21 December 1996, Manchester, Old Trafford.
By the time David May passed the ball to Eric Cantona, United were already leading 4-0, who waited just past the midline.
Three Sunderland players surrounded him, and Richard Odd was behind Cantona, preventing him from turning around. Such a space is very demanding on the player's sense of the ball, but for a player like Cantona, there is no difficulty. He completed the turn after a fake move, getting rid of all 3 Sunderland defenders in a row.
Fans let out exclamations of approval, but the Manchester United captain's performance was not over.
At the time, Cantona wasn't going to be too fast, but when he started, you could still feel that something great was about to happen. Cantona passed the ball to Brian McClair, then flashed past Andy Melville, receiving a pass from a teammate to complete the two-on-one.
When Cantona received the ball near the edge of the penalty area, he glanced up at the Sunderland goalkeeper and his old teammate Lionel Perez in Nimes before – Cantona found that Perez was about 8 yards away from him, and about that distance from the goal.
Cantona completed the calculation in an instant. He decided to rub the ball up with his right foot, just above Perez's head, drawing a perfect parabola that hit the junction of the far column and the beam and bounced into the net.
The goal was a beautiful work of art and one of the most memorable goals of the Premier League era. As the fans stood up to cheer him on, Cantona stood where he was, spinning 360 degrees, accepting and enjoying the fans' adoration.
That's what Cantona looks like: he stands up collar, chest up, chin up, shows his unparalleled confidence, and has a look of arrogance on his face – as if inviting the fans and players in the audience to bow to his talent.
That's what happened at the beginning of the Premier League.
At the time, Cantona looked as if he were from another world, possessing skills and football IQ far beyond the comprehension of England fans. On the pitch, even on the dullest Saturday afternoon, he showed his unique skill and personality. Off the pitch, he also says vague "riddles" – which undoubtedly adds to his mystique.
There is no doubt that such distinctive qualities are the key to Cantona's football legacy that will endure in England.
Cantona's energy doesn't seem to belong out of this world, and he can do almost everything that other Premier League players at that time wanted to do but couldn't. For example, in the weeks at the end of the 1995-96 season, it was almost always he who carried Manchester United forward and eventually won the Premier League title.
In short, Cantona changed Sir Alex Ferguson's side with his own efforts, and then used it to change English football.
Before coming to Manchester United, Cantona helped Leeds United win the last old League One title. After that, he moved to Manchester United and continued the road to success. For those fans who have not been able to witness his influence on Manchester United, Cantona is almost a figure in mythology. It was as if he had spent 5 and a half years lighting up the entire Premier League stage, and then suddenly disappeared into a fog a few days after his 31st birthday – not just leaving Manchester United, but retiring from football altogether.
If you look at the basic statistics, Cantona's ta60 list is difficult to compare with many of the great centers who rank lower than him. 156 Premier League games, 70 goals, which is a good goal efficiency, but still behind Walcott, Abonlajo and Benteke. What about assists? 56 assists, two fewer than Crouch.
If you combine the two statistics, with the more popular "participation in goals" data today, Cantona's data ranking has improved a lot, but it is still some distance from the top of the Premier League, and it does not reflect his revolutionary influence on the team, or on English football as a whole.
So, is Cantona a world-class player?
He finished 3rd in the 1993 Ballon d'Or vote, but from an objective point of view, he did not belong to the Ballon d'Or. At the age of 25, Cantona came to England with a reputation for being a "maverick", but his talent was overshadowed by his personal "baggage".
Cantona made 45 appearances for the national team, but during that time, France missed the 1998 European Championship and the 1990 and 1994 World Cups. At the 1992 European Championships, France reached the final round, but was eliminated from the group stage, and Cantona played little role in the team. Four years later, at the 1996 European Championships, Cantona was controversially defeated. In his first World Cup after retiring, France lifted the Hercules Cup.
At the same time, Cantona's performance in the club's European competition was not satisfactory. He has scored 5 goals in 16 appearances for Manchester United in continental competitions and 4 goals in 11 continental matches for other clubs. It is no exaggeration to say that Cantona has had a greater impact on Leeds United in European competition than on Manchester United – he has scored key goals for Leeds United in both his matches against Glasgow Rangers and Stuttgart.
