Cantona (24 page)

Relating to the Nîmois was easy for Éric; like him, they were both exuberant and reserved, their natural warmth still checked by the rigours of Calvinism. In fact, when the football club had been created in 1901 under the name of Sporting Club Nîmois, its founder, Henri Monnier, had specified that only Protestants could wear its colours; the adoption of professionalism in the mid-1930s had caused much hand-wringing among the traditionalists, who feared the club might lose its God-fearing identity (which it did, but without altering many idiosyncrasies which can be felt to this day). Cantona sought to consummate his divorce from everything Marseille now represented for him; Nîmes, with its sparse crowds, humble ambitions and kind-hearted manager, could never compete with OM on equal terms, but this suited Éric to the hilt.

Goethals had mocked him; Tapie had suggested he should be sent to a psychiatric hospital. Mézy said: ‘As a man, Éric has never disappointed me . . . as a player, he hasn’t got the right to! But I’ll always be here to support him.’ Convincing Cantona to join the club had been easy. ‘Maybe it is because he identifies himself so strongly with Nîmes,’ Mézy explained, ‘which is a passionate city, with passionate people.’ He would give Éric ‘the means to express himself fully and freely; he will have more responsabilities within the team than he’s ever had before and will have to be an example to follow for our youngsters.’ This was said without the least trace of irony – which is precisely how Cantona wanted it to be.

Money was a problem, as Éric wouldn’t come cheap. Tapie asked for FF10m; fortunately, the club’s chairman and the mayor of the city were one and the same person, Jean Bousquet, who released public funds to finance the acquisition of the player (again, entirely legitimate at the time). This arrangement did no favours to Cantona, whose purchase quickly became a political hot potato. The flamboyant Bousquet didn’t want for enemies, who seized upon this opportunity to ask their electorate whether it was sensible to pay a fortune for a footballer when cash was needed to improve the city’s sewage system. Should success prove elusive, Éric would be the first to feel the backlash.

Despite the controversy, the deal went through, and on 27 July Nîmes’s new skipper made his debut at home, having missed the season’s first game because of a slight knee injury.
Les Crocodiles
had drawn at Sochaux (1–1), and drew again – 2–2 against Toulouse – in front of little more than 10,000 paying spectators. Michel Platini had taken a seat in the stands, and left the ground a reassured man. Éric had coolly dispatched a penalty, looked fit and sharp, and pronounced himself ‘fully satisfied’ with his young team. He wouldn’t be ‘satisfied’ for long. Two defeats and two 0–0 draws followed, in which Nîmes had created hardly any chances, and failed to score on each occasion. When they finally did, it was in a 4–2 drubbing by OM, of all clubs, a match Cantona missed because of a thigh injury which kept him out of competitive football for almost a month, from 17 August to mid-September. Nîmes now occupied 19th place (out of 20) in
le championnat
, which many believed was their rightful position.

Platini never lost faith in Cantona throughout this dreadful summer, and invited him to join the national squad for a crucial European qualifier against Czechoslovakia on 4 September, which France won 2–1 in some style, thanks to a magnificent brace by Papin. Platini’s gesture touched Cantona a great deal. ‘An international player is also a man,’ he said, ‘and, psychologically, it’s comforting to know you haven’t been forgotten, especially when you’re not playing.’

Nîmes finally woke up in the eighth league game of the season. Cannes, for whom a certain Zinédine Zidane – then 19 years of age – was playing, were beaten 2–1. Still Cantona-less, Mézy’s players fought out a precious 3–2 victory in Nancy. Fine results both, but not the kind that would stop tongues wagging in the provincial town. Nîmes, it seemed, were doing better without their star player – the striker who didn’t strike, and who failed to do so again on his return when Le Havre were added to their victims (1–0) on 14 September.

When his team went through a purple patch of sorts in the autumn, remaining undefeated until late October, few attributed the club’s newfound confidence to the influence of its skipper. In fact, Éric applied himself to the task of captaining a group of unproven youngsters with great diligence, despite his reluctance to take on the mantle of leader, for rousing speeches meant little to him. You only used your voice when you had failed to share information and feelings in a different, more profound way – instinctively, by exchanging a look, or by passing a ball.

