ERIC
CAn TOn Aagainst Saint-Etienne,” Lemoult says. “That
fight between us was just the consequence
of disappointment after a defeat, nothing
more – we were separated and it ended
there. I later became team-mates with him
again at Nimes; it was Eric who advised the
club to take me.”
Cantona returned to Marseille for 1990–91,
initially scoring regularly alongside Papin.
“He was never the slightest problem in the
dressing room,” his strike partner insists.
Papin even got away with accidentally
squirting an entire bottle of ketchup over
him during a mealtime prank, of which Chris
Waddle had been the intended recipient.
Team-mates held their breath, expecting
Cantona to explode, but instead he carried
on eating as if nothing at all had happened.
“Everyone who was there still remembers it!”
Papin smiles.
Injury halted Cantona’s progress, though –
by the time he returned, Raymond Goethals
had replaced Franz Beckenbauer, and boss
and forward didn’t see eye to eye.
Marseille won the league and reached the
European Cup final, but Cantona didn’t even
make the bench having been frozen out from
March onwards. L’OM were defeated by Red
Star Belgrade on penalties after 120 goalless
minutes of ‘action’.
“It’s a regret that he didn’t play the final
with us,” Papin says. “I tried to use my role
as captain to talk to the coach, but Goethals
was a bit stubborn. The reason for Eric being
sidelined wasn’t sporting, even if the coach
told us otherwise.
“But Goethals made it clear to me that
he’d made his choices, and he didn’t have to
discuss them. We’ll never know if we would
have won that final with Eric in the team, but
he never disappointed in big games. I think it
could have been a very big day for him.”
Cantona never played for Marseille again –
he was sold to Nimes for around £1m and
installed as their new captain. The French
firebrand was reunited with old Montpellier
boss Michel Mezy, but joining a promoted
club was risky for a 25 year old who was
still France’s first-choice forward.
Nimes started the season poorly, and
Cantona quickly grew frustrated. Platini
sounded out Liverpool, attempting to find
a better home for his key man, before the
forward went nuclear. During a home game
against Saint-Etienne in early December,
Cantona grabbed the ball and hurled it at
the referee after an innocuous free kick
had been awarded against him.
“He left the field even before he was sent
off,” says Lemoult, his team-mate once more
at Nimes. “I didn’t see the incident coming,
but Eric was unpredictable. Everyone knew
it wasn’t difficult to annoy him on the pitch –
a lot of opponents did. He hated injustice and
couldn’t control himself.”
A one-month suspension was dished out
at his disciplinary hearing, then increased to
two months after Cantona insulted the panel.
As he later said, “They passed judgement
on my life as a whole, not just the isolated
incident, so I told them they were idiots,
which was remarkably restrained for me.”
FourFourTwo.com The Story of Man Utd 65