All of this needs to be acknowledged before cantona's greatness can be told, but it became the basis for shaping the zeitgeist of the early Premier League era. As Ferguson put it years later, Cantona was "the right player on the right team at the right time" – a phrase that applies to the league as a whole, even if United's opponents at the time would never have welcomed Cantona.
As he said in the introduction to the PL60 series, not everything was "ready" when the Premier League was formed in 1992.
At that time, the media attention to the new league was unprecedented, but it was really unnamed. For example, in the European Championships that year, superstars such as Luther Gullit, Frank Rijkaard, Marco van Basten and Robert Baggio played in Serie A, and even England superstars such as Des Walker, Paul Gascoin and David Pratt were in the Italian team. In contrast, the newly formed Premier League lacks a lot of star flavor, and the quality of players, teams and games is completely incomparable with Serie A.
But Cantona is different.
His talent is different, and so is his reputation. Cantona's transfer from Nimes to Leeds United was remarkable enough in itself, as the British media knew little about French football except for the French national team at the time.
But Cantona's arrival also has a rather peculiar backstory: he was banned from the national team for calling head coach Henri Michel a piece of shit; Marseille was swept out of marseille for throwing his shirt at head coach Gérard Gilli after being replaced; he was suspended for a month while in Nimes for smashing the ball at the referee, and then he was suspended for an additional month in order to fight back and insult every member of the French Football Association's disciplinary committee; and finally, Cantona responded to the French Football Association by announcing that he was considering retirement.
So the British media came to a very simple conclusion: Cantona was a difficult bad boy.
Cantona's influence at Leeds United was somewhat overrated, but there was no doubt that on the road to Leeds United's victory in 1992, Cantona provided a unique motivation and conviction. One of the most famous was a 3-0 win over Chelsea at Elan Road, where Cantona scored his signature third goal – picking the ball in a row and ending with a volley to seal the win.
It seems that Cantona and Leeds United are a match made in heaven.
After winning the title, he stood on the balcony of Leeds Town Hall and told the fans: "I don't know why I love you, but I love you."
Later, in the 1992–93 season, he scored a hat-trick against Liverpool on the Charity Shield at the start of the season.
Unfortunately, in Cantona at the time, there seemed to be no good thing that could have lasted too long.
Under Howard Wilkinson, Cantona struggled to secure regular starting spots. Then, three months after the start of the new season, in a state of shock from Leeds United fans and endless doubts from all Premier League fans, Cantona was sold to Manchester United.
As to how the deal was made, there is already an urban legendary legend passed down at Old Trafford.
On 25 November 1992, Leeds United, through Bill Fotherby, called Manchester United president Martin Edwards to inquire about the possibility of signing Dennis Elvin. According to Ferguson' description, Edwards, at Ferguson's request, told Leeds that the heart had died. But at the same time, Ferguson wrote a note telling Edwards, "Ask him about Cantona."
Edwards went to ask Fosser the question, and to everyone's surprise, negotiations on Cantona began, and within a few hours a deal had been made. The transfer fee is just £1.2 million.
Leeds United single-handedly brokered a deal for Cantona, who joined a team that had not lifted a league trophy in the past quarter-century.
For Manchester United, this inertia of "failure" is largely insurmountable, just like the 30 years when Liverpool did not win the top flight - in the previous 1991-92 season, Manchester United won only 3 games in the last 11 rounds, and at one point suffered three consecutive defeats, giving up the top position; in the first year of the Premier League, Manchester United's record in the first 15 rounds was 2 consecutive defeats and 3 winless, 5 consecutive wins, 5 consecutive draws, 2 consecutive defeats and 7 rounds without a win, ranking tenth in the league.
Then Cantona joined the team and changed... all.
A few years later, Ferguson said: "Cantona was born to play for Manchester United. Some of the prestigious players were intimidated by the size and expectations of the squad after coming to Manchester United, but Cantona did not. He walked over to the club, straightened his chest, looked up at everything around him, as if to ask, "I'm Cantona, how old are you?" Are you big enough for me? ”」
"At the time, we were an inspired team that was in transition. In the summer before that, I knew we only needed a specific player to take our performance to the next level, and the like of Cantona has always been our favorite. Of course, after signing Cantona, I knew we could expect him to do something different right away."
