Cantona (10 page)

Roux beams. ‘We were 3–0 after 15 minutes’ play.’ (
Which, by the way, is not true. Auxerre drew 0–0 that day, 3 September 1986; but Guy Roux is not the kind of raconteur to spoil a good story by something as trivial as a scoreless draw
.)

He went on: ‘Cantona had had his head shaved! And all his friends had gone to the barber’s with him! That evening – what fun! – I had the room opposite his. I go out of my bedroom, and here he was, talking to Isabelle on the phone: “Yes, Isa! I am completely bald . . . no, not a hair left . . . and I’m so cold!”’

Cantona had acted on impulse, as usual, to fulfil a sudden desire to ‘feel the freshness of water, the power of the wind’ on his bare skull; maybe. But there must also have been the mischievous itch to test his boss’s patience, to find out how far the staunch traditionalist would allow his twenty-year-old striker to bend the rules his rebellious way. Roux himself didn’t take the bait. But the sight of a bald teenager on the pitches of the
championnat
was unusual enough to catch the attention of a number of French publications. It hardly mattered that Cantona had scored the grand total of six goals in thirty-nine games for Auxerre so far – and would have to wait until 13 September to open his account for the 1986–87 season.

Interviewers made a beeline for the Stade de l’Abbé-Deschamps and Éric’s home in the forest, where he supplied them with enough quirky quotes and references to poets, painters, philosophers and the like to try and convince their readers that a rather different, previously unsuspected species of footballer had been discovered in northern Burgundy.
Paris-Match
, the magazine one could find in every French dentist’s waiting-room at the time, allowed space for Éric’s stream-of-consciousness effusions beside its regular instalments of comings and goings at the princely court of Monaco, marriages of uncrowned Ruritanian royals and the odd half-serious report about some war taking place somewhere else. Over the next nine months, Cantona became the first
celebrity
footballer in his country’s history, when others – Platini, Kopa – had merely gained fame for their on-field achievements. Éric would later revile the ‘media circus’ that would follow his every move and misdemeanour, perhaps forgetting how willing a subject he had been at the time, and how much it would help him to appear – at least for a couple of seasons – to be the answer to the question ‘What now?’, which followed France’s defeat by Germany in the semi-finals of the 1986 World Cup.

That summer, the ‘golden generation’ led by Michel Platini had fired its last bullets in Mexico, winning an unforgettable game against Brazil before surrendering to the Germans. Their tournament, which also included a 2–0 victory over world champions Italy, ended with a sadly predictable whimper, predictable inasmuch as the team which had emerged eight years before in Argentina had reached the end of its life cycle. One by one, the heroes of Seville 1982,
Les Bleus
most mythical game (they were denied a place in the World Cup final by the Germans on penalties, having led 3–1 in the first period of extra time), announced their retirement from the international game, within weeks of an epoch-closing defeat. Some were too old. Others were spending more time in the physiotherapist’s treatment room than on the training ground. The rest suffered from burn-out. Of the superb squad gathered by national coach Michel Hidalgo, who also took his bow and passed on the baton to the former Nantes midfielder Henri Michel, only a couple survived: left-back Manuel Amoros and defensive midfielder Luis Fernandez. France was in mourning. The search was on for a new Giresse, a new Trésor – one dared not say a new Platini.

Éric’s timing was as crisp as a Brian Lara on-drive. Out of nowhere, it seemed, had appeared – Kojak-headed, his chest puffed out like one of Napoleon’s field marshals – a pro who talked like no other pro dared to talk, and could play a bit too, as he proved by scoring on his debut for France’s under-21s, a 4–1 ‘friendly’ thrashing of Hungary, which took place nine days after he had startled the great and good of Roscoff On 10 October his two goals gave a far more significant 2–1 victory over USSR in Le Havre – the game that sparked a magnificent adventure for
Les Bleuets of Marc
Bourrier, another of these southern managers who had an instinctive appreciation of and affection for the maverick of Marseilles. His team would be crowned European champions in June 1988, with Cantona suspended, as we’ll see. And the closer one looks at the legendary misfit, the more one is struck by how snugly he fitted in the tangle of aspirations, doubts and fantasies of French football as it saw its most successful troopers and generals head for
Les Invalides.