Listen to Cantona speak. His delivery is halting, almost stuttering, in French as in English. He’ll stop mid-sentence, swallow, pause again – unless he’s acting, of course. What will eventually come out will read wonderfully off the page, but were you to transcribe faithfully what he said, the punctuation mark you’d use most often would be ‘. . .’, as if verbal expression were an obstacle to communication. I’m wondering: for him, are poets the blessed few who have managed to go ‘beyond words’, something he was incapable of? Can it be what he admires so in them?

Cantona didn’t lead by giving orders, but by example. He ran, and ran, and ran. He ‘drenched the jersey’, as the French say. This most selfless of egotists genuinely couldn’t care less if another player came up with the goals. (‘If I have a 49 per cent chance of scoring, against my teammate’s 51 per cent, I’ll pass the ball to him. That’s normal.’) Nîmes climbed up the table, at one stage coming within seven points of leaders Marseille, when Éric’s penalty (his second and last goal for
Les Crocodiles
, for whom he never scored from open play) gave them a 1–0 win over Lille on 19 October. Michel Mézy had by now taken over from Bousquet as chairman of the Olympique, and France had won 2–1 in Spain (with Éric) and guaranteed
Les Bleus
’ presence at the forthcoming European Championship of Nations, with seven wins in seven games in the qualification phase.

Apart from a fiery exchange of words with Robert Nouzaret, the general manager of Montpellier to whom he had ‘jokingly’ offered his captain’s armband in a heated scoreless derby on 4 October, there had been little controversy on or off the pitch. Nîmes appeared to have welcomed him as one of their own. A couple of weeks after the draw at La Mosson, he attended the inauguration of a new playing field in a so-called ‘difficult’ neighbourhood of his adopted city, staying far longer than planned to please the autograph-hunters. ‘There are places where you feel good,’ he told a
France Football
reporter. ‘Teams, players which enable you to express yourself. Fully and freely. Because when you give the ball, you know for sure that it’ll come back where you expect it. Because runs actually serve a purpose. Because no one plays for himself. That’s what football is for me, the best football.’

Too often, though, despite what Éric said, the ball didn’t come back where he expected it. His devotion to Nîmes couldn’t hide the plain fact that he, a player of the highest calibre, was surrounded with what was at best a half-decent squad of middling-to-average pros, untested youth team players and rejects whose skill and ambition could never match his. As happens with teams in which one individual clearly towers above the others in terms of ability, the excellence of a single player can push recipients of more moderate gifts beyond what is expected of them – but only for so long. Think of Maradona at Napoli, for example. The flipside of such a ‘miracle’ is that a single loss can be enough to precipitate a catastrophic series of results, as the ordinary mortals realize that their engine has been overheating. The wheels come off, seemingly all at once. Nîmes experienced this brutal awakening on the occasion of a not unexpected 2–0 defeat at PSG, on 26 October. Every manager at every level knows that it is only when you’re bad that you find out how good you really are. To judge by what followed, Nîmes were decidedly poor.

First, Rennes ran out 2–1 winners at the Stade des Costières. Then Toulon blitzed the toothless
Crocodiles
5–0. Caen inflicted on them their second home defeat in a row (0–1). Metz joined in the slaughter with a 4–0 win that didn’t flatter the hosts. Fourteen goals conceded in five games, one scored and no points: Nîmes were heading for the drop at this rate. It mattered not one jot that Cantona showed exceptional form when playing for his country; it merely substantiated the sceptics’ view that having Éric in your side was like having two coins in your pocket. When Platini flipped one of them, it landed on heads every time, whereas Mézy could only spin a dud.

On 20 November France established a new record in the history of the European Championship of Nations by winning their eighth and final qualifying match (their nineteenth undefeated game in a row – another record), to finish their campaign with sixteen points out of sixteen. In the absence of the suspended Papin, Éric had dazzled against Iceland in Reykjavik, revelling in the role of centre-forward in an ultra-attacking 4-2-4 formation. Two goals – one header from six yards, and a short-range shot following a superb one-two with PSG winger Amara Simba – rewarded one of his most devastating displays for the national team. A radiant Platini told the press how Éric ‘sees things more quickly than the others,
understands
them more quickly . . . He’s a very intelligent guy.’ This was some praise, coming as it did from a supreme master of the game’s geometry, Juve’s greatest-ever number 10. Cantona found it almost overwhelming. ‘This is the most beautiful compliment you can pay to a football player,’ he said. ‘The beautiful game recognized by someone who knows what he’s talking about . . . It gives me incredible pleasure. These few words are more important than thousands of critical comments.’

