Eric Cantona lives his life as a rock star: ‘That’s why I was so crazy about the Dutch national team of 1974 as a child’

The conversation is coming to an end when Eric Cantona (57) looks sternly into the distance, his eyebrows folded low over his eyes, just as he often did as a football player. Then he chuckles briefly at himself and starts singing, almost solemnly: “We have been lucky, to get all your love. I love you so much, and so forever.”

The question was what he would like to sing for Erik ten Hag, the troubled manager of Manchester United. “I wish him the love of the fans,” Cantona said. “That’s what this song is about. Once he feels that love once, it will inspire him for the rest of his life.”

Cantona spontaneously sings the text again, softly rasping, whispering with his characteristic French accent. Smiling, he lets the result sink in for his one-headed audience. “I like to end my live shows with this song,” he says. “Together with the people. Then you really feel the energy, the love and the connection with the audience.”

Spontaneous inspirations

We spoke to the legendary former player of Manchester United, Olympique Marseille and the French national team via a Zoom connection, well before his planned appearances in the Netherlands. That doesn’t go completely smoothly. Cantona clicked on the wrong link first. Then the battery of his iPad is empty.

It all has little effect on his mood. Cantona speaks freely, is extremely friendly, talking calmly in the sunny front room of his house in Lisbon. “Have you ever been here? Beautiful city.” The former football player, singer, actor, photographer and artist and his wife, the French actress and producer Rachida Brakni, decided to live in Lisbon a few years ago. The family was on holiday in Portugal, enjoyed the lifestyle and decided to stay.

That is also typical of Cantona, a man of spontaneous inspiration. At the age of thirty he suddenly stopped playing football, completely unexpectedly, because he no longer felt the deeper motivation. It only made his myth bigger. Among football fans he was and is the ultimate, inimitable rebel of the nineties. A unique and idiosyncratic character, playing with the collar of his shirt straight up. One of the last top football players with the image of a rock star.

“That’s why I was so crazy about the Dutch national team of 1974 as a child,” Cantona says now. “Because of how great they played, but also because of how they looked. Cruyff. Neeskens. Van Hanegem. It was football as an art form. Rock and roll.”

Faulty English

From Lisbon he travels through Europe; to where depends on the creative project he is involved in at that moment. For a few years now that has been music. During the first corona lockdown in early 2020, Cantona decided to sing at home, accompanied on guitar by a friend.

“I have always written lyrics. Lyrics for songs, poems, short stories. Sometimes in French, sometimes in English.” In practice it often sounds like a combination; he makes no effort to sing in perfect English. He sings like he talks: in charming Cantona English full of lilting z sounds: that’s how it becomes the thing invariably she sing.

After retiring as a player, Cantona acted in several films, he painted and took photographs, but no singing. In fact, when he was a guest on a Manchester United podcast shortly before the lockdown, it was about the many songs and chants that the Stretford End stands always and everywhere sing to him, to this day.

We’ll drink a drink a drink,
To Eric the king the king the king.
He’s the leader of our football team.
He’s the greatest center forward,
That the world has ever seen.

When the presenter asks in the podcast whether Cantona ever sings those songs herself, perhaps in the shower, the Frenchman sounds relentless. Never. Never in his life will he ever sing a song.

Low, abrasive voice

“Maybe that was the trigger, in retrospect,” he says. “It is precisely the things you never think you will do that you should do, even if only to create something new. Afterwards I really needed the music to express myself. Singing has always been my ultimate dream, but it seemed unattainable to me. As a teenager I bought my first live album by The Doors: magical. I wanted to be Jim Morrison.”

Cantona the singer is above all an artist who lives for his live shows. It is not without reason that his first full-fledged album is a live album, recorded last year in Manchester.

Both in Le Parisien as The Guardian his style was described as a kind of combination of Nick Cave, an older Leonard Cohen and Serge Gainsbourg. With a little wink, that is. Because Cantona is more of a performer than a born singer. His low, abrasive voice does not necessarily hit all the notes, but together with the accompanying musicians, the Frenchman puts on an atmospheric and intense show.

Sold out halls

“Of course I am not an opera singer,” he says himself. “When I started singing, I first had to look for my own voice. I had to discover the sounds of my voice myself. How do you use the microphone?” To illustrate, he begins to ‘talk-sing’, growling softly: “Watch the trees when the others fall.” It’s a line from his autobiographical hit The Friends We Lost. “Do you hear it? Do you feel the different sounds?”

His musical career really started in December last year. Cantona did his first short theater tour, including Paris, Marseille, Manchester and London. With great success: the shows were all sold out, two performances in The Stoller Hall in Manchester even within twelve minutes. The hall was packed with frenzied fans, half of them dressed in football shirts.

“My music is above all intended to be played live,” says Cantona. “I have always needed art to express myself, to be completely myself. I live from the energy of the audience, from the interaction. It’s a form of expression I can’t live without.”

Is it comparable to the love you received from the public as a football player?

“Yes I think so. Football and music are able to lift people to another world. You are together in your own mini-universe. The joy you feel together, the energy it gives: I live for that. It’s something enchanting. I never really missed the football itself, but I did miss the interaction with the fans.”

Did you ever feel insecure during those first shows? That you wondered: can I actually do this?

“I’m not the type to feel humble easily. I don’t have the talent for that. But doubts and uncertainty can help you get the best out of yourself. When I started singing, I still felt uncomfortable. I had to discover things, try things out. But once in the theater, that’s all gone. Then I step on that stage and give the people everything I have.”

As a boy from Marseille, Cantona grew up with Cruijff, Ajax, FC Barcelona and Oranje. The 1974 World Cup was the first major tournament that the Frenchman, born in 1966, consciously experienced as a child. “What I liked about that team and Cruijff was that they changed football. That is the highest thing you can achieve in football and in art: to do something that has never been done before. That you really create something, create something. Something completely new. Cruijff and the Dutch national team did that.”

Guardiola fan

Cantona rarely watches football in 2024. Sometimes he is invited by his old club Manchester United to attend a match. Every now and then he sees the French team or Olympique Marseille play. “You don’t see much football that is unique, that is revolutionary. Yes, Pep Guardiola has changed football, not coincidentally an heir to Cruijff. He works at another club in Manchester, but I love watching his teams.”

Cantona refused on principle to watch even a single match during the World Cup in Qatar and lashed out when his former teammate David Beckham started doing promotional work for the oil state. In France, Cantona’s many artistic endeavors are sometimes ridiculed, but he is also considered socially involved and very outspoken, including about wars and major political conflicts.

“It is difficult to change the current world, but we must try. It is important that we make ourselves heard, that we dare to speak out. We must continue to try to be on the right side of history. Because there is a good side, just as there is a bad side. We have to be brave enough to keep mentioning that.”

Understand each other better

Cantona gets his number We Believe in Ourselves a moody protest song against rulers and belligerents. “They have death in their veins, my love. But the angels will silence them, as long as we believe in ourselves.”

He checks whether his audience on the other end of the connection has heard and understood. “Arts and sports may not be the solution for everything, but they can help. It can help to understand each other a little better.”

Cantona Sings Eric, Friday April 26 in the Meervaart. Tickets can be purchased through Ticketmaster.