Over the next four and a half years, Cantona whipped up a whirlwind of passionate football and trophies in Manchester – as well as red cards and controversies, of course. It was as if overnight everything was on track, and on the pitch and in the stands at Old Trafford, the mood of the players and fans was completely different from six months ago.
In the journey to the long-awaited league title, Manchester United burst out with amazing energy and dedicated many unforgettable performances. Whether it's Dennis Ervin, Andrey Kancherski, Ryan Giggs or older people like Mark Hughes, every Manchester United player is inspired by Cantona's performance.
Looking back at Cantona's highlights for Manchester United's goals, and looking back at the magnificent chapters he wrote at the Theatre of Dreams, you will find that countless goals are like works of art: the away challenge to Southampton on the edge of the penalty area, the unstoppable free kick against Arsenal in Highbury, the breakthrough goal after the Manchester City home score... Four or two jacks and thunder are the best adjectives for Cantona's shot, and he has scored memorable goals on both his left and right feet.
But in addition to that, Cantona also scored a lot of headers. Despite being 1.87 metres tall, Cantona is not the kind of striker who will compete with Tony Adams for the first drop spot near the midline. He prefers to be ready in the small penalty area, receiving accurate passes from Kanchersky, Giggs or later David Beckham, finding a space header to break the goal. Of course, Cantona is also very proficient in those 1v1 single-knife ball handling, as well as penalty opportunities.
Then there were those classic goals that Cantona had created for his teammates: a right-footed out-of-the-foot assist in Ervin's goal against Tottenham, a wonderful arc to find Ole Gunnar Solskjaer in West Ham, and a juggling hanging shot over the crossbar against Nottingham Forest, which bounced back and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer scored easily – an assist in the Premier League's calculations. Like Pele, this kind of goal can be considered a great shot that "should have happened but ended up regretting to miss".
And then, what we can't avoid, about the ugly side of Cantona — some rough steals, or less necessary stampedes. Over the years, some red cards can still be considered too harsh, but there are also some yellow cards that are merciless under the referees.
For example, at Selhurst Park in January 1995, The red card That Cantoner received was nothing compared to that — of course, on the way back from outside the sideline of the pitch to the dressing room after being sent off, a truly terrifying scene emerged. The fans' insults at him were unbearable, so Cantona aimed at a Crystal Palace fan who had spoken too badly, flipped over the billboard, and performed his flying leg kung fu.
Manchester United immediately decided to suspend him for 4 months, but the FA still felt that it was not enough and decided to take action and suspend him for 8 months.
To this day, the discussion about Cantona's foot continues. Many people will defend Cantona, especially after the investigation report found that the victim fan had participated in a National Front rally 3 years ago and was convicted of violent robbery for attacking a waiter at a gas station.
In 2020, 442 did a feature story about the 25th anniversary of that event. In an interview, Cantona said his favorite moment of his career was "when he kicked that hooligan," adding that the biggest regret of his career was "not kicking him harder."
However, even Ferguson admitted that the Actions of the French Striker were "appalling".
Later, at Croydon Magistrates Court, Cantoner pleaded guilty to criminal charges of assaulting fans and was sentenced to 2 weeks in prison before appealing for a commutation to 120 hours of community service. Cantona held a press conference, and the media crowded the press room to find out what he was thinking. So he said the confusing quote slowly but forcefully.
"The seagulls follow the fishing boat because they think the sardines will be thrown into the sea."
In an interview decades later, Cantona said he didn't mean anything special when he said it, but it was amusing to see so many people studying and discussing the statement. But he also admits that this subconscious speech may be a projection of his inner subconscious.
One thing that's not ridiculous, but it's also funny, is that Cantona has always felt like he's being persecuted by British fans and the FA. After his ban, he is preparing to return to France and (for the second time) consider retiring. Or going to Italy was also an option, when Inter was interested in him. Had it not been for Ferguson's intervention, the event would have been the end of Cantona's legend in England.
Ferguson flew to Paris, rode a motorcycle along the streets for a while, and secretly met his favorite star players. Ferguson was almost pleading with Cantona to return, reminding him in passing that in his years at Old Trafford, Cantona enjoyed a sense of belonging that had never been seen before in his career.
Cantona agreed and he decided to return to the Premier League because he still had unfinished business.
In the 1994-95 season without Cantona, United finished with two runners-up: after Blake himself in the league and losing to Everton in the FA Cup final.
