250 Days. Daniel Storey

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ that the police are urgently considering what action they should take. We will as always cooperate in every way with them. And as far as the FA itself is concerned, charges of improper conduct and of bringing the game into disrepute will inevitably and swiftly follow tonight’s events. It is our responsibility to ensure that actions that damage the game are punished severely. The FA will live up to that responsibility.’

      Ferguson’s reaction was altogether more interesting, not least because he had not seen the full extent of the incident from his vantage point and had been given mixed messages about what had taken place. A number of Manchester United players have recalled their surprise at Ferguson’s composure in the dressing room after the match, barely focusing on the incident but instead castigating his defenders for allowing Gareth Southgate to score a late equaliser. That gives some credence to the theory that United’s manager was not fully aware what had happened. It would have been a brave player to have spoken up to explain.

      Ferguson’s initial anger was at Cantona’s stupidity in ignoring his half-time advice. ‘Not for the first time, his explosive temperament had embarrassed him and the club and tarnished his brilliance as a footballer,’ Ferguson wrote in Managing My Life. ‘This was his fifth dismissal in United colours and, in spite of all the provocation directed at him, it was a lamentable act of folly.’ That description became mistakenly attributed to the kung-fu kick at Simmons; it was actually in reference to the kick on Shaw.

      Initially – and, his critics might say, typically – Ferguson blamed the referee. Alan Wilkie had also not seen the incident, although he was informed post-match of the precise details and stayed late at the ground to assist with the initial inquiries. He was met by a furious Ferguson, who told him, ‘It’s all your fucking fault. If you’d done your fucking job this wouldn’t have happened.’ It is unclear whether Ferguson was again referring to the red card or the post-sending-off events, but a police officer eventually had to force Ferguson out of Wilkie’s dressing room.

      Having flown back to Manchester late that night, Ferguson rejected the advice of his son Jason to watch what he described as a ‘karate kick’ and instead endured some broken sleep. By 4 am he had risen, and by 5 am was ready to watch the footage. ‘Pretty appalling,’ is the only description that Ferguson offered.

      Ferguson’s anger with Cantona reflected his disappointment that he had been so let down by a player in whom he had bestowed considerable faith. Manchester United had been widely derided for taking a chance on the enfant terrible. If Cantona’s performances in his first two seasons had proved Ferguson right, here was the sting in the tail.

      Manchester United’s manager couldn’t say that there had been no warning signs. When playing for Auxerre, Cantona punched teammate Bruno Martini after a disagreement. During a charity match in Sedan for victims of an earthquake in Armenia, he kicked the ball into the crowd, threw his shirt at the referee and stormed off the pitch. In September 1988 he called France national team coach Henri Michel ‘a bag of shit’ in a post-match interview and was banned from playing for the national team until after Michel’s eventual sacking.

      In 1991, when playing for Nîmes against St-Étienne, Cantona threw the ball at the referee and was given a four-game ban. When hauled in front of a disciplinary commission to explain himself and be told that other clubs had complained about his behaviour, Cantona approached the face of each member of the panel and called each of them an idiot in turn. The ban was promptly extended to two months.

      That ban led to Cantona retiring from football at the age of 25, but he was talked round by Michel Platini, who believed that such a talent was too big a loss for the national team. It was Platini who persuaded Cantona to consider a move to England, having burned his bridges in Ligue 1.

      If Ferguson’s aim was to smooth the roughest edges of Cantona’s ill-discipline, he barely managed it. Six months after joining United, Cantona was found guilty of misconduct and fined £1,000 after Leeds United fans accused him of spitting at them. Cantona claimed that he had spat at a wall. The disciplinary commission certainly agreed that there were mitigating circumstances, Cantona having been subjected to constant abuse from Leeds supporters.

      In 1993/94, his first full season at Old Trafford, Cantona was sent off twice in the space of four days against Arsenal and Swindon. The first dismissal was for a stamp on the chest of John Moncur, the second for two yellow cards. The accusation against Ferguson’s United was that they were becoming undermined by their own indiscipline. For better and worse, the players were following Cantona’s lead.

      Matters deteriorated even further in September 1994 in Galatasaray’s Ali Sami Yen Stadium, a daunting atmosphere for any player. Cantona was again sent off, right on the full-time whistle, and was reportedly struck by a police officer’s baton as he headed down the tunnel. Incensed by the assault, Cantona attempted to force his way through stewards and officials to confront the police officer, and had to be dragged to the dressing room and guarded by teammates.

      ‘Pally [Pallister], Robbo [Bryan Robson] and Brucey [Steve Bruce] had to drag Eric in and hold him there,’ Gary Neville remembers in his autobiography. ‘The experienced lads were going to the shower two by two so that Eric was never left alone in the dressing room. They ended up walking him to the coach to stop him going back after the police.’

      This suggests two things: that Cantona’s combustibility was hardly a secret to Manchester United’s coaches and players, and that his anger took a considerable time to dissipate.

      The uncomfortable truth for Ferguson is that Cantona was an accident waiting to happen and that the incident at Selhurst Park – while initially shocking – was not at all surprising. Manchester United’s manager backed himself to curb such ‘over-enthusiasm’ but was not successful, even if he rightly considered that Cantona’s quality outweighed the pitfalls.

      In an interview with the Observer in 2004, Cantona – perhaps unwittingly – alluded to the inevitability of such incidents and his own lack of control. ‘If I’d met that guy on another day, things may have happened differently even if he had said the same things. Life is weird like that. You’re on a tightrope every day.’

      Further evidence arrives in another Cantona quote, this time on the subject of being challenged. ‘I want to be like a gambler in a casino who can feel that rush of adrenaline not just when he’s on a roll, but all of the time,’ he said. ‘He gambles because he needs that buzz, he wants to experience it every moment of his life. That’s the way I want to play.’

      This is the definition of playing on the edge, with every extreme element of the psyche bubbling just beneath the surface. It is a style that is rarely admitted to by sportspeople, for whom the typical strategy to achieve excellence is to rely upon an inner calm that enables composure in the crunch moments.

      Cantona was a team player and very rarely selfish in possession of the ball, and yet he says that penalties – football’s most individual moment – were his ultimate buzz because they offered him a few seconds during which all eyes were on him to perform. He was driven to achieve, not necessarily to help the team or for personal glory, but through an addiction to the feeling of displaying immense skill and entertaining spectators in doing so.

      That might sound peculiar, but it’s actually a persuasive argument. Becoming a professional footballer and maintaining your fitness and level of performance is incredibly hard. Dragging yourself through such physical and mental exhaustion for neither money nor love but to satisfy an addiction makes some sense. After all, many retired players speak of their propensity to succumb to other addictions because of their need to recreate football’s adrenaline rush.

      Cantona sat at the extreme end of that spectrum. Anything that stopped him playing or curtailed his enjoyment of the game became the enemy: referees with their red cards, defenders СКАЧАТЬ