In classical literature the anti-hero is an evil misfit. In cinema he is a violent loose cannon. Yet we perpetually root for the bastard. From Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost to Schwarzenegger as the profoundly conflicted Terminator, cheering on the bad guy has never felt so delightful. And in football the anti-hero is Eric Cantona. The controversial Frenchman has just landed the job of Director of Soccer at New York Cosmos, but as far as I can see, America is blissfully unaware of Cantona—the footballing assassin sent from the past to wreak havoc on the Land of the Free. Let me explain: I’m an Englishman marooned in Hollywood, so it’s now my raison d’être to think of football as a beautiful narrative rather than a beautiful game. And Monsieur Cantona is an anti-hero straight from Central Casting.
Quick peek at the SparkNotes. Modern theory defines the anti-hero’s common attributes as: being a loner, having flashbacks relating to a dark, troubled past, and wearing lots of black. And he will not hesitate to destroy anyone who threatens him. And so to Eric, whose youth career was interrupted by a grueling spell in the French Army. Signing for Auxerre, in a January 1989 game against Torpedo Moscow he ripped off and threw away his shirt, then kicked the ball at supporters after being substituted. Did I mention this was in a friendly? Soon, Eric was also banned from international matches after insulting the national coach… live on TV. At Montpellier, he was involved in a fight that saw him throw his boots into teammate Jean-Claude Lemoult’s face. So that’s the dark and troubled past. Then, in 1994, he pulled on the ominous, all-black Manchester United away strip, and did something that changed football forever.
“To do aught good never will be our task/ But ever to do ill our sole delight.” —Satan, Paradise Lost
Before we get to that moment, though, let’s segue back to Paradise Lost. Although Milton’s ancient tome is about the Fall of Man, Satan is openly the secular hero: a more beguiling force than God himself, sexier than Adam, more dazzling that the angels. It was rather controversial, more than three centuries ago, to hand Satan the lead role, but it did a powerful thing: Milton allowed the reader to identify with the devil. And doesn’t it feel good to cheer on the ‘bad guy’? I’ve seen grainy footage of Eric Cantona that you can’t find on YouTube. It features one of Eric’s earliest red cards, and my personal favorite. Marvelously, Cantona commits a biblically bad foul, but storms off the pitch before the referee can even produce the red card. Marching away, shirtless, Cantona hilariously ignores the feeble referee chasing after him. It makes me want to applaud. Milton’s Satan is similarly arrogant, and shares that latent desire for glory, yet a taste for violence and destruction: “And with ambitious aim against the throne and monarchy of God / Raised impious war in Heaven and battle proud / With vain attempt.”
And it is this vanity that separates Satan/Cantona from the equally violent Gattuso. After all, Gattuso has the rap sheet: He bitch-slapped Beckham, love-tapped Lippi, went mental on an Italian hidden-camera prank show, and last week he even head-butted Joe Jordan. But we don’t cheer on Gattuso, that pantomime villain. And as Graeme Souness pointed out, Gatusso is “not the best of players.” Contrarily, it was easy to love Eric Cantona, for he was also a genius. He marauded through defenders like they were wasting his time. Against Sunderland in 1996, he danced past three players, then deftly floated the ball over a stranded goalkeeper with such precision, such sheer fucking perfection, that he had time to stand back and simply admire his ball as it flew goalwards. Eric’s celebration after the Sunderland ‘moment’, was simply to turn to the audience as a conductor does—to address at all four corners of the theatre, as if to say: “Yes. I just did that.” You will recognize the look as the same one the Terminator wears, like a mask of perpetual badass-ness.
I watch that Sunderland video today and it makes every single hair on my body stand up. Cantona had a simply profoud effect on my life as a football-mad kid in the 1990s. If the Spanish play to the tika-taka beat of a juggling toy, Cantona played to the sound of a violin concerto. He actually made defenders look like retarded dogs, staggering after their tails. So I showed the Sunderland YouTube video to my American colleague, Peter, 22. A New Englander and Liverpool FC obsessive, Peter can tell you the transfer prices to the nearest pound of every current Liverpool player, and blogs extensively on the English game. Yet impossibly he said to me recently, “Who is this Can-TOE-nuh”?
