Eric Cantona Remains Manchester United’s Ultimate Hero

Thirty years ago, on November 26, 1992, Manchester United signed Eric Cantona and changed the history of the club.

It is difficult to fully appreciate just how different United were when he arrived. Alex Ferguson had been there for six years and built a good cup side, but they had not won the league title for 25 years.

United had come close the previous season, but like so often before, collapsed within sight of the trophy. The banner held aloft at Anfield, the home of Liverpool, that read, “Have you ever seen United win the league?,” hurt, because it was true. Most United fans had never seen it.

Four and a half years later when Cantona suddenly left Old Trafford he had helped United win four Premier League titles in 1993, 1994, 1996 and 1997, as well as adding two FA Cups as part of two doubles in 1994 and 1996.

In 185 games for United Cantona scored 82 goals and provided an incredible 66 assists. When he was on the team sheet United won 66% of games, drew 23% and lost only 11%.

“Eric was the catalyst for the championships,” Sir Alex Ferguson has said. “He brought a vision we did not have before. We were getting there, but he certainly accelerated it. He was a phenomenal player.”

Sixteen years ago I had the privilege of interviewing Cantona in London. I can remember when the call came through from a magazine editor asking if I could do it. He already knew the answer, for this wasn’t work, he was offering me the chance to meet a hero.

My first thought was to locate my camera (phones did not have cameras then), rather than my tape recorder. A decade after he had retired, Cantona still brought out the fan in me rather than the detached journalist.

I had joined the Manchester United magazine in the summer of 1996, but didn’t get the opportunity to speak to Cantona before he retired nine months later. The truth is he didn’t speak to the English press then, even the club’s official magazine or programme.

Now in the spring of 2006, Cantona was more talkative on behalf of his sponsors Nike in the suite of a hotel. I had been asked to find out his dream team of eleven players, and he included Diego Maradona, George Best, Garrincha, Mario Kempes, Johan Cruyff, and just one of his former United team-mates, Roy Keane.

I have interviewed many famous sports people without being remotely star struck, but this was different. This was Eric.

I’m glad I took my tape-recorder, as I didn’t do much listening, being too preoccupied with thinking, ‘That’s Eric sitting opposite me, I’m talking to Eric Cantona,” and when the interview was over I asked to have a picture with him.

Eric Cantona had this sort of effect on United fans of my generation. He was probably my last genuine United hero, when footballers were still older than me and you could look up to them.

In the film Looking for Eric, he says, “I am not a man, I am Cantona.” It is a brilliant line, delivered with a knowing smile, because he was always more than just another footballer.

United fans came to believe he personified the club with his swagger, his attitude, his rebellious spirit, his effortless style and his ability to seemingly do whatever he wanted.

He inspired a blind devotion amongst United fans that hasn’t been seen since, and has only ever been matched by probably Denis Law and George Best. His name is still lustily sung at Old Trafford.

His character has always been overanalysed; his initial appeal was simply that he was a bit different, at a time when he was one of only eleven foreigners at the launch of the Premier League.

He didn’t conform to the usual stereotype; appearing to be more artistic and cerebral than most footballers; he liked to paint, and had an interest in literature and philosophy.

“Cast as the brooding, temperamental prima donna, Eric was in reality one of the lads, that was his game, especially with the media,” Roy Keane has observed. “The eccentric loner was his public mask, part of what he wanted, professionally, to be.”

But most importantly, Cantona was revered for helping deliver a period of success Manchester United had never known before.

At 26-years-old Cantona came to Old Trafford as a footballing nomad, having already passed through seven clubs in his career.

On November 26,1992, Ferguson was at Old Trafford with his chairman Martin Edwards discussing strikers they might bring to the club after their poor start to the season.

During their discussion, a call was put through from the Leeds chairman Bill Fotherby enquiring about Denis Irwin. United would not consider selling the Irishman, but while they talked, Ferguson scribbled down a note for Edwards, ‘Ask him about Cantona.” The next day Cantona was paraded at Old Trafford.

United signed Cantona for just £1 million, an amount that when Ferguson relayed it to his assistant Brian Kidd, he replied, “For that money, has he lost a leg or something?”

When Ferguson was giving Cantona a tour of his new home, they reached the centre of the pitch, and he turned to Cantona and asked, “I wonder if you’re good enough to play in this ground?” Cantona replied, “I wonder if Manchester is good enough for me.”

It would soon turn in to what Cantona called “the perfect marriage,” while an equally effusive Ferguson called their union, “the perfect player, at the perfect club at the perfect moment.”

On only his second start Cantona scored his first goal against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge, and so begun a run of scoring in four consecutive games to lift United to the top of the table for the first time that season. And United would be there at the end of the season to become champions for the first time in 26 years.

In that first season, despite arriving just before the half way point, Cantona scored a total of 9 goals in 23 games, the best ratio in the side, contributed the most assists, with 13, and played a role in half of United’s goals. With Cantona in the side, United only lost once.

Cantona had found the trust from a manager he always wanted. Recognising a rare talent, Ferguson undoubtedly indulged his striker, nurturing him, sharing regular cups of tea with him, and attending to his needs. He gave him greater freedom than the other players, causing some team-mates to grumble at the double standards, but most accepted it because he helped them win.

