The moment Eric Cantona landed that infamous karate kick on a fan in 1995, his Manchester United career looked dead in the water.
The fiery Frenchman’s astonishing actions were front page news across the world, he was facing criminal charges for assault and the board at Old Trafford wanted him gone.
But Sir Alex Ferguson revealed how he fought to save the United icon’s career from what he called ‘the mob’.
Speaking in a BBC documentary, he said: “Jesus, you know, he was done and it was a problem for the club because it got such headlines, it was front page and we decided to have a meeting at Alderley Edge the next night.
“On the way I get a phone call from Richard Greenbury, who was chairman of Marks and Spencer at the time, Richard, a big United fan.
“He says ‘well, don’t let Cantona go. He’ll give you great moments of joy.’ I said ‘I know that.’ But you know it was the mood of the board, so I had to fight the case, look we must keep him, we can’t let him go, we can’t give in to the mob and we decided to suspend him for four months and the FA at the time were happy with it, but somehow they added to it.”
But it’s the way Sir Alex handled the mercurial talent of Eric Cantona that exemplifies his supreme leadership at Old Trafford.
He explained: “He’d never given us any indication that explosion was there. But I decided to approach it this way: I would speak to him every day, I would talk to him about football all the time and he loved it.
“That’s why the other players said he was my prodigal son. But I think he needed different attention, you needed different ways of dealing with him, he was a different guy from everyone else. He’s an amazing human being.
“No. There was something in me that said I need to stand by him because the world is after him. And it was a bit like, no one’s there to help him and I says well it’ll have to be me because I’m his manager.”