His name, I explained, like an angry mother addressing a misbehaving child, was pronounced “CAN-ton-ar!” I thought Peter was just too young to know of Eric, (or even the Terminator, probably, bless ‘im). But later, as I drove across Los Angeles, towards a ‘soccer’ match with my seven-a-side team, Gus, 34, a former Arizona State Quarterback, confessed that he too had never heard of Cantona! A Scotsman on the team, Gavin, simply leaned forward from the back seat, and said: “He kicked a fan in the face.”
And so to January 25, 1995, and Crystal Palace vs Eric’s Manchester United. It was a bitterly cold night in South London, and EC had just been shown the red card, yet again, for a routine horror-challenge on Richard Shaw. But as the Frenchman sulked off towards the tunnel, Cantona’s interest was piqued by a Crystal Palace supporter named Matthew Simmons, a particularly verminous specimen from Croydon. Eric was told a few home truths about his Mother, by Simmons, and dressed all in black, Cantona had his greatest moment. He jumped into the crowd, catching the thug fresh in the kisser with a violent kung-foo kick. A Kung. Foo. Kick. Eric followed up with a right hook, before being led away by Peter Schmeichel, as the crowd screamed and booed and hissed. The scene was of Pandemonium, in the truly Miltonian sense of the word: Selhurst Park had become the capital city of Hell.
John Connor: You just can’t go around killing people.
The Terminator: Why?
John Connor: What do you mean why? ‘Cause you can’t.
The Terminator: Why?
—Terminator 2: Judgment Day, 1991
Eric was completely unrepentant, giving a press conference during which his only take on events was this: “When the seagulls follow the trawler, it’s because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea.” Oh yes, the anti-hero is often misunderstood by society, and like the Arch-Fiend in Paradise Lost, Cantona was poetic and persuasive. And that’s the joy of the anti-hero. They don’t even know they’re bad. How can they, when even the audience is cheering them on? In booting Simmons, Eric was sticking one on the school bully, the racist, and the hooligan we all fear. Like Batman, another classic anti-hero, Cantona had taken the law into his own hands. He is unrepentant even today: “You have to allow yourself to lose control from time to time,” he has said, before eulogizing his career on this nugget: “I have a lot of good moments, but the one I prefer is when I kicked the hooligan.” It was, after all, the most famous kick of his career.
Most memorably, it was also a be-swooshed boot that he wore to kick the fan in the face. Nike was the long-suffering sponsor of Eric Cantona, and on that fateful day he had re-appropriated their slogan, “Just Do It”, in the worst possible way. Instead of ditching him, Nike quickly hired Eric to play himself in an epic television commercial. As the captain of a team of Nike’s top endorsees, Eric did battle with evil gargoyles on a pitch set in Dante’s Inferno. Life was imitating sport imitating art, and there was only one role for Cantona.
“And on that day, a dark warrior rose to the earth, to destroy the beautiful game.” —Nike commercial, “Good vs Evil”, 1996
Set in a Greek amphitheatre no-less, the climax of what I believe to be the best two minutes of advertising of all time saw Eric as the ultimate anti-hero. He chested the ball down in front of the goalkeeper, who was a bat-like Beelzebub, flicked his collar to attention, and destroyed the king of beasts without hesitation, before deadpanning what would forever become his catchphrase: “Au Revoir.”
“Au Revoir” [good-bye, until we meet again], channels the Terminator’s threatening declaration, “I’ll be back”—so damned obvious it was delicious. And Cantona did come back, swerving a prison sentence for common assault in lieu of community service for his kung fu kick. In the 1996 FA Cup Final against Liverpool, Eric scored the winning goal. He became the first player from outside the British Isles to lift the FA Cup as captain. James Joyce once wrote: “A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.” Satan didn’t have the power to destroy God, and Cantona, despite his best efforts, didn’t destroy the beautiful game. But today, Eric Cantona is ‘back’ once again, he is in New York, and he is being very quiet. Almost…too quiet.
