Free Cantona by Philippe Auclair Page B

companion of Éric throughout the turmoil and the triumphs of his whole career; to borrow from Cantona’s favourite poet Arthur Rimbaud, she was the rock to which Éric could always moor his drunken boat. She asked me to withdraw much of what she told me from this book, and I have done so. Her memories are too raw, and what need is there to sharpen what pain they may carry for the sake of an anecdote or two? Still, Isabelle, whom I’ve always heard being talked about with affection, respect and even admiration, cannot remain a silent silhouette cut out from the backdrop of Éric’s melodrama. Her selfless love for her husband ennobled him, and I don’t believe you can tell a man’s story if you do not speak, even that briefly, about the woman he loved more than any other.
    But settling down like his teammate Nino had done was not on Éric’s mind just yet, despite the passionate nature of his first real relationship. A footballer’s summer lasts but a few weeks: Éric had to go back to the training ground, Isabelle to her books, hundreds of miles away. Already disoriented by the violence of his feelings, and by the frustration of being so far from the one human being he wanted to be with, he also saw the beginning of his 1985–86 season ruined by a viral infection that kept him out of the first team from mid-August to early October – precisely at the time when Andrzej Szarmach’s departure meant that he could claim a place in the Auxerre forward line. Roux had promised to give him a string of games to establish himself, and was true to his word, but Éric, his mind elsewhere – in Provence – failed to capitalize on the chance he had been given. He didn’t score a single goal in the six games (one victory, two draws, three defeats) he could take part in before the virus struck him down; and when he had recovered his fitness, it was to find that another striker had claimed his spot in Roux’s first eleven: Roger Boli, brother of man-mountain Basile, a quick, clever centre-forward, whose goals had kick-started Auxerre’s stuttering season.
    AJA won at Nice thanks to him, then recorded the most brilliant victory in their history by beating mighty AC Milan 3–1 in the first leg of the UEFA Cup’s first round. Boli had scored again, and Cantona found it hard to share fully in the joy of his teammates. What’s more, when he rejoined the team, on the occasion of the second leg, it was to be on the receiving end of a 3–0 drubbing. Any player would have suffered a blow to his pride in such circumstances; and Cantona’s pride was as strong a current in his character as insecurity, strong enough to flood him when so much in his life was already in a state of flux. Roux, who loved him and understood him better than any manager other than Alex Ferguson (some of Éric’s teammates openly teased him about his relationship with ‘Papa Roux’), was at pains to comprehend why the player who had lit up the end of the previous campaign had retreated into his shell. That is, until he was told by one of his many spies that Éric’s Renault 5 had been spotted on the motorway, heading towards Aix-en-Provence. ‘All my guys were stationed at toll-gates between Auxerre and Paris,’ he explained to me. ‘But it so happened that one of them had taken the place of someone who worked between Auxerre and Lyon, on one of these nights when Éric was driving south! I’d never have known about it otherwise.’ Roux asked for an explanation; Éric gave it to him. ‘I want to see her,’ he said. ‘It’s her I love.’
    What to do? According to Roux, he picked up his phone and called the coach of FC Martigues, Yves Herbet, whose club had sunk into the relegation zone – and that was relegation to the third division. Herbet remembers things differently: he desperately needed a quality striker, and it was he who called the Auxerre manager. In any case, both men clearly saw a splendid opportunity to address their own ongoing