Red: My Autobiography by Gary Neville Page A

to our first Champions League semi-final and felt we had nothing to be scared about facing Borussia Dortmund, even if they were the champions of Germany.
    In the first leg in Dortmund, we had the three best chances. Butty hit the post, Eric shot wide from fifteen yards, and Becks had a chance cleared off the line. We deserved better than to lose 1–0 to a deflected shot off Gary Pallister. Still, all to play for, even if Keano was suspended back at our place after a booking in Germany. In his absence, we’d go front foot with Eric behind Andy Cole and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.
    The game had barely started when Lars Ricken put them ahead with their first attack. Now we needed three goals, but we kept at it and created an unbelievable number of chances. The best of them fell to Eric. A cross-shot from Cole was pushed out to him inside the six-yard box. But, as the goal gaped, Jurgen Kohler slid into his path and Eric shot at him. Two 1–0 defeats.
    It was to prove the final blow for Eric, even after we went on to win a second championship in a row, celebrated in style at the Hacienda, the nightclub made famous by the Happy Mondays and the Stone Roses. That’s my type of music, though hanging around with Giggsy, Becks and Ben Thornley we probably looked more like Take That.
    At the weekend we’d drawn 3–3 at Middlesbrough, which included my first goal for United. I’d like to tell a story of great attacking adventure, but truth is I was knackered after a run forward and ended up staying up the field. The ball came across to Eric and, inevitably, he played the perfect pass to slip me in. I remember really concentrating as it came across my body and I just struck it absolutely perfect. It went in, and what a feeling – the greatest goal of my career. Sad, really, that there were only seven of them in 687 games for United and England. That’s a crap total by any standards. Sometimes I have thought, ‘Christ, is that all I contributed in all those years?’
    Anyway, when Liverpool lost and Newcastle could only draw the following day, we’d clinched the championship. ‘The goal that won us the title!’ I joked to the lads when we danced around the Hacienda with a room full of ecstatic United fans.
    We celebrated in style, but Eric’s thoughts were elsewhere, as they’d been since our European exit. We’d soon discover that losing to Dortmund, and the way we lost the games, must have had a massive effect on Eric. We hadn’t been beaten by a great team, we’d just not taken our chances. Tiny margins. There were several factors, and no one inside the dressing room blamed Eric, except perhaps himself.
    But as I knew from that chat in the Bull’s Head, he’d set his heart on Europe that season. He’d dominated the English league and he’d wanted to take us to the next level. We’d fallen short, and while there were no recriminations, at the age of thirty he’d decided that he’d given it his best shot. He’d had enough. Time to quit.
    A week after our final game, I saw on Teletext that there was going to be a big announcement by the club. I assumed we must be signing someone. Instead Martin Edwards, the chairman, told the world that Eric Cantona had retired. One of United’s greatest ever players had decided to walk away while still in his prime.
    The news came as a shock to all of us. I’d played with him in a testimonial for David Busst just a few days earlier and he’d got off the team bus and told us, ‘Have a good summer, see you later.’ But the way he left was typical Eric. There would be no diminishing of his legend, no slide into mediocrity. He’d finish at the top, or as near as he could make it – captain of a club that had won the Premiership. He certainly left us wanting more, which isn’t a bad way to go.
    I wished he’d stayed because I believe he could have been part of the European Cup-winning team. Failure hadn’t been down to him; it was because we were a young, inconsistent side still