Cantona’s star wouldn’t have risen as spectacularly, and rapidly, if these fantasies hadn’t had a new medium to feed on: subscription TV channel Canal+, then a byword for modernity and trendiness. Just as Sky television would use coverage of football in all its guises as a battering ram into British homes, Canal+ exploited the epic progress of France’s best young footballers in Europe for something more than what it was worth. Until then, this competition – of which France had never even reached the final – had been pretty much ignored by media and public alike. But the up-and-coming TV channel needed to differentiate itself from and compete with the established, government-controlled terrestrial networks, which held exclusive rights over the senior team’s games. Canal+ was about the new, the untried, and sold itself as an outsider, a trend-bucker on its way to becoming a trend-setter. X-rated films on Saturday nights. Marc Bourrier’s
Espoirs
(literally, ‘The Hopes’) on match days. What Canal+ heralded, of course, was not an age of quasi-anarchistic freedom and hedonism, but of consumerism and instant gratification, in which it would come to represent a different kind of Establishment. Few saw it that way at the time.

The contrast between the exuberance of Marc Bourrier’s hopefuls and the drabness of a declining national team couldn’t have been starker. Cantona and Co. took risks, scored outrageous goals – and won. Henri Michel’s eleven stuttered, looked for and couldn’t find an identity – and would miss out on the European Championships and World Cup qualification. The horse that Canal+ had picked was rushing home, when it could have cantered to the line. The next year-and-a-half was the making of Cantona as a footballing icon in France.

If everyone soon knew how different Éric was, very little had filtered through of his more erratic behaviour at Auxerre. Roux, who employed spies not just on motorways, but also in every nightclub in Burgundy, was known to hop on his moped in the small hours of the morning to drag home a player who had been spotted on the dance floor of some rural disco. He was equally good at keeping his extended family’s linen washed in-house. No one was aware then of one particular hair-raising incident which had taken place a few months previously, during a pre-season visit to Poland. According to Roux, it could have led to a diplomatic incident. Auxerre took part in a tournament in Mielec, in the south-east of Poland. Cantona treats the public to a scissor-kick, then to a magnificent goal . . . but they don’t like it, oh no. As we’re walking off, a guy throws an egg, which explodes on his thigh. He loses it completely, I try and hold him by his coat-tails, but no way, it was as if I were water-skiing behind a speed-boat!’ One is rarely bored in Guy Roux’s company. One sip of Irancy, then: ‘Éric climbs in the stand – looks for the guy – and I’m thinking: “Let’s hope that guy is hiding somewhere,” and I’m saying, “Éric, if you hit him, we’re in communist Poland, you’ll get ten years, and we won’t be able to get you out!” Bernard Ferrer was yelling, “Think of Isabelle!” But here we are amongst these Polish miners, those guys who go down 2,000 metres every day – but he couldn’t find the egg-thrower, and we were saved.’

Roux, however, loved Éric more than he had ever loved any other of his young players, and, more often than not, reached for the carrot, not the stick. He took no action when, on 21 February 1987, word got out that Auxerre’s goalkeeper Bruno Martini had been on the receiving end of Cantona’s anger; word – and pictures. Martini sported a magnificent shiner. The door he had walked into was Éric’s head. (‘Make sure people know Éric didn’t throw a punch!’ Roux exhorted me, ‘and tell them it was all Daniel Rolland’s fault!’) It’s fair to say that Martini, a superb ’keeper who had already been selected by France, and would become a long-term member of
Les Bleus’
technical staff, did not court popularity with his teammates, and that the rough justice meted out by Éric would have found an acquiescent jury in the Auxerre dressing-room. Like Cantona, Martini affected to find the life of a footballer tedious in the extreme, but unlike Éric, he made no efforts to balance his world-weariness with the kind of horseplay familiar to young footballers the world over. Martini preferred the company of authors like Goethe, Montherlant and Céline to that of fellow players, and listened to Handel oratorios at home. That morning, he made the mistake of demonstrating his contempt by refusing to help the first-teamers and the academy players who were trying to clear the pitch for the final of the Coupe des Alpes, which would pit Auxerre against the Swiss champions Neuchâtel-Xamax. The broadcasting rights of that half-serious, half-friendly encounter had been acquired by Canal+ for half-a-million francs – manna from heaven for a small club like AJA.

