifiers, France was sitting pretty: one draw would be enough to guarantee them safe passage to the USA. Both their opponents, Israel and Bulgaria, would have to come to the Parc des Princes, where Les Bleus hadn’t been defeated in a competitive game since November 1987. Qualification seemed a formality, so much so that a short-lived French weekly magazine called Le Sport, not wishing to miss the party, decided to ignore the most basic rule of reporting (i.e. wait until something happens before writing about it) and dispatched tens of thousands of copies bearing the headline ‘QUALIFIED!’ to newsstands everywhere in the country in the early hours of Thursday 14 October.
The only problem was that France had contrived to lose the previous evening.
But how could anyone have predicted it? Israel had been walloped 4–0 in Tel Aviv seven months before, and the Parisian crowd was in fine voice at the kick-off of what was supposed to be a procession. Even Ronen Harazi’s opening goal in the 21st minute failed to silence them. France created chance after chance, shots raining down on ‘Boni’ Ginzburg’s goal, and it only took eight minutes for Atalanta’s midfielder Franck Sauzée to put the scores level. Six minutes before the break, David Ginola gave the lead to the French with a stupendous curler from the left corner of the box, and the celebrations began in earnest. Cantona then played Papin through after evading a couple of challenges, but the Milan striker pulled his shot just wide. Éric himself came close to giving France a 3–1 lead with a header at the far post. How they would rue those missed chances. Israel, who had played with spirit and skill throughout, equalized with seven minutes to go. The Liverpool player Roni ‘Ronny’ Rosenthal bundled his way through a series of tackles and drew a stupendous save from Bernard Lama, whose parry fell sweetly for twenty-one-year-old Eyal Berkovic to volley the ball home with the outside of his right foot, despite Marcel Desailly’s last-gasp intervention. It didn’t matter. Seven minutes to go plus added time without conceding, and Houllier’s team would have achieved qualification.
The lanky Israeli number 10 Reuven Atar had other ideas. A few seconds before the final whistle, he met a miraculous Rosenthal cross on the half-volley, and France were beaten.
A late reversal as dramatic as this one must have had an explanation. The post mortem conducted in the French media concluded, not illogically, that Les Bleus had suffered a disastrous collective lapse of concentration. Just as the Milan players sang victory songs during the interval of the 2005 Champions League final and then collapsed, throwing away a 3–0 lead against an apparently ragged Liverpool, Cantona and his teammates were already mentally on the plane to the USA as they walked out on to the Parisian pitch. Once Ginola had put them 2–1 ahead, they were convinced they had landed safely. And when they were shaken from their dream by the Israelis’ late equalizing goal, panic set in. This explanation did no favours to the ability of the managerial staff to keep the squad’s feet on the ground, or to Houllier’s coaching, a term the French use to describe the real-time tactical changes a manager implements as a game unfolds. Still, if this shock defeat had made qualification for the 1994 World Cup more problematic, France surely couldn’t lose the ground they had gained since the disaster of Euro 92, as they would play the crunch game at home – against Bulgaria. A share of the points in that game would be enough.
England wouldn’t hav
e minded being in that position. While the French rued the missed opportunities and swore to themselves that this wouldn’t happen again, Graham Taylor’s team fell 2–0 in the Netherlands, ensuring that Éric’s United teammates Paul Ince and Gary Pallister would be on holiday when the 1994 World Cup was played in America.
Three days later, some kind of normality was resumed when United and their beaten internationals made Tottenham pay for their frustration. Spurs wilted almost embarrassingly against the champions. The 2–1 final scoreline was achieved at a canter; Cantona hardly broke sweat. After eleven games, his team had extended their lead to seven points in the Premiership, and that with players intent on preserving as much energy as possible before their next European engagement, against Turkish champions Galatasaray.
The Red Devils’ lack of European experience was cruelly exposed when the Turks swept past a naïve United in the second half. It took a Cantona volley a few yards from the goal-line nine minutes from time to rescue a 3–3 draw and spare United their first-ever home defeat in a European competition. All the same, it had been a thrilling game in which Éric, while not quite at his best, nonetheless held his rank against fine Continental opposition – in retrospect, one of a handful of performances which can be offered in his defence when his admittedly poor record in Europe is questioned by critics.
