SPECTATOR SPORT
Au revoir, Eric
Simon Barnes
THE football season is on its last knock- ings, and across the land football's follow- ers sort out the Man of the Season from the rest. It seems to me that there can only be one winner, and that is Eric Cantona.
Admittedly, the turbulent Frenchman did not actually play a single game all season. He retired at the end of last season to become an actor, having already played his greatest role. He was the Sarah Bernhardt of football, every gesture, every pout the result of a lifetime of study. There is a Yiddish word nebbish: a per- son who leaves the room and you think somebody has just come in — a nonentity, a person of no account, a hole in the air. Cantona is the exact opposite. Even his absence is filled with a brooding and men- acing presence.
Manchester United, Eric's former team, You will recall, had the championship all sewn up by November. The rest were scrap- Ping futilely for second place. Eric had gone, long live Eric. His heirs strutted with exactly his arrogance. Eric's personal self- confidence had become a corporate belief. The Messiah had gone, leaving behind an all-powerful church of true believers. The faith of Eric would live forever. So it seemed, anyway. But this is exactly what has not hap- pened. Doubt has crept in. Doubt has undone Manchester United. The one thing an infant faith cannot afford is doubt. The charismatic leader of men allows no time for doubting; but when he is gone, the faith lives or dies by the strength of faith in his followers. Doubt, like a small piece of grit in an engine, has worked its way deep inside, and the engine has stalled.
It was Eric's perfect self-certainty that gave him the gift of finishing — not just finishing the passing movement to score the goal, but finishing the season to col- lect the championship. He did this first at Leeds United, a fact of which Leeds fol- lowers remain in a permanent state of denial. He played very few games at the end of the season, and mostly as a substi- tute. But in a delicate balance it does not take a ton weight to turn the scales. Eric was there. ca suffit. Championship to Leeds.
He then went to Manchester United, and won three championships in four years.
The single gap well, don't blame Eric, or perhaps do: he was not there, his absence once again the dominant presence of the long and troubled season. He was busy serving his suspension for his famous kung- fu assault on an abusive Crystal Palace sup- porter.
Last season, his football — never, in truth, the most important part of his contri- bution — was less than outstanding. Physi- cal and spiritual weariness showed. All he did was to win the championship. In the scrap at the springtime end of the season, in game after game, Manchester United sneaked a 1-0 victory and, in game after game, they did so with a goal in the 79th minute from Cantona.
They were not goals that sprang from Cantona's ideals of lyrical perfection, not goal-of-the-season goals. They were just goals that won a championship, goals that came from Eric's gift for finishing, goals that came from Eric's perfect self-certainty.
Many reasons have been suggested for Manchester United's failure of nerve, and all of them are correct: injuries; disappoint- ment in the European Cup; mental exhaus- tion; even the excellence of Arsenal, the likely champions.
But it all comes down to the ability to fin- ish, the ability to hold your nerve. Doubt has triumphed, and that was an opponent Eric always had the beating of. Apres lui, la deluge.
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