They also came at a time when Éric needed them the most. While on a short break in the walled city of Carcassone, he had just learnt that his adored grandfather Joseph had passed away. It was a bitter sea that lapped on the Côte Bleue from then onwards. One by one, the threads that bound him to his Arcadian youth were cut away from him. As he told his biographer Pierre-Louis Basse, ‘I should never have left the world of children.’ Cantona’s neverland is inhabited by many.

Éric, who had hidden his grief from all except those closest to him, still had to explain why he showed two faces to the world. ‘At Nîmes,’ he said, ‘it’s a different problem. It’s a team of youngsters who have great qualities, but who are still finding their way in the first division. With the national team, we didn’t reach that level in one day. We needed time. It’ll be the same with Nîmes.’ Time? But who was willing to give him time? It was so much easier to shoot him down. How did he feel about that? ‘Criticisms hurt,’ he admitted. ‘But nobody has succeeded or will succeed in killing me. Nobody.’

Then, during an otherwise uneventful, scrappy 1–1 home draw with St Étienne, on 7 December, Cantona committed suicide on national television. ‘He was fouled,’ recalled Henri Émile. ‘No free kick was given. He turned towards the referee and complained. The referee gave him a lecture. The game went on. Soon afterwards, he was fouled again. Still no free kick [
in Émile’s view, because of the argument he had just had with the official
]. He took the ball, threw it at the ref, and went to the dressing-room without even looking back.’

The referee, one M. Blouet, was made to look rather ridiculous as he brandished a red card at the departing player, standing straight-backed in his black shorts. Éric confided to a journalist: ‘It’s me, so, people will talk about it for two or three days. Then things will calm down. Time should be given the time to work . . .’ How misguided he was. Time was precisely what no one in the game’s establishment was willing to give him. Cantona was hauled in front of the FA’s disciplinary committee. He apologized for his action, and requested to be treated like any other player, expecting the customary two-game ban which punished any misdemeanour of this kind. But the response of the panel chairman Jacques Riolacci cut him to the quick. The apparatchik handed out a four-match suspension, adding, unforgivably: ‘You can’t be judged like any other player. Behind you is a trail which smells of sulphur. Anything can be expected from an individualist like you.’

Riolacci, who had been in place since 1969 and, at the time of writing, still held the post of chief prosecutor at the Ligue de Football Professionnel, was startled by Cantona’s reaction to his comments. Éric walked up to every member of the commission and repeated the same word:
‘Idiot!’
and left the room. The original punishment was extended to two months. That would teach him. Riolacci felt compelled to tell Agence France-Presse: ‘This is a striking summing-up of the character of a boy who has chosen to marginalize himself, and whom no one can channel.’

Reprehensible as Cantona’s behaviour had been, nothing could justify the harshness of the verdict and, especially, the condescending tone of the judge’s statement. If Éric wanted proof that he’d been tried for being Cantona, and not for what he’d done, he had it. They couldn’t quite push him off the cliff. So he jumped, and announced his retirement from football. Éric Cantona died for the first time on 12 December 1991.

‘To move away, to change clubs and horizons wasn’t something that worried me. I loved it,’ he said shortly after his second coming to Marseille. He may well have felt that way. But I was struck by one of Éric’s assertions that, when looked at more closely, made no real sense – certainly not when he talked to Laurent Moisset in 1990. Éric kept referring to his urge for constant change. ‘I need to feel good in a club,’ he said. ‘With everyone. To have clear, untwisted relationships. Maybe that’s why my adventures have been short-lived in some clubs. When you arrive, when you’re at the stage of discovery, you tell yourself, “Everything is going to be just fine.” Everything’s beautiful. As time goes by, sometimes, you realize it’s the other way round. It’s better to leave.’ True, at the age of 24, Cantona had played for five professional clubs already, and would join a sixth (Nîmes) a year hence. Howard Wilkinson would often refer to Cantona’s nomadism to support his claim that Éric’s departure from Leeds fitted a pattern of chronic instability rooted in the player’s character, not caused by the circumstances he found himself in. In 2009 this shuffling of clubs would not be deemed exceptional, especially as three of Éric’s moves were loans, not straight transfers. But nineteen years ago, when many footballers wore the same jersey for over a decade, Éric’s zig-zagging trajectory jarred with the commonly held view that a player ought to ‘bed himself in’ to succeed.