Cantona (22 page)

But three games later, disaster struck when Marseille played against Brest on the 28 October. OM needed to react after a 2–1 defeat at Sochaux and did so; in fact, they were cruising. Pascal Olmeta told me of an Éric who was then ‘at the top of his game’ and managed to put aside his disenchantment with the club when he had the ball at his feet. Cantona had opened the scoring with a header that afternoon, in front of a beaming Beckenbauer who was at last watching a performance worthy of his squad’s reputation. But just before half-time, the Cameroonian midfielder Racine Kané launched himself in a wild tackle from behind which left Éric writhing with pain on the turf. He had torn the cruciate ligaments of his right knee. With Stojkovi
, Vercruysse and Abedi Pelé already long-term absentees because of injury, OM had lost the last of its playmakers, and the glow of a 3–1 victory soon faded away. The wobble which had followed the German manager’s appointment snowballed into a real crisis. Marseille fell 3–2 against Lech Poznan in the European Cup (a result they would cancel out in the return leg at the Vélodrome), then conceded a humiliating defeat to Nancy in the championship, which enabled Cantona’s first club, Auxerre, to overtake them at the top of the league. But results only told part of a far bigger story.

Almost every day, it seems, France was waking up to the news of another football scandal. The Girondins of Bordeaux had been found to have a black hole of FF242m (£24m) in their accounts. The ‘great treasurer of French football’, Jean-Claude Darmon, was accused of having used phantom companies to siphon money out of both Toulon and Matra Racing. The ensuing investigation cleared him of any wrongdoing in the affair, but football’s reputation within French society, which wasn’t lofty to start with, sank a little bit deeper. Marseille hadn’t yet been sucked into this quagmire of suspicion and financial irregularities, despite the rumours which surrounded the club; but this changed at the end of November, when a photocopy of Jean-Pierre Papin’s contract was leaked to the press. It had long been suspected that OM used an undeclared slush fund to pay sweeteners of all kinds. Whilst the document which had just come to light – bearing the signatures of the player and of the club’s then technical director Michel Hidalgo – did not provide conclusive proof of its existence, it nonetheless revealed serious irregularities in OM’s accounting. JPP had been granted an interest-free loan of FF1m (about £100,000) in February 1988, ‘to help him realize personal investments’. Compared to what Bez had done, of course, this was mere child’s play. But everyone surmised that only the very tip of the iceberg had emerged. Previous OM bosses had unfortunately been susceptible to brokering ‘arrangements’ of that kind long before Tapie had taken control of the club: in 1972, Marseille’s inspirational chairman Marcel Leclerc’s downfall in a boardroom coup (dubbed ‘The Night of the Long Knives’) had been brought on by his use of OM’s financial resources to prop up his media investments. In Cantona’s eyes, though, the arrival of Tapie turned what the player called a ‘culture of cheating’ from an unsavoury trait of Marseille’s character into a
modus operandi
, a superficial flaw into a full-blown disease which poisoned every nook and cranny of the club’s management structure.

When I asked Olmeta how Cantona, who had been magnificent until his injury, could be first sidelined, then ostracized as he was in the second half of the season, he was quick to point out that football had little to do with it. ‘Only three people dared tell Tapie what they thought of him,’ he said. ‘Éric, [Bernard] Pardo and myself. Éric told him he was an
enculé
[motherfucker] in front of the others. And that was that.’ Cantona was disgusted by what he could see happening around him, and appalled by what he felt was the lack of courage of the great majority of his teammates, some of whom theatened to go on strike when their beloved chairman was threatened with disciplinary action after abusing a referee. The ‘band of brothers’ Éric had found at his return from Montpellier became a fractious dressing-room, and ‘that’s what really got to him’, Olmeta recalled. ‘Nobody had the balls to say
merde
to Tapie, and when you shit on Canto’s head, he’ll never forget it as long as you’re alive.’