Jeff Maysh is a British journalist based in Los Angeles. He supports Tottenham Hotspur and is the author of two books on the club. Find him on the web at www.jeffmaysh.com.
“Ooh ah, Cantona, show your knickers, show your bra. Under-over, Pepsi-Cola.” —Playground chant, circa 1994.
Read More: Eric Cantona
by Jeff Maysh · February 24, 2011
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The 1996 goal vs. Sunderland really is worth watching: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fu4NT9XnIvs#t=1m56s
@Jacob Yes, that’s why we embedded it in the post.
@Brian Phillips Whoops! I went straight from the RSS feed to the comments section. My bad.
@Jacob Fortunately, the more people click on that link, the more total happiness there is in the world, so all’s well that end’s well, I say.
@Brian Phillips The embedded links don’t work very well for me in Firefox (perhaps due to Flashblock?) so it would be nice to always have a direct link to the hosting website
@Ben Just add runofplay.com to your Flashblock whitelist.
Poor player – awful record at both the European and international level and a thug to boot.
Brilliant Article!
Great read.
And also one of the very few articles I have been able to properly understand as I am new to this site and have yet to synchronize my frequency with that of, say, Brian Phillips.
@T4329024 Your name is a code! How could I confuse you?
@T4329024 Must try harder.
Quality article, fantastic read. Cantona’s film ‘Looking for Eric’ showcases his acting skills haha
Gustav Dore is the best!
@Dr_Lister I agree completely. England in the mid-1990s was the provinces of the European game. Of course he succeeded there; back then England played in straight lines and had never heard of attacking centre-mid (or defensive mids to counter them).
Lister and M.G. really need to relax. Anyone who watches what Cantona did while at United cannot deny/downplay what he contributed to the legacy and fortunes of that team, my team. From his FA Cup final goal against ‘pool, to the Sunderland goal, to almost single-handedly clawing United back from a 10-point deificit in the 95-96 season, eveything the guy did just reeked of contempt for his opponents. That he called time on his career when he did only reaffirms the conviction with which he played the game.
Damn, i am listenig to this sound (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfZEvUje5KM) since one houre and visiting your site (great article, the one about XAVI) but also this one about cantona … as a french speaker i can say that I never read something so original and true about the KING … and except that… , your graphism is also so cool (middle age, red, colors and all) … By the way, i have a broadcast on a university radio and we will be glad to work together in the futur, I will come back if u please …
About Cantona, you forgot perhaps, his mistake about the Revolution, the Bank and all … it was a mistake to present this “idea” with a tshirt NIKE … Isn’t it ???
Didn’t the infamous kung fu kick take place in January of 1995, not 1994?
@JimmyB Whoops. That’s fixed.
Good stuff as always guys.
Cantona changed the definition of “Cool” in football.
(and CR7 the definition of “uncool”)
Isn’t that more important than World Cups, and Golden boots?
Great post. I usually love all of Cantona’s Nike ads. The joga bonito ad were great too. The US missed out on him due to a lack of European football exposure until the 2000’s. Articles like yours’ help to let people inside and understand a little more of the history of the beautiful game.
I sometimes think that signing Berbatov was Ferguson’s attempt to relive the “crush” that he had on Cantona.
Brilliant article Jeff, I was too young to remember anything of CAN-ton-ar, but this article with accompanied videos just do a spectacular job of conveying this man who, now i wish had the chance to watch play.
I really want to see that early red card footage. Sounds entertaining.
great article.
The writing is just too awesomely orgasmic now at ROP. I think it must be what having multiple simultaneous orgasms feels like 😀
@joao jorge Oh come on, CR7 is cool. Maybe he tries a bit hard to be so, which negates his coolness a tad, but he’s the complete package of looks, skills, off-the-field flamboyance and playboyism, etc. He’s cool!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57queEIhqqs
“Oh come on! I know what you did last summer, and who. Cristiano Ronaldo…”
Ahahahahahah… I don’t know if this makes him less cool to us, but Gossip Girl wouldn’t have touched him if he wasn’t allegedly “cool”.
