It wasn’t that he set himself up as a leader. Before he came to England and while he was at Leeds, I don’t think that part of Eric’s character particularly stood out. Once he got to United, everything changed. It was as if he’d found the place he belonged and the stage he thought he deserved. In a United shirt, what he did was amazing right from the start. It was Eric’s arrival three months into the season that was the key to United winning the League in 1992/ 93, putting an end to all those years of waiting for the club. Then the following season, he helped United to our first Double.
I didn’t play in the first team during those two seasons, but when we did eventually play together, I could tell Eric must have been the spark that made it all happen. He led. The rest of us followed. It’s a rare quality: a born captain, who hardly needed to say anything, to us or anybody else. You didn’t hear Eric leading the team. Just seeing him on the pitch, standing there with his collar turned up, ready to take on the world, was enough.
When people talk about Eric, they’ll always refer to the sendings off, and worse, during his career. The way I see it, though, all great players have an edge to their character and to their football. That edge is what makes them more than the ordinary. And if you go through a whole career with that quality, you’re bound to have trouble with the authorities sooner or later. It may sound strange but despite the bookings, sendings off, bans or whatever, it would never have occurred to me to criticise Eric. We played football together and that was what my relationship with him was all about. I’d think about him, about what he brought to the dressing room and the team: his ability, his passion and his commitment. Nothing else bothered me. He played the game and lived his life the way he was driven to and he made things special for the rest of us by doing that. How could I have even started to think badly of Eric Cantona or anything he did? David Beckham owed him a lot and Manchester United owed him even more.
I was at Selhurst Park that night in 1995 when Eric jumped into the crowd. I wasn’t on the bench but was in the stands, with a couple of the other lads, watching the game. I don’t remember much about the game itself against Crystal Palace, but I remember the incident. Eric got sent off after a tackle on Richard Shaw and, as he was walking along the touchline, you could see this bloke force his way down to the front of the crowd. He was goading Eric, shouting things at him. And next thing, Eric was in the crowd, kicking and punching: the whole thing flashed by in a couple of seconds and then Eric was being hurried towards the dressing room. I think it was just an instinctive reaction, a natural thing to do. Anybody getting that sort of abuse in the street would have reacted in the same way. Just because Eric was a professional footballer, in the spotlight, didn’t stop him behaving like anybody else might have done. I’m not saying what Eric did was right but you have to remember that, in any other circumstances, if someone was screaming that stuff at another person, you’d be surprised if there wasn’t trouble.
There was no big fuss about what had happened in the dressing room after the game. It was quiet and the boss was really calm about it all. He just said that none of us should speak to the press. Obviously, nobody realised then what the consequences would be: Eric was banned from football for the best part of eight months. We ended up not winning anything that season; others can probably decide what effect losing Eric had on the team. As a player, you just had to get on with your job. Eric went home to France for a few weeks but then came back to Old Trafford and we would work and train with him every day, although he couldn’t be involved in the games. He was still very much part of everything at the club but we wanted him playing. After the community service and the FA suspension, he was back in the side a month and a half into the 1995/96 season. From that October onwards, you couldn’t quite say that Eric Cantona went on and did the Double on his own. But I’m absolutely certain the rest of us felt that we wouldn’t have done it without him.
Talking about that season, it’s almost a cliché to say that, during it, we grew up as players. When I think back, though, what I really remember is how much growing up as a person I was doing at the same time. For a start, after sixteen years with Mum, Dad, Lynne and Joanne and then three years in digs that were family homes in their own way, I got my own place. Ryan Giggs had already moved into a house in Worsley, North Manchester, and he told me there was another three-storey townhouse nearby that was coming up for sale. It was perfect. Worsley was a nice, quiet village, the house was brand new and barely ten minutes from the training ground: now I’d never have an excuse for arriving late for work.
I’d grown up in a suburban semi on the outskirts of London, in a house just about big enough for the five of us. Now here I was, collecting the keys to a proper bachelor pad and making it my own: a den with a pool table, a leather suite in the front room, a Bang & Olufsen television and music system, and a great big fireplace. The top floor was just one huge room, my bedroom. I had wardrobes made for it and, when the joiners put them in, I got them to build a cabinet at the bottom of my bed. You pressed a button and the television would come up out of it. When we first started going out together, Victoria used to rip me apart about that. And I had my mate, Giggsy, living next door, as well: what more could any boy ask for?
Even then, Ryan was a legend at United. He was only a year older than me and we’d played in the same Youth Cup winning side, but it seemed as if he was already a star when I got to Manchester. Giggsy was a first-team regular by the time he was eighteen. He was a hero to the younger lads and he was also great to work alongside. Once I moved in next door, I got to know him really well. And that meant getting to know all his mates at the same time: the so-called Worsley Crew. We’d all meet up at the local pub, the Barton Arms, for lunch. I felt like I was keeping Manchester’s coolest company.
Giggsy and I have stayed close ever since. He’s still someone who can win a game on his own, still a player every opposing defender will tell you they hate playing against. Think back to the ‘New George Best’ tag he grew up with. Giggsy’s had his ups and downs at United like any other player but, over the past twelve years, he’s had the ability and strength of character to live up to all the expectations people had of him. I hope Wales make it to Germany for the World Cup in 2006: it would be great to see Giggsy on that international stage. Whatever happens, by the time he packs it in – and there’s not much chance of that for a long while – he’ll go down as one of United’s all-time greats.
I suppose lots of young lads in my situation would have been living on takeaways and looking for a phone number for a good cleaner. I’ve always been what you might call domesticated, though. Even when I was a boy, living at home, I can remember getting up early on a Sunday morning and cooking a full breakfast for my mum and dad. Not because I had to but because I wanted to: cooking was something I’d always enjoyed. Don’t get me wrong. I’m no Gary Rhodes or Jamie Oliver. Mum will tell you that when I was at home I’d cook the same thing every time for an evening meal. Chicken stir-fry. When Mum and Dad came up to the new house and I cooked for them in my own home for the first time, I don’t think they were all that surprised at what I’d made: chicken stir-fry. Not that what we were eating was all that important. I was really proud, being able to take my parents to my own place on a Saturday night after the game. I think they were pretty proud too.
What’s more, I could drive Mum and Dad home in my own motor. As a boy, when I wasn’t thinking about football, it was because I was thinking about cars. I got a Scalectrix one Christmas and drove the thing into the ground through into my teens. As well as imagining myself playing for Manchester United, I’d spent plenty of rainy afternoons thinking about the car I might turn up at Old Trafford driving one day: how about a Porsche? When I passed my test, though, that kind of fantasy car was a long way out of my range. Instead, I bought Giggsy’s old club car, a red Ford