Unfortunately, heaven had also sent down a copious amount of snow – three inches of it – during the night, and the surface of l’Abbé-Deschamps was unplayable. Armed with advertising boards, the whole squad helped to push the slush over the touchline; all the squad – bar Martini. Roux picks up the story: ‘Rolland, who’d been there since the break of dawn, noticed it and told the ’keeper: “Hey, Bruno, maybe you could . . .”’, and Canto said, “Absolutely!” Martini made a dismissive gesture with his hand. He shouldn’t have. Canto went up to him, and bang! That evening, I had to explain to the Canal+ presenter that we’d been practising headers, and that Martini had taken a knock . . .’ Amusingly, Éric, who was still recovering from the injury he had sustained in December, took no part in Auxerre’s 3–1 victory in that game. But Martini did.

I should add that the veracity of Roux’s account was vouched for by several witnesses of the incident, who accompanied their assent by a knowing smile. Later, when it became a national English pastime to demonize Éric, the Martini ‘punch’ always featured high in the list of his greatest hits. Hardly anyone – no one, in fact – bothered to check what had really happened. The British public was told that ‘Auxerre had punished Cantona with a suspension’ for his assault on Martini. False. He played in the very next game, a 2–0 win at Laval. But who cared about the truth by then? It was enough that another dark spot could be found in his character, and there were so many of those that the picture emerging was black, black, black. The man was a maniac. He had knocked a teammate out cold on the training pitch. Roux knew otherwise. Éric repaid his manager’s clemency by giving his all when it mattered; and all through this magnificent season, it seemed to matter each and every weekend. It was no longer a question of if, but when Éric would make the transition from the under-21 s to the national team, and Roux’s prediction to Cantona’s mother and grandmother would be fulfilled.

That season came to a close very late for Éric, as late as 16 June, when the
Bleuets
fought out a 2–1 victory in Norway in which he had, again, been decisive, and which gave Bourrier’s players a place in the quarter-finals of the European Championships. Two weeks later, after the briefest of holidays, he was back in training with his club, and taking part in another staging of the Coupe des Alpes, won 3–1 by Auxerre over Grasshoppers Zurich, Éric adding another goal to his collection. Then the
championnat
took over, the footballer’s bread and butter, in which AJA dipped a tentative toe, as usual, with a solitary success in their first four games. But Éric’s form remained stupendous throughout, and nobody was surprised to find his name in the squad that Henri Michel announced on 4 August, eight days before France was to play West Germany in Berlin.

It is customary for players who celebrate their first cap to serve up heartfelt platitudes such as ‘a dream come true’, or ‘the proudest day in my life’ to journalists who’re not too demanding about what ends up on their plates. Not unexpectedly, Éric switched off the autopilot, and the comments he came up with after he had walked off the pitch, having scored the goal that brought the home team back to 1–2, left quite a few taken aback.

‘I didn’t feel any pressure on me,’ he said with the straightest face he could conjure up for disbelieving hacks. ‘I am not an emotional person,’ (
Really?
) ‘and I took this game as if it were a banal league game.’ (
Excuse me?
) ‘Why should I have made a huge thing of playing against West Germany? The questions I asked myself were purely tactical. I thought about my game. I concentrated. That’s all.’ (
But you scored – a clinical finish from ten yards – surely this means something special to you?)
‘It meant nothing to me. Maybe if it had been the equalizer. But then, nothing. I told myself we had fifty minutes or so to re-establish parity.’ (
But
. . .) ‘Giving up is not a habit of mine. I’ve got my own mental attitude; every one’s got his. But mine suits me perfectly. If I were a coach, I’d transmit it to my players. Because I think I am in the right. In France, we have a tendency to tell a player he’s the most beautiful, the strongest. That’s awful. Nobody will manage to destabilize me or to make me lose my head. I’m quite happy for people to compliment me, but I take it with enough detachment to take it or leave it. In fact, I prefer criticism. My wife told me I hadn’t been good. She knows nothing about football. But I’ll try to please her next time round.’ (
Thank you.
)