Cantona (13 page)

Characters appeared and vanished on the scene like cuckolds and lovers in a Georges Feydeau farce. Éric was paying frequent visits to Paris, where he and his most trusted friends set up camp in a hotel. Four rooms had been booked: one each for Cantona, Migliaccio, Paille and Didier Fèvre, who held war councils to discuss the proposals slipped under the player’s door. Didier was in a very awkward position. Information his colleagues at
L’Équipe
were desperate for had to remain a secret that was getting heavier to carry every day.

‘We were locked in there for three or four days to sort out the transfer, fielding calls from Borelli, Bez, Campora and the others,’ he recalls. ‘Stéphane [Paille] was managing the lot, as Éric wasn’t as quick to seize on details as he was . . . whereas Stéphane was an ace at calculating bonuses. We went to Borelli’s house, and you know what painting means to Éric? At one point, Éric tells Borelli: “Say, this picture is really something, isn’t it?” Borelli wanted him so much that he said: “You like it? Take it!” Éric left with the picture under his arm! Stéphane was quick to react . . . he pointed at an object, and said: “Say, this is really beautiful!” – and he too didn’t leave empty-handed.’ But Borelli’s gift was not sufficient to keep PSG in the race to sign Éric. Bez and Campora threw in the towel too. Their resources didn’t enable them to come close to the offers made by Lagardère and Tapie.

The former, one of those captains of industry who amassed a colossal fortune by securing huge public contracts in France’s so-called ‘mixed economy’, dreamt of creating a franchise which would make Paris one of the world capitals of football. But his Matra Racing, patched together by the merger between the old Racing Club de Paris and PSG’s failing competitor, Paris FC, was far too artificial a creation to survive beyond a few years of lavish expense and underachievement on the field. The club he had purchased in 1982 recruited some first-rate players, such as the German winger Pierre Littbarski, the Uruguayan playmaker Enzo Francescoli and France’s favourite midfield gladiator Luis Fernandez, paying them salaries only the richest Spanish and Italian clubs could match. But Lagardère’s unpredictable collection of ‘names’ never attracted crowds big enough to earn itself a true club identity, and, within nine years of its inception, Matra Racing would – at its own behest, so precarious was its financial situation – be demoted to the the third tier of the French football league, with nothing to show for the millions spent by Lagardère but images that faded almost immediately, and few memories.

In the light of the club’s eventual fate, the attempt to seduce Cantona can look like the gesture of a gambler playing his last hand. It was not so. In truth, for most outsiders, Roux included, Éric looked set to become another ornament in Lagardère’s folly. ‘One day, Canto comes to me and says: “M. Lagardère has invited me for dinner – how should I dress?” He had a pair of jeans on which looked as if he had slashed them with a knife. I told him: “You can’t go dressed like that. Go buy yourself a suit.” “A suit? Like yours?” “No, no – a young man’s suit! Go to Patrick.” Patrick was a Jewish-Tunisian tailor who ran a small shop in the Rue du Temple. He was gentle, very good at his job, and mad about football. He went to Patrick. “I’ve got my suit, M. Roux!” “And what about the tie?” “A tie? Like you?” “No . . . a leather tie, something for young people, you see!” So he bought it. I saw Éric and Isabelle after they’d met Lagardère. “Oh la la . . . it was like in the Middle Ages! The servants! They had wigs! And carried halberds! . . . and Mrs Lagardère . . . she’s so, so beautiful!” So I thought – Canto is going to Matra Racing.’

What’s more, Éric had noticed, hung on a wall of Lagardère’s palatial home, a painting by Joan Miró, one of his favourite artists. An original. The ‘man of taste and of culture’ who had so impressed Cantona also presented him with two books, one about Pablo Picasso, the other an essay on the Catalan surrealist. Éric and Isabelle’s home would soon become too exiguous for all these presents.