As a sidebar to a dead cracking[1] piece, it’s interesting that in the history of the Stretford End only two players and two players only have ever been dubbed “The King”: Eric Cantona and Denis Law. And the parallels between the two are legion.[2]
First, on arrival at Old Trafford both were greeted more with murmurs of suspicion than hoo-hah and flat-cap-hurling hurrahs, almost certainly because of their then-improbably-exotic backgrounds, what with Cantona being French and all – yes, French! Like that garlic and funny food! – while Law, although reassuringly blond of coiffe and Aberdonian of accent, was procured from some club in Italy where not hot Bovril but minestrone soup was no doubt served at half time.
Second, the arrival of both players marked – triggered, even – new golden eras for the club. In Cantona’s first season United won the league championship for the first time in 25 years – the first time since the Law era, in fact – followed by the club’s first ever league/F.A. Cup double the following season, while Law was one of the four cornerstones of Busby’s forced rebuilding after the Munich air crash.[3]
Third, both regularly did “right flash”,[4] daringly self-confident stuff with the ball, the likes of which Old Trafford (and most of the rest of English football, probably) had never seen before but soon came to expect. Rooney’s overhead-kick goal the other week was pure Law, while every time Leo Messi or David Villa chips the ball in a slow-motion parabola over the goalkeeper, it’s always an image of Eric Cantona that sneaks into my head. More than jogo bonito it was jogo arrogante.[5]
And, finally, there’s the apparently banal but perhaps most-telling-of-all detail of what you might call their on-field deportment, their bearing. Both tended to celebrate goals in the same way, by raising their right arm, index finger pointing skywards, and loping – job done -back to the centre circle. And there’s another bit of shirt-related business that both used to do too: trap the cuffs of their shirts in the palms of their hands. Many have done it since,[6] but it was perhaps the defining quirk of how Law and Cantona carried themselves on the pitch, making them instantly recognisable in those fog-bound, pre-hi-def winters.
Of course, Eric Cantona never got to snap his collar up, walk up the steps and lift the European Cup, but neither did Denis Law, strictly speaking; he missed the 1968 final through injury.
________
1. Thoroughly satisfying in every fundamental respect (Manc. Eng.).
2. OK, a few.
3. Besides the say-in-one-breath trio of Best-Law-Charlton, the key player everyone tends to pass over was their proto-Robson/Keane/Scholes figure: Paddy Crerand.
4. Seldom saddled by self-esteem issues (Manc. Eng.).
5. For those who never saw the ur-Cantona in his pomp, here’s Denis Law.
6. Cf., among today’s players, Leo Messi and David Silva (except when they’re wearing – tsk – gloves).
@Archie_V Superb — thanks. I might add that no one palms his shirt-cuffs quite like Kaká.
I am female, American, 34, a giant soccer fan for five years, and to me, Cantona is pure artistry. He is a giant in soccer history, and one which even American soccer fans should be aware.
Chapeau!
Cleanly written article, a great piece of story-telling. Cheers.
One of my two favorite players of all time. You can’t claim he was the greatest player ever, but he definitely did everything his own way and had moments of genius that may not have all been glamorous, but they were the perfect play at exactly the perfect time
Great read: The Rebel Who Would be King
@Archie_V I used to do the cuffs thing when I was younger. I really can’t explain it, or why some players do it, but I think it’s sort of a comfort thing. Literally having a grip on something.
@Brett So characteristic was Law’s upward-pointing cuff-clutching that it’s been immortalised in bronze outside Old Trafford.
@M.G. I still say “uncool” because there is a brashness about him that makes him unreal.
He’s the “high school jock”, the quarterback that dates the cheerleader. He’s a cliché. Young, rich and beautiful. He needs a fundamental flaw. Cantona had flaws. Many of them, starting with the fact that he was never really that good as a football player or human being.
It’s easy to be Ronaldo. It’s hard to be Cantona and that makes him cool.