Eric Cantona is a brand that is available on all media. After football, advertising, theater, cinema and the (aborted) revolution against the banking system, the song: “Canto” released his first album, whose title sums up the ambition, Cantona sings Eric. Megalo? The singer-songwriter-himself certainly is. On his site, he “sells” himself in a Hamlet-like posture, holding at arm’s length the head of his own “Guignols de l’info” puppet. But the man also knows, at 57, that success does not come easily – especially in music. “At worst, we are ridiculous for some, brilliant for others, he confided, realistically, to New Obs. Everything is subjective. »
The first lines devoted to the phenomenon in the pages of World, on August 14, 1987, were subject to the most complete objectivity. The journalist Jean-Jacques Bozonnet could only be ecstatic about this young 21-year-old footballer, “surprising composure and nerve” in the defeat (2-1) conceded, two days earlier, by the French team in a friendly match against the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), in West Berlin. The AJ Auxerre striker scored, for his first selection in blue, the only goal on the French side, at the end of a match largely dominated by the Mannschaft. “The only positive element that the coach [Henri Michel] wanted to remember from this meeting is therefore called Eric Cantona, “an international class striker””, reports Jean-Jacques Bozonnet.
A few months later, on May 7, 1988, the sports columnist devoted a first portrait to this “young glory”. The biggest European clubs then scrape their “funds of drawers to collect the billions of centimes (more than 20, it seems)” necessary for the transfer of an attacker who radiates with his “a clever cocktail of physical power, technique and playing intelligence”. By his personality, too. “At twenty-one, this boy is already a character, laughs Jean-Jacques Bozonnet. He did not wait for the immunity of his new glory to shoot with ardor in professional football conventions. » The original Marseillais lives without a telephone, on a farm near Auxerre. Shows himself to be stingy with smiles. Said to be disappointed by “The not-so-healthy football environment” to the point of considering early retirement, before changing his mind. ““I am completely unstable, he admits. Normal, I’m a Gemini. But instability is a charming thing.” » Not sure that Henri Michel shares the observation.
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