Ooh! Aah! Cantona!

“When seagulls follow a trawler it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea” the stoic Eric quipped. Till today, I am still baffled. What did he mean? It was perhaps, a classic Eric on-field performance. Everyone was outfoxed and left in the lurch….so hard to catch and impossible to comprehend. Ask any defenders who had played against him during his Leeds and Man United days.

Eric Cantona was a genius. Even the Hairdryer stood by him, for good and bad. Even Beckham and Keane were not accorded such treatment. With Hairdryer extoling his professionalism, Eric had repaid his manager’s faith in full when he made his comeback on October 1995.

Not since the days of George Best and Gazza…. has a player been so idolised in the United Kingdom. I think his flying kick at Selhurst Park in January 1995 left the footballing world divided. For me, the foul-mouthed spectator probably deserved that kung-fu kick.

L’Enfant Terrible is sheer attitude. The sort of character that the game demands and needs. He truly sets himself apart from the average professional footballer. I loves every moment he troops to the field, with the trademark collar up.

One will never forget… his sublime body feints, the shimmies, the cheeky delicate backheels, the most exquisite of well-timed passes, and lastly, his goals. Goals scored with a panache of a maestro with French flair, of course.

I am always a keen admirer of Ian Wright, Dennis Bergkamp and Thierry Henry. I find it awkward to sing praises of Cantona. He is an exception; he’s even a Red Devil. The day he grabbed the big Belgian, Philippe Albert by the Newcastle collar and threw him to the ground like a sack of potatoes… he became one of my favourite footballers.