What cuts and bruises United had suffered to their self-esteem against Galatasaray could be appeased by the balm applied week after week in England, where their opponents were developing a pleasant habit of rolling over. Everton (1–0 at Goodison), Leicester City (blasted away 5–1 in the League Cup, Éric rested) and QPR (2–1) obliged them in quick succession in the second half of October. United’s supremacy was such at the time that when Les Ferdinand opened the scoring in the third of these games, they only needed to accelerate on a couple of occasions to restore the natural order. First, Cantona raced 40 yards to beat the Czech goalkeeper Jan Stejskal for the equalizer, Mark Hughes poaching a second goal from a corner kick to claim a victory that had never been seriously in doubt. As Norwich and Arsenal had only achieved a draw on the same day, the champions now led the league by a huge margin: 11 points – after just 13 games.
Unfortunately, Galatasaray refused to follow the script written by English teams when the second leg of their tie was played on 3 November. The atmosphere in which the game was played was shocking, even to players used to the ‘Munich aeroplanes’ which crashed sickeningly in the stands of Anfield and Eiland Road. The United squad were greeted on their arrival at Istanbul airport with banners reading ‘Welcome to hell’ and ‘You will die’. A bell boy working in the palatial hotel where United were staying scowled at Gary Pallister and ran a finger across his throat. Bricks were thrown at the team bus when it crossed the Bosphorus. The game itself was worse. Cantona missed United’s best chance in the 55th minute, when Parker lobbed a ball into the box. Twice he snatched at the ball, twice he failed to connect properly. Anger and anxiety had got the better of him. Then, in the 77th minute, incensed by Bulent feigning injury, he ran off the field across the perimeter track and kicked the ball out of the gloves of Nezihi, elbowed the ’keeper in the ribs in the ensuing scuffle and had to be rescued from a swarm of Turkish players by the referee, who – showing surprising leniency – decided not to caution him. It didn’t stop there. After the game had finished 0–0, sending the Turks through on the away-goals rule, with all kinds of missiles raining on the United players, Cantona walked towards the official, shook his hand, and said a few choice words in French – which happened to be the language that Mr Roethlisberger taught to earn a living when UEFA didn’t require his services.35 This time, a card was shown, and it was red.
‘He had gone, mentally,’ was how Ryan Giggs later described Éric’s behaviour that night in the Ali Sami Yen stadium. Cantona was manhandled in the tunnel by a police officer, and snapped; the policeman struck him on the back of the head with a baton. Bryan Robson, trying to defuse the situation, was hit by a shield, and needed two stitches. Chaos ensued, with the whole United squad, it seems, joining the mêlée, before their own security men finally managed to usher them into the dressing-room. An unrepentant Cantona addressed the press in these terms: ‘Tonight was a scandal. I was punched on the back of the head by a policeman. I don’t care about the red card. I just went to the referee and told him he was a bad referee.’ But he also revealed the true cause of his frustration when he added: ‘Galatasaray is a little team. Equally, tonight, so were Manchester United.’
He would make sure they were great again the next time they played, at Maine Road.
Manchester City was one of Éric’s ‘lucky’ teams over the course of his career. He scored in every single one of the seven Manchester derbies he took part in – eight goals in all – and never finished on the losing side, though he nearly did on 7 November 1993. United fell 2–0 behind. Then Éric, collar turned up, erupted into life shortly after the pause, and almost single-handedly rescued a losing cause. Vonk’s misdirected header opened a clear path to goal: 2–1. Then Giggs, who had been one of United’s most disappointing performers in Istanbul, came off the bench to provide a perfect cross for Éric to tap in. Two each. Keane consummated a redemption of sorts by snatching the winner. A frustrated Cantona was a dangerous animal, as City had found out – and Bulgaria undoubtedly would as well. But Bulgaria didn’t.