Another man had the ‘balls’ to stand his ground: Franz Beckenbauer, whom Cantona admired for his ‘German rectitude’ and his refusal to condone what Éric called ‘southern dilettantism’ – by barring hangers-on from the dressing-room, for example, which didn’t go down too well with local journalists who had enjoyed ‘access all areas’ status for as long as anyone could remember. A World Cup-winning coach is unlikely to listen to the tactical advice of a failed pop singer, and when Tapie attempted to give a half-time pep talk to his players towards the end of the year, the Kaiser reminded his chairman who was in charge of the team. ‘I’m the boss,’ he said in front of an admiring Olmeta; but he wasn’t for long. Many were of the opinion that Beckenbauer’s fate was decided the minute he dared put Tapie in his place. In December 1990, speaking to the German press agency DPA, the manager had already admitted to ‘differences of opinion between’ his chairman and himself, and complained about ‘the excessive outside influences on the players’. ‘I’ll meet Mr Tapie after Christmas,’ he said. ‘Either it’ll all be over in five minutes, or we’ll come to an arrangement.’ A few weeks later, in January 1991, the arrangement had been found. The German World Cup winner was appointed ‘director of the technical staff’, a first step towards the door leading him out of Marseilles, and the team’s future had been entrusted to a new coach, the third in a season that was just five months old: Raymond Goethals, whom Éric knew a lot about, as it was he who had made life a misery for Stéphane Paille at Bordeaux the previous year.

Goethals, the man who would effectively cut short Éric’s career at Marseille, certainly didn’t project the image of sophistication Beckenbauer was so keen for others to perceive. Garrulous, fond of outrageous metaphors, speaking with a thick accent that (depending on your outlook on what constitutes humour) accentuated your amusement or your embarrassment, the Belgian Sorcerer was a throwback to older, and not necessarily more innocent, times. He eked a decent career as a goalkeeper in the 1940s and 1950s for two of Brussels’ lesser-known sides, Daring Club and Racing, before establishing himself as one of his country’s most successful managers, guiding the national team to the 1970 World Cup finals and a superb third place in the 1972 European championships. Moving to Anderlecht, his three-year tenure there was highlighted by two European Cup Winners Cup finals, the second of which was emphatically won 4–0 against Austria Wien, in 1978. Having proved his worth, Goethals thought the time had come to be properly rewarded for it. He embarked on a peripatetic career that saw him look after Bordeaux (for one season only, in 1979–80) and, even more briefly, Sao Paulo, before taking over the venerable Standard Liège in 1981. He led them to another Cup Winners Cup final, narrowly losing 2–1 to Barcelona.

As a coach, Goethals had pedigree. He also had what police officers call ‘previous’. He had to leave Liège in a hurry in 1984 when it was reported that the players of modest Thor Waterschei had been offered money to ‘take it easy’ in a league game played two years beforehand. Goethals was accused of having used his own captain, the fearsome Éric Gerets, as a go-between (at the time of writing, the same Gerets had just left his managerial post at Olympique de Marseille, of all clubs), and was banned from coaching in Belgium ‘for life’. Goethals fled to Portugal, where Vitória Sport Clube Guimarães were happy to offer him a managerial position, which he kept for a year only, when the Belgian FA controversially pardoned Goethals and allowed him to go back to his native country. Amazingly, Standard were never stripped of their 1982–83 title. A couple of years with the tiny Brussels club Racing Jet, another two with, again, Anderlecht, and
Raymond-la-science
(a popular nickname in the underworld, which OM fans bestowed upon him almost instantly) was on his way again, to Bordeaux, at which point his eccentric trajectory joined that of Cantona.

This preamble is not gratuitous. If two men were ever born who were fated never to understand each other, it must have been Goethals and Cantona. ‘The Belgian’ (which is how Éric refers to him in his autobiography, where it doesn’t come across as a complimentary or even informative epithet) changed clubs at the drop of a hat to serve his own, very material interests. Éric followed his instinct, with scant regard for the consequences. Goethals valued –
le mot juste –
victory so much that he was apparently prepared to buy it. Éric hated losing to such a degree that he would rather fail than admit that defeat was a possibility. The manager didn’t rate the player (‘he’s not a modern striker’); the player despised the manager who put him on the bench. This, for Cantona, was the darkest hour.

