250 Days. Daniel Storey

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СКАЧАТЬ game before his arrival and 1.92 goals per league game afterwards. From being eighth in the league and nine points from the top, United finished the season as league champions, with a ten-point cushion to second place.

      Alongside the results, Cantona changed the mood too. By New Year’s Day 1993 Ferguson was publicly enthusing about Cantona’s effect on every element of Manchester United. ‘More than at any time since I was playing, the club is alive,’ he said. ‘It’s as if the good old days are back and the major factor, as far as I’m concerned, is the Frenchman.’

      Manchester United’s former greats lined up to pour on praise. ‘I can’t think of anyone who I would rather wear my crown,’ said Denis Law. George Best was even more effusive: ‘I would pay to watch Cantona play. There are not many players over the years I would say that about. He is a genius.’ Old Trafford had its new king.

      But the appeal of Cantona lay not just in his achievement, but also the controversy. Like another famous No. 7 at Manchester United who courted headlines off the pitch as much as on it, Cantona’s misdemeanours did not detract from his legacy; they cemented it. Cantona’s popularity with supporters is explained very simply: he was one of them. Here was a superstar, but with the flaws of Everyman laid proudly bare for all to see.

      Never were those flaws more exposed than at Selhurst Park on 25 January 1995. Cantona’s acrobatic assault on Matthew Simmons provoked one of the longest bans for an on-pitch offence in the history of English football, and created a media circus the like of which the sport had never witnessed. Moreover, it threatened to force Cantona’s departure from England in the same manner in which he had left France, ignominy trumping all else. Had this happened, Cantona’s reputation at Old Trafford would have been very different.

      Ferguson risked his own reputation over Cantona, but also acceded to him. This is captured in one memorable Steve Bruce anecdote. The squad were invited to Manchester Town Hall for a civic reception, and required to wear club suits. Cantona turned up wearing flip-flops, ripped jeans and a long, multi-coloured coat. As captain, Bruce was instructed to tell the manager that several players weren’t happy with Cantona’s appearance, believing it to be disrespectful.

      ‘Fergie’s on the red wine,’ Bruce recalls. ‘He puts down his glass, looks over at Eric. “Tell them from me, Steve,” he says, “that if they can play like him next year, they can all come as fucking Joseph too.”’

      So when Cantona did step out of line so spectacularly in January 1995, Ferguson inevitably felt let down and wrestled with his own moral compass as well as what was best for Manchester United. In sticking by his man, Ferguson doubled down his trust in an enigma when others in his position would have taken an alternative – and easier – route. It proved to be a masterstroke.

      For all the focus on Cantona during the 250 days between kung-fu kick and return to the pitch, Manchester United changed too. Ferguson started an evolution that began with a mini-revolution: senior players were sold but not replaced, while extraordinary faith was placed in a crop of prodigious young talent. During that summer, with Manchester United neither the reigning Premier League nor FA Cup champions, Ferguson would have his judgement called into question. The great manager even admitted to doubting himself. That didn’t happen often.

      The ‘Class of 92’, as they would be nicknamed in hindsight, were already on the fringes of United’s first team when Cantona assaulted Simmons, but Ferguson brought them to the front and centre of his vision in the Frenchman’s absence.

      Cantona’s role in that process has been too easily overlooked. His ban enabled him to play tutor and mentor to a wonderful generation of academy graduates. In turn it helped establish Ferguson’s first dynasty as Manchester United manager.

      ‘He changed the mentality and changed the way of everything,’ Peter Schmeichel said. ‘All the kids we’ve seen grow up with Manchester United from that period, they’ve really benefited from that and you could go and speak to David Beckham, Gary Neville and Paul Scholes about him. They will always point to him, as he was the guy.’

      It is wonderfully fitting that Cantona’s first game back, against Liverpool at Anfield, was the first match in which all six of the ‘Class of 92’ appeared in a Manchester United shirt: Gary Neville, Phil Neville, Nicky Butt and Ryan Giggs as starters, David Beckham and Paul Scholes as substitutes.

      This is the story of Cantona’s lasting impact on Manchester United, told through the 250 days between assault and comeback. A man whose temperament was questioned when he signed ultimately failed to escape his imperfections. But rather than erode his and Ferguson’s legacy, it only helped to define both.

       DAY 1

      ‘Go on, Cantona, have an early shower’

      At 8.57 pm, Steve Lindsell got the shot.

      Lindsell had gone to Selhurst Park on a Wednesday evening to watch Manchester United try to move to the top of the Premier League and witness the third anniversary of Eric Cantona’s arrival in English football through the lens of his camera. He was positioned on the touchline, primed. He would hope to sell a few choice photos – a goal celebration, frustration etched onto a contorted face, a manager thrusting his hands in pockets to protect against the cold January night – to several media outlets.

      Right place, right time. Midway through the second half, Lindsell hurriedly clicked his shutter and took the photos that captured the most outrageous moment of the Premier League’s first decade. The most famous footballer in the land had both feet off the ground. One was planted into the chest of a supporter. Around him, fans who had rushed to the ground after work, or paced the same walk from their homes as they had done a hundred times before, watched on. Just another home game had become a match they would never forget.

      ‘I snapped, and snapped again,’ Lindsell said. ‘I thought I had a good picture but couldn’t imagine the impact it would have. I went to my van outside Selhurst Park, printed the roll, which must have taken me 15 to 20 minutes, then sent the pictures. It was only the day afterwards that all hell broke loose.’

      Before the 48th minute Cantona had been a passenger in an uneventful game. Palace, just outside the relegation zone on goal difference, had broken up play effectively and limited Manchester United to a series of half chances. This was largely due to the man-marking job done on Cantona by Palace central defender Richard Shaw, who had been instructed by manager Alan Smith to stay touch-tight to the Frenchman.

      Smith and Shaw would later insist that the defender was merely doing his job, but Cantona spent the first half complaining about the physical treatment that referee Alan Wilkie had either failed to spot or chosen to ignore. The reality is that Shaw left his foot in on more than one occasion to both put Cantona off his game and try to rile the Frenchman. It was common practice at the time; the hallmarks of the old First Division hadn’t quite been erased.

      Wilkie remembers Cantona chastising him as the players left the field at half-time – ‘No yellow cards!’ – and the Frenchman repeating the message as the players waited in the tunnel to come back out for the second half. But, as ever, it was Ferguson’s message that most stuck in Wilkie’s mind. ‘Why don’t you do your fucking job?’ was the Manchester United manager’s presumably rhetorical question. This was par for Ferguson’s course.

      What is certainly true is that Ferguson had spoken to Cantona in the dressing room at half-time to warn him not to get involved in Shaw’s games. ‘Don’t get involved,’ he quotes himself as saying in his autobiography. ‘That is exactly what he wants. Keep the ball away from СКАЧАТЬ