Cantona's absence has only made his legendary rise again, almost to the point of holiness as the Bible. Nearly nine months later, when Cantona made his comeback against Liverpool, the stands at Old Trafford became an ocean of tricolour flags, with a fan telling Sky Sports staff that "God is back".
With Cantona's return, a new Manchester United team was formed, and the Neville brothers, Nicky Bart, David Beckham and Paul Scholes, who were considered "nothing to win" at the beginning of the season, also became mainstays. The reinvented Red Devils swept the 1995–96 Premier League and FA Cup doubles, and in the fierce battle with Newcastle, Cantona was almost single-handedly the heart of the team.
In the second half of that season, Cantona was the only player to score in United's five narrow 1-0 wins, a full 10 points. In the FA Cup, in the first game, It was Cantona's draw that helped United get a chance to replay, while in the final, Cantona scored a deadlock in the 86th minute to help United beat Liverpool.
At the end of the season, Cantona was named Player of the Year by the Journalists Association. For some journalists who wanted to kick him out of English football forever after the Selhurst incident, it was humiliating. However, you should never underestimate the extent to which the news media loves this story of redemption — or, in Cantona's case, the quest for sardines. (Perhaps it is correct to understand Cantona's words this way?) ）
Then the clock went forward another 12 months, and at the end of the next season, Cantona suddenly announced his retirement, shocking the entire football world. This announcement is like a bombshell, the kind of blockbuster that will be asked, "What are you doing when you hear this news?"
Manchester United and the Premier League without Cantona were completely unthinkable at the time.
Looking back now, I can indeed find some clues that he is ready to retire. If the 1995-96 season was an individualistic adventure story of the return of heroes, the 1996-97 season looked a bit overdone. Cantona once again helped United win the Premier League title, his fifth top-flight title in five and a half years in English football.
At the same time, he also has some top-level performances, such as the all-time goal against Sunderland. However, when looking back on this video, he does look different from him a few years ago: heavier and more solid. He still had that ballet-like touch feel, but at this stage of his career, how to control his weight became a problem for Cantona.
So when Cantona had the idea of retiring for the first time the day after United's Champions League elimination by Dortmund, Ferguson was shocked at first – of course, Cantona didn't do well in the two-legged quarter-finals.
However, many years later, Ferguson wrote in his autobiography that he admitted to seeing the appeal of football diminishing for his captain: "Looking at Cantona's occasional sluggish eyes and changing body shape, I have to admit that maybe he was right – the rapids could avoid his visible decline in front of the fans and then gradually lose the respect of the fans, which is simply a humiliation for his self-esteem."
This way of leaving has allowed those who have a cult of personality for Cantona to grow undiminished.
Unlike many people in sports circles, Cantona turned away when fans were still expecting him. Many United fans didn't realize at the time that Cantona had nothing to offer after one of the most intense and honourable careers. Nor do they know that Cantona is increasingly frustrated with the sport and the club's marketing department, who sees the team as nothing more than a pawn.
So, God knows how Cantona sees where football has gone over the years, especially from his old clubs.
After retiring from the military, Cantona's acting career achieved a degree of success, including playing himself in Ken Lodge's film In Search of Eric, a story about a postman with a broken life who sees a football hero as a spiritual mentor.
Not surprisingly, the film was recognized by many Manchester United fans, especially the post-70s and post-80s fans – they didn't know if they could still see the home team win the title, and Cantona's arrival at the team changed everything. This also allows Cantona to rank high among many fans about the many legends of Old Trafford, above Brian Robson, Norman Whiteside, Hughes, Giggs, Roy Keane, Scholes, Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney.
Cantona is a fantastic player, but more importantly he is a great player who came to the right place at the right time. At that time, the Premier League and Manchester United needed such a hero to appear. And The appearance of Cantona has given them a player who has turned their wildest dreams into reality.
It is true that some players have achieved more in The European or world football scene, but no one has mastered English football like Cantona, changed English football according to their own wishes, and finally conquered English football.
Cantona turned away, leaving us all subservient to his genius and leaving us all wondering if there would be another genius like him coming to English football.
Next issue, 2nd place, Alain Shearer.
This article is compiled from The Athletic's "Premier League 60" series by Oliver Kay.
Following the "Don't Know the Ball Column" on major platforms, we will continue to share The Athletic's "Premier League 60 Stars" series of articles.