4 Eric Cantona
185 appearances, 82 goals
4 League titles, 2 FA Cups, 3 Charity Shields
‘He’s the one’, ‘I’m telling you Mike, HE’S. THE. ONE’. Optimism in football is not uncommon and while those words were to eventually prove prophetic, their importance to a United-mad 18 year old resonate to this day. A few months previously, I sat, nay slumped, at Upton Park having watched United lose to West Ham and handing the title initiative to Leeds. They went on to lift the title, the last before the Premier League era. We got close. It was in our hands. And we threw it away.
Uttered by my cousin, ‘the one’ was Eric Cantona. The Frenchman made an instant impression on time-served Cockney Reds. My cousins ‘Kilburn’ (God rest his soul) and Jimmy, are the reasons I’m a red and also a constant reminder of a different era, had witnessed the first touches Cantona made in our shirt. Yet it wasn’t when the mercurial, much travelled Frenchman, came on as a substitute for United against City. No, they had travelled to Portugal to see United take on Benfica in a friendly to honour Portuguese legend Eusebio’s 50th birthday. And that was that. Love at first sight. Impressed enough with a cameo performance, albeit in a friendly, they were convinced he was the final piece of the puzzle. And he was.
So much has been written about Eric. So much adulation has been bestowed on him it would be churlish, probably foolish, to try and compete with better written pieces eulogising our modern ‘King’.
So I will describe and give my abiding memory of Eric, the moment that sums him up is not a goal, and boy are there plenty to choose from: Liverpool at Wembley, Arsenal at Old Trafford x 2, Sheff United, Wimbledon, Sunderland…you get the idea. Nor was it a pass though that delicious sand-wedge style chip to Denis Irwin against Tottenham should be framed as a piece of art. Nor is it the infamous kung-fu kick or the poetic ‘seagulls following the trawler’. It is in fact a goal bound attempt which had commentating legend John Motson lost for words and which didn’t even hit the back of the net.
Eric played off the cuff within a system that allowed his exuberant brilliance to shine. At Stamford Bridge in September 1993, his quick thinking and fondness for the different came to the fore.
After Chelsea goalkeeper Kharine raced out of his penalty box to head away Pallister’s quickly taken free-kick, a move rightly lauded by Motson, it was what happened next which had the master of the mic scrambling for words.
The ball eventually fell to Cantona, some 40 yards out and the way he turned, pivoted and hit the ball towards the goal was balletic in its execution. The back-peddling Kharine didn’t have a hope of getting back to save it, but his blushes were spared as the ball bounced and hit the bar and into his hands.
Strange how a miss, to me, can sum up a hero who always delivered. Attempting the extraordinary, a step ahead of the rest and winning even though he failed. ‘Who needs Pele?’ opined Motson. United didn’t. We had Eric. This was our Cantona. He was indeed, ‘the one’.
In the time between Eric Cantona signing for Manchester United in November 1992, and retiring in May 1997, the club’s value had multiplied ten-fold.
Cantona was widely thought of as the player who finally made the telling difference to end the 26 year wait for the League title, and made crucial contributions to the 1994 and 1996 successes. He also scored the winning or decisive goals in both FA Cup Finals he played in.
He made other players around him better; Mark Hughes and Andrei Kanchelskis enjoyed the best spells of their career alongside the Frenchman. Ryan Giggs’ quality increased. Cantona’s greatest influence could be seen on the young group of players coming through, who idolised and imitated him. He helped their development and United reaped the rewards handsomely.
Faced with the normal or elaborate, Cantona would always take the latter option, with a flick here or a back-heel some three feet off the ground. A juggle with his knees when a lesser player would have brought the ball down to the floor. A flick up and half volley into the top corner when others would balloon it over the bar. A chip against the open, howling wind that somehow went in off the crossbar. In many ways, he was the last of the great entertainers, one of those who had an innate sense of timing and awareness to always make the right choice.
The red cards and the Kung-Fu kick at Selhurst Park did nothing to harm his relationship with the adoring United supporters but they did reveal just how dependent United were on him; Martin Edwards went on record to tell me that he felt United would have won another double if Eric had been available in 1995, and most agree with that.
On and off the pitch Cantona transformed Manchester United; ironically for the player who once said he would be happy to retire without a penny in his pocket, United had almost become Frankenstein’s monster, a commercial machine whose merchandising revenue, at the most recent estimates to Eric’s retirement, had the Frenchman to thank for a quarter of its profits.
His influence was felt after his shock retirement, as the generation of young players who had been educated on the pitch by him more than any other player went on to enjoy unprecedented success.
For the goals scored, and the skill shown, and the trophies won which came as a direct consequence of his involvement, Eric Cantona finishes where he does in this list. For the size of that transformative presence in such a relatively condensed period of time, and the contribution to the trophies won, certainly nobody could argue with the suggestion that Cantona is also the most influential and possibly even important player in the club’s history, too.