What Roux didn’t know is that Lagardère’s rival, Bernard Tapie, had a powerful ally in the person of Gérard Bourgoin, Auxerre’s CEO. Tapie was in many ways an exact negative of Lagardère, in birth, character and social trajectory. Lagardère glided on deep, richly coloured carpets without a sound; the floor shook every time Tapie’s feet (slipped into expensive Italian shoes) hit the ground. Lagardère spoke gently, each word accompanied by a smile; Tapie swore like a trooper, and one with a vivid imagination to boot. Few men could make as valid a claim to have made themselves as ‘Nanard’ Tapie, the Parisian prole who (after a brief stint as an unsuccessful pop crooner in the sixties) kicked off his business career by selling televisions door to door – introducing himself as an imaginary ‘quality controller’ employed by the state-controlled networks, who lent out sets free of charge for a week, then came back and, with genuine charm, convinced his preys to buy what was at the time an extraordinarily expensive piece of equipment.

If Lagardère was a product of his class, Tapie was entirely self-made. He became one of the most remarkably successful businessmen of his generation, building a portfolio of internationally renowned companies (Adidas, for example) which had fallen on hard times and could be bought for – literally – nothing; as soon as they became profitable again (thanks to some ‘restructuring’ which he blamed entirely on the previous owners), he would sell them, and move to another easy picking. There was genius in Tapie. He would become an MP, an MEP, a short-lived minister of cities in Pierre Bérégovoy’s Socialist government. He would try his luck as an actor. He would try anything, apparently driven by a ferocious belief in himself (verging on recklessness) that some found mesmerizing, others appalling and which eventually led to his downfall.
⁷
The Tapie who courted Cantona was approaching the apex of his ascent. The boat he sailed in the Mediterranean, the
Phocéa
, was one of the world’s most luxurious yachts.

In 1986 Tapie had taken control of Olympique de Marseille, France’s best-supported club. His instinct told him that, in order to further his political ambitions (which some say included winning the Presidency of the
République
itself), he needed to establish an impregnable base somewhere, anywhere, provided he could rule it unchallenged. It should be said that he had a genuine liking for and understanding of sport. When Bernard Hinault, then Greg Lemond, ruled the Tour de France in the early 1980s, they were wearing the colours of one of Tapie’s companies, La Vie Claire. Tapie had also sent his manager, Gérard Banide, to Auxerre before making his big move; Banide’s role was to explain to Éric which role he would play in the Marseille team: that of a
‘numéro dix’
, a goalscoring playmaker, a string-puller in the mould of Platini, rather than the centre-forward Célestin Oliver and Guy Roux had in mind. Cantona was strongly attracted to the maverick millionaire he would later dub ‘a demon’. ‘If everyone was as interesting as Tapie, I’d buy the papers more often,’ he had said in 1987. One year later, his suitor announced himself in his customary dramatic fashion. Lagardère had invited Éric to his luxurious residence; Tapie would invite himself to Cantona’s little house in the forest.

He chartered a private plane and landed in a small airfield at Branches, a few miles away from Éric’s village, jumped in a car, and arrived at his destination in the middle of the afternoon. He only stayed for a few minutes to deliver his message. ‘I’m speaking to you man to man,’ he said. ‘There’s no need for big words. I want you. Whatever the other one is offering you, I’ll give you the same – and you’ll be at home! So long, Éric!’ Then he left. Yes, there was genius in Tapie.
⁸

Cantona stood to multiply his salary not ‘by five or ten’, but by twenty, whichever club he decided to join. Figures of £4,000–5,000 a week were mentioned in the press, which apparently weren’t that wide of the mark: Éric was about to be promoted to the super-elite of Europe’s best-paid footballers. But money wasn’t uppermost in his thoughts. In this as in so many other things, Isabelle’s feelings and his own were perfectly attuned. He had been shaken by Lagardère’s easy eloquence, and could see himself building a unique creative relationship with Enzo Francescoli at Matra Racing. But he had less than twenty-four hours to come to a decision. Alain Migliaccio advised him to sleep on it, and, during the night, Éric dreamt of Marseilles, not Paris. Not for the last time, he chose to trust his impulses.

That very morning, Éric and Isabelle made their way to Tapie’s extravagant townhouse, the seventeenth-century Hôtel de Cavoye in the seventh
arrondissement
of Paris. Both felt incredibly nervous. Isabelle slipped on the marble floor, Éric caught her by the arm just as she was about to hit the ground. A bad omen? Then, as the contracts were laid out on Tapie’s desk to be signed, the phone rang. Migliaccio’s assistant was on the line: a close associate of Silvio Berlusconi wished to let Cantona know that AC Milan, Italy’s champions elect, wanted him to partner the prodigious Marco van Basten at the head of the
rossoneri
’s attack. But Éric had given his word, and would not take it back. It was a noble gesture, in keeping with the persona Cantona wanted to assume for the outside world, but it would haunt him for a long time to come.