No one saw it coming. The front page of L’Équipe bore a single word: ‘INQUALIFIABLE’, which meant: ‘unable to qualify’, but also ‘impossible to describe’ and ‘disgraceful’. Any sub-editor would have been proud of this witty example of self-inflicted Schadenfreude. The shame was that a picture of Éric Cantona had been chosen to illustrate France’s footballing Waterloo – and that France Football followed suit a few days later. He most certainly didn’t deserve to be made a symbol of failure. Cantona had put France in front with his sixth goal of the qualifiers. With 32 minutes on the clock, fed by Papin, he volleyed from six yards to open the scoring, and 48,402 spectators were booking a trip to America. They still had their tickets in their hands when Emil Kostadinov equalized five minutes later from a poorly defended corner. France controlled the game, and a draw was good enough. But with twenty-three seconds to go, from a free kick which had been awarded to the French (!) within touching distance of the Bulgarian right corner flag, David Ginola opted to send a wild, deep cross to what the French call ‘the third post’ which sailed over Cantona – the only French player present in the opposition box at the time – landed on the other wing and was quickly, beautifully worked upfield. Three passes later, the same Kostadinov found himself running towards Bernard Lama’s goal in a tight angle, and, despite Laurent Blanc’s desperate lunge, arrowed a magnificent strike under the bar, so emphatic that it almost screamed: ‘WE’RE IN THE WORLD CUP!’ to the silenced ground. The power of the shot was such that Bernard Lama didn’t stand a chance. France were out. Houllier, chin down, hands in pockets, walked a few desultory steps on the touchline, where his assistant Aimé Jacquet held his head in his hands. It couldn’t be. But it was.
The French manager tore Ginola to pieces in his post-match press conference. ‘He sent an Exocet missile through the heart of French football,’ he said. ‘He committed a crime against the team, I repeat: a crime against the team.’ Houllier, a very emotional man, was factually correct, of course. Had the PSG winger not given away possession in the dying moments of the game, France would have qualified and Bulgaria would never have reached the semi-finals of USA 94. But what Houllier didn’t mention was the statuesque reaction of the French midfield and defence to the Bulgarian counter-attack. Didier Deschamps, Reynald Pedros and Emmanuel Petit had switched off, jogging when they should have been running for their lives, and watched the ball go from the other end of the park to the back of their own net in nineteen seconds. Neither did the soon-to-be former national coach explain why it was Pedros (5’ 8”) rather than, say, Sauzée (6’ 2”) or even Cantona (6’ 2”) who had been put on the goal-line
for the corner kick that led to Kostadinov’s headed equalizer. Everyone knew who would be the first loser in this game of ifs and buts. Houllier fell on his sword, and was replaced by Jacquet.
Gerard’s anger had not abated when we relived this catastrophic moment fifteen years later. ‘It was a pleasure to have Cantona in your team,’ he told me. ‘He was a gem, a loyal man, a player who gave everything. But Ginola? . . . I’ll never say anything good about Ginola.’ He broke his bread like ‘Tiger’ O’Reilly broke a match when asked how he rated Don Bradman. ‘As a cricketer? The best. As a man? Not worth that,’ the leg-spinner had said, snapping the stick in his powerful fingers. What Houllier could never forgive was not so much a temporary moment of madness than what had preceded it: Ginola had publicly questioned the soundness of his coach’s decision to give preference to Papin and Cantona rather than to him in his starting eleven – and intimated that Papin and Cantona could do as they wished in the French set-up, that they had forced their manager’s hand. Against Israel, it was he, Ginola, who had provided the assist for Sauzée’s opening goal, and who scored a superb second; but Houllier kept him on the bench until the 69th minute against Bulgaria, when the score was still level at 1–1. He certainly wished he had kept him there.
The next morning, as France awoke in a state of shock, an unshaven Cantona, wearing a dazzling white suit, was the last to board the Air France shuttle that took passengers of the earliest Paris-Manchester flight to their plane. By pure chance, my France Football colleague Jean-Michel Brochen – then at L’Équipe – found himself sitting just behind Cantona on the Airbus. His mission was to extract a pearl or two from the clammed-up star of the humiliated national team. Jean-Michel, who had first met Cantona on the night he shaved his head in Brest, six years earlier, knew that the safest policy was to resist the temptation to tap on Éric’s shoulder. As the plane landed, footballer and journalist exchanged a polite greeting, nothing more (‘No, I don’t talk [to the press],’ were Éric’s parting words), and went their separate ways – except that their destination was the same: Éric’s home from home, the Worsley Novotel, where the French-speaking staff (who adored Cantona) were used to welcoming a variety of pressmen who had come from the other side of the Channel. What followed over the next few days was hardly spectacular, but quite comical all the same, and highlighted a certain streak of innocence in Éric’s character which I believe is worth mentioning here.
Cantona: The Rebel Who Would Be King Page 33