Cantona had a rare ability to bring the best out of others, with how he delivered the ball at just the right pace to Ryan Giggs and Andrei Kanchelskis on the flanks, or how he pulled defenders around to allow Paul Ince or Brian McClair the space to surge in to, or how he hovered behind and swapped passes with Mark Hughes up front.

“He was perhaps the best I’ve played with,” Paul Ince once observed. “He seemed to know where anyone was on the pitch at any given time when he had the ball. He used to say to me, ‘Treat the ball like you treat a woman, and caress it.’ He just loved the ball didn’t he? His little touches, flicks…he was unbelievable.”

In the 17 league games United played in the 1992-93 season before Cantona’s arrival they scored just 18 goals, but in the next 25 games with Cantona they scored 49 goals.

Cantona was a blend between a classic number 10, the playmaker, playing between midfield and attack, and a number nine, who could play up front on his own and score goals. It is why his biographer Philippe Auclair referred to him as a “nine and a half” style player.

After enjoying his first proper pre-season at United, Cantona became an even better player, as Ferguson came to describe him as “the fulcrum” of what many regard as United’s greatest ever side. He would score a total of 25 goals in the 1993-94 season, his largest total for a campaign at United, as well contributing 15 assists.

These goals would help deliver another Premier League title, and United completed their first ever double on a wet day at Wembley with a 4-0 win over Chelsea in the FA Cup final. The London side had actually beaten United twice in the league that season, and the game had been tight for the first hour until the coolness of Cantona prevailed twice from the penalty spot to settle the game.

The United captain Steve Bruce had told Cantona of his premonition they would win a penalty in the final, and recalls, “Eric shrugged his shoulders, threw his arms out and said ‘No problem; I’ll score.”

The following season Cantona’s brilliance continued to underpin United’s dominance, but in January 1995 after he had been sent off at Crystal Palace he launched a kick at a Palace fan who had been abusing him. Hysteria ensued and Cantona was banned by the Football Association until October that year.

Cantona was also charged with assault, and initially jailed for two weeks at Croydon Magistrates Court, but on appeal it was reduced to 120 hours of community service, which he spent coaching children.

The ban only served to nurture Cantona’s legend at United. In his martyrdom he became even more adored, as you protect your own in times of crisis. My wife, then my girlfriend, even wore an ‘Eric is Innocent’ T-shirt, though clearly he wasn’t.

Cantona vowed to come back a changed man, calmer and more controlled, but also fuelled with a fierce desire to repay those who had not cast him out, and remained loyal.

His first game back was in October 1995 and he thrived in his new role as a mentor to United’s young players including David Beckham, Paul Scholes and Gary Neville.

Cantona was the focus of every game now, as both the defiant United hero, and the cartoon villain, remorselessly booed at every away game, but it didn’t affect him and he was never sent off again.

His team-mate Peter Schemichel believed he was now “an even better player,” who once again, was the difference, and took charge of United. In fourteen games during the 1995/96 season Cantona’s goals directly decided games with either a win or a draw.

In the spring of 1996, Cantona scored in six successive games, including the winner in 1-0 wins against Arsenal, Tottenham, Coventry, and what would prove to be the title-decider against Newcastle at St James Park, which he celebrated with a cathartic and crazed roar to the heavens. He scored 14 league goals in 30 games to help secure his third Premier League title.

He helped complete United’s second double in three years by scoring the winning goal against Liverpool in the 86^th minute of the FA Cup final, brilliantly readjusting his body on the edge of the penalty box before striking a volley through a crowd of players. He was the first foreign captain to lift the FA Cup.

The following season there were signs Cantona was starting to lose interest. He began carrying more weight, noticeably on his face and waist, and appeared less nimble.

Ryan Giggs has revealed during that season, Cantona had said with “evident self-disgust” that “I didn’t know I could play so badly.”

It was all relative; this was Cantona after all, he still scored 15 goals, including arguably his best ever, the run from the half-way line and chip against Sunderland, was voted United’s Player of the Year, and captained United to yet another Premier League title.

On the afternoon Cantona lifted the Premier League trophy at Old Trafford after the final game of the season, he appeared subdued, less willing to celebrate. As Ferguson wrote in his diary, he watched his captain “deep in contemplation” and feared the worse.

Three weeks earlier Cantona had come to Ferguson the morning after United’s had been knocked out of the Champions League semi-final by Borussia Dortmund and told him he wanted to retire.

At the end of the 1996-97 season, Cantona confirmed to Ferguson he had played his final game when it was still a week before his 31^st birthday.

“I didn’t want to play any more. I’d lost the passion, I think I retired so young because I wanted to improve every time…[and] I didn’t feel that I could improve any more,” Cantona has since said.

Cantona disappeared without saying goodbye. His retirement was announced at a press conference by Martin Edwards, prompting a spontaneous wake on the Old Trafford forecourt of distraught and bereft fans. For them, the King was dead.

In the 25 years since he retired United have embraced other heroes including David Beckham, Ryan Giggs, Wayne Rooney, Cristiano Ronaldo in two spells, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Robin van Persie and Bruno Fernandes, but none of them have come close to matching the love and devotion Cantona inspired in United fans.

“I do not want any inscription on my tombstone, a blank stone, because I would like to leave behind me the sentiment of a great mystery,” Cantona once declared.

A generation of United fans know what should be chiselled on that tombstone: Manchester United’s ultimate hero.