Auxerre pocketed 22 million francs – over £2m – for their academy graduate, which made Cantona’s move to Marseille on a five-year contract the most profitable transfer in their history. But AJA’s chairman, Jean-Claude Hamel, was furious. Éric had become even more uncontrollable since the news of his move to OM had been made public. Part of him already mourned the friends he was about to leave, and his way to deal with the grief was to seek their company at all hours of the day and night. The teams that roasted Auxerre in the last three weeks of the 1987–88 season faced a group of footballers who had hardly had a minute’s sleep the night before. No matter how late it was, Éric drifted from room to room in the hotel where Roux’s young men were supposed to gather strength before the Saturday game.

Cantona had a few accounts to settle, too, with a small group of supporters who had barracked him constantly since his departure from Auxerre had been announced. Éric had told his manager how he was intending to put an end to this: by giving them a good hiding after the last game of the season. Fortunately for Guy Roux, Tapie made a suggestion that would scupper Cantona’s plan. Bernard Genghini, who had played such a pivotal role in France’s epic campaigns of 1982, ’84 and ’86, was about to play his last-ever game for the Marseillais. Couldn’t Éric take charge of a symbolic kick-off that day? That would be beautiful. The old passing on the baton to the new, in front of 60,000 passionate supporters . . . Yes, Roux thought, and that would happen 400 miles away from the guys he intended to beat up. A fine idea.

Hamel exploded. ‘That’s out of the question! He has to play the last game!’ ‘When Hamel is like that,’ Roux told me, ‘there’s no point in talking to him. This time, I sat down in his office, which I never did, because he’d keep you there for an hour. “Mr Hamel,” I said, “I will not leave until you’ve listened to me. Éric Cantona wants to have a good go at a few people in the ground, including one person who sits in the directors’ box, not very far from you. Nobody will stop him – nobody. Either we tell these five people not to come to the game or . . .” “But we’re paying him!” he screams. “Mr Chairman, they’re paying us 22 million francs, we could consider that this is enough to give them an extra week.” No answer. I think for a while, then tell him: “I might not be going to the game myself, you know.” And in the end, Hamel relented.’ And on this farcical note, Éric Cantona was gone from Auxerre.

THE
FRANCE FOOTBALL
INTERVIEW

Éric, you’re welcoming us at the Stade de l’Abbé-Deschamps, apologizing for not doing so in your home, as you would have done normally. Why?

There are moments when I don’t feel able to welcome somebody in my home. I do not have the strength for that. Because when someone comes to my home, generally speaking, he’s made to feel welcome. At this point in time, I’d rather stay alone with my wife, with my dogs, to cut myself from everything in my mind. I haven’t bought a paper since the game in Athens [
the 2–0 defeat to Panathinaikos, in which Cantona was uncharacteristically wayward in front of goal
], I’ve gone away from football as much as I could, to recharge my batteries.

Do you feel you do not have this inner strength any more?

I find it difficult to concentrate. Being aware of it is the hardest part. Then, you must have the inner strength to isolate yourself. I have that strength.

Do you lose this concentration when you speak to journalists?

I avoid journalists because, when I speak, I express a sensitivity, I give [a lot of] myself. A bit too much. It’s energy, ‘juice’ – it’s some of my strength I’m wasting. And twice: when I speak, then when I read the interview.

Your life seems to have changed a lot since you were pre-selected for West Germany-France, on 4 August
. . .

There have been changes, but only around me. For example, people say ‘hello’, people I don’t know. They have changed. I haven’t.

Are you troubled by this notoriety?

My environment causes me problems. But in my head, I haven’t changed, because sport is not the only thing in life. When I miss goals as in Athens, I come home, and there are so many things that make me feel good that I forget about such a bad moment. Even if I am a perfectionist and hate failure.

Do you find it normal to have been the object of so many solicitations over the last two months?