for him. In training, if the ball didn’t get played to him as he wanted he would look at you like he was going to knock you out. He had massively high standards; he was a perfectionist. But because it was Eric, you didn’t feel belittled, it just made you strive to do better. We were desperate to impress him.
Respect for him contained a little dash of fear because we had all seen how he could erupt, even though we knew he’d never take it out on us. There’d been the kung-fu kick, a string of red cards, the punch-up at Galatasaray. We found incidents like that amusing – after the event, anyway – because Eric was so mild-mannered, quiet even, the rest of the time. He wasn’t arrogant at all but polite and considered. He always remained real. He drove a modest car, lived in a modest house in Salford. He’d turn up at all the team evenings, the Christmas parties, the nights out with the wives, but he’d be quiet, a bit like Scholesy or Andy Cole – not in a way that excludes you from the team, you’re just accepted as being a quieter participant, just like there are louder types.
Eric did things his way and no one interfered, not even the manager sometimes. When we turned up at a civic event at Manchester town hall to celebrate the Double, Eric wandered in wearing a denim jacket instead of a blazer. We looked him up and down and wondered how the boss would react when he arrived. Surely he’d go berserk. The press were there and all sorts of VIPs. But the manager just shook his head and smiled. ‘Eh, lads,’ he said. ‘Some man, that Cantona.’
Eric could get away with it, as Gazza did with England, because he combined his talent with being a committed team-man at heart. He trained as hard as lesser players and strived for improvement. And in that 1996/97 season he was striving, like the rest of us, to win the Champions League.
One problem was that, as a young team, we were still plagued with inconsistency. We thrashed Newcastle United, with the newly signed Alan Shearer, 4–0 in the Charity Shield but then lost 5–0 at St James’s Park in October on one of those days when you just want to disappear off the pitch. Everything Newcastle tried came off. I backed a few yards off David Ginola at one point. I should have been tighter, and I managed to get on the wrong side. He turned inside and smashed a shot into the top corner from thirty yards. It was a great bit of skill to buy himself a yard and to finish like that. The minute a player of that quality does you on the turn like that your heart sinks because there’s the feeling he’s going to pull off something special. I was left praying that Schmeichel would get me out of trouble. This time even Peter couldn’t get a hand on it.
It was a great goal, though not the best bit of skill ever done on me. That has to go to Jay Jay Okocha. One moment he was standing in front of me and the next thing I knew he’d disappeared the other side of me, and the ball too. It’s probably on YouTube somewhere. I still don’t know how he did it.
The Newcastle defeat was a horror, and we let in six at Southampton a week later. Beaten 6–3 at Southampton – it was a bad moment, that, and we had to learn to cope with such set-backs. You’d get them in every season, and that’s when the manager came into his own, keeping up morale, maintaining focus and making sure we didn’t get distracted by all the noises outside. He had belief in us, and on another day we’d play like world beaters.
In Europe we were proving just as unpredictable. We’d needed victory at Rapid Vienna in the final group match to qualify for the knock-out rounds. Eric’s idea of proving ourselves the best team in Europe was looking ambitious, to say the least.
We dared to believe a bit more when we blitzed Porto 4–0 in the first leg of the quarterfinals. We ripped into them on the counter-attack, flying forward at 100mph to score fantastic goals through Giggsy and Andy Cole. We were through
Respect for him contained a little dash of fear because we had all seen how he could erupt, even though we knew he’d never take it out on us. There’d been the kung-fu kick, a string of red cards, the punch-up at Galatasaray. We found incidents like that amusing – after the event, anyway – because Eric was so mild-mannered, quiet even, the rest of the time. He wasn’t arrogant at all but polite and considered. He always remained real. He drove a modest car, lived in a modest house in Salford. He’d turn up at all the team evenings, the Christmas parties, the nights out with the wives, but he’d be quiet, a bit like Scholesy or Andy Cole – not in a way that excludes you from the team, you’re just accepted as being a quieter participant, just like there are louder types.
Eric did things his way and no one interfered, not even the manager sometimes. When we turned up at a civic event at Manchester town hall to celebrate the Double, Eric wandered in wearing a denim jacket instead of a blazer. We looked him up and down and wondered how the boss would react when he arrived. Surely he’d go berserk. The press were there and all sorts of VIPs. But the manager just shook his head and smiled. ‘Eh, lads,’ he said. ‘Some man, that Cantona.’
Eric could get away with it, as Gazza did with England, because he combined his talent with being a committed team-man at heart. He trained as hard as lesser players and strived for improvement. And in that 1996/97 season he was striving, like the rest of us, to win the Champions League.
One problem was that, as a young team, we were still plagued with inconsistency. We thrashed Newcastle United, with the newly signed Alan Shearer, 4–0 in the Charity Shield but then lost 5–0 at St James’s Park in October on one of those days when you just want to disappear off the pitch. Everything Newcastle tried came off. I backed a few yards off David Ginola at one point. I should have been tighter, and I managed to get on the wrong side. He turned inside and smashed a shot into the top corner from thirty yards. It was a great bit of skill to buy himself a yard and to finish like that. The minute a player of that quality does you on the turn like that your heart sinks because there’s the feeling he’s going to pull off something special. I was left praying that Schmeichel would get me out of trouble. This time even Peter couldn’t get a hand on it.
It was a great goal, though not the best bit of skill ever done on me. That has to go to Jay Jay Okocha. One moment he was standing in front of me and the next thing I knew he’d disappeared the other side of me, and the ball too. It’s probably on YouTube somewhere. I still don’t know how he did it.
The Newcastle defeat was a horror, and we let in six at Southampton a week later. Beaten 6–3 at Southampton – it was a bad moment, that, and we had to learn to cope with such set-backs. You’d get them in every season, and that’s when the manager came into his own, keeping up morale, maintaining focus and making sure we didn’t get distracted by all the noises outside. He had belief in us, and on another day we’d play like world beaters.
In Europe we were proving just as unpredictable. We’d needed victory at Rapid Vienna in the final group match to qualify for the knock-out rounds. Eric’s idea of proving ourselves the best team in Europe was looking ambitious, to say the least.
We dared to believe a bit more when we blitzed Porto 4–0 in the first leg of the quarterfinals. We ripped into them on the counter-attack, flying forward at 100mph to score fantastic goals through Giggsy and Andy Cole. We were through
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