The season had started well for him. Seven goals in twelve games. The Vélodrome chanting his name, at long last. Then Racine Kané launched into his tackle, ripping Éric’s knee ligaments, Beckenbauer was gone, and by the time Cantona was fit again, Goethals had implemented a tactical system in which his striker’s opportunities would be severely restricted. It would serve Marseille well, however, as two European Cup finals, one of them victorious, testify. Papin operated as a lone centre-forward, with Chris Waddle and Abedi Pelé jinking this way and that to attract defenders and create space for the dynamic striker. Both the Englishman and the Ghanaian were in magnificent form that season, providing JPP with chance after chance, which he gleefully buried. Did OM need Cantona? Not according to Goethals.

By the end of January 1991, Éric was ready to claim back a spot in the Marseillais starting eleven. In the 73rd minute of a routine demolition of FC Nantes (final score: 6–0), Goethals waved him on. On 1 February, he was given half an hour to jog around in a low-key 1–1 draw at Bordeaux. A week later, OM won 1–0 at PSG, without Cantona; he was back on the 23rd of the month (0–0 against Cannes); and was out again when OM beat Arsène Wenger’s Monaco 1–0 on 1 March. To some footballers, the bench is purgatory. To Cantona it was hell itself.

Goethals was toying with Cantona, while Tapie contentedly smoked his cigar in the background. The other players found themselves in an impossible situation, ‘between the hammer and the anvil’, as the French expression goes. A full-scale rebellion was unlikely. Too many had too much to lose by siding openly with the outcast, even if, as Bernard Pardo insists, ‘Éric was never ostracized from the squad by his fellow pros.’ He added: ‘Maybe, at the end of the day, it was for the better. If he hadn’t imposed himself at OM, I am not so sure that he would have done so well in England.’ It was a moot point at the time, to say the least. Goethals, for all his many flaws, knew how to organize the magnificent collection of talents put at his disposal. But it is hard to disagree with Olmeta when he says that ‘with Éric, Marseille would have won the European Cup that year. To cut him out of the team was a lamentable thing to do . . . When I think of the final in Bari [
OM were held 0–0 by Red Star Belgrade and lost on penalties]
, and what he could have done for us that day . . . lamentable is the word.’

What OM would miss was highlighted by the consistent quality of Cantona’s performances for the French national team, of which he remained an essential cog. While Goethals was – at best – consigning him to the bench, Platini exploited Éric’s versatility with great success, deploying him in a more withdrawn role in which he proved just as efficient as he had been as the spearhead of France’s attack. Spain, the most dangerous of their opponents in the race for a qualifying spot at Euro 92, were dispatched 3–1 on 20 February, Cantona playing the full 90 minutes, as he did again six weeks later, when Albania were torn apart 5–0 at the Parc des Princes. France now headed their group with a perfect eight points out of eight. In the meantime, his Marseillais career had effectively been brought to an acrimonious end. The media had another ‘Cantona affair’ to report.

Incensed at being ‘forgotten’ for a crucial European Cup quarterfinal against AC Milan, Cantona let Goethals know of his frustration and anger. He had demonstrated his fitness with
Les Bleus
, who now ranked among the very best teams on the Continent. What is more, his club manager was denying him the right to show that his partnership with Jean-Pierre Papin, so effective at international level, could benefit Marseille as well. But Goethals would have none of it. ‘He refused to be on the bench,’ he said. ‘I don’t care if he’s on the bench or not . . . He doesn’t care whether he’s on the bench, so he won’t play in Milan . . . I don’t know how to use him against Milan. These are technical decisions. Full stop.’ Goethals’s disingenuity was plain for all to see. ‘Technical decisions’? What technical decisions? Cantona was not just out of favour. He had to be humiliated, made to grovel. One week later, with a 1–1 draw in the bag, the Belgian manager carried on in the same vein. ‘When a player comes to me and says: “I don’t want to be on the bench, ever,”’ he said, ‘I can tell you, it’s finished! Whoever you are, it’s over!’