With Eric Cantona turning 50 on Tuesday, we look at some lesser-known facts about the former Manchester United maverick.
- Cantona's penalty technique involved watching the goalkeeper, waiting until the bend of their knees revealed which direction they would dive in, and shooting the opposite way. He was considered among the finest penalty takers of his generation.
- The forward's first appearance for Manchester United came in a friendly against Benfica, in Lisbon, that had been organised to mark Eusebio's 50th birthday.
- When asked to select his dream team, Cantona chose the late Johan Cruyff as his manager for the Dutchman's "tactical brain", even over Sir Alex Ferguson who inspired his finest football. Roy Keane was the only United team-mate he included.
- His family home, having been born in the Caillols district of Marseille, was originally a cave in the foothills of the Massif de la Sainte Baume. The cave was used by the Nazis as a lookout post during World War Two before Cantona's grandfather transformed it into a home in 1955.
- According to Roy Keane, when Cantona's name came out of a hat to win a total of £16,000 taken from £800-contributions from several United players, he gave £8,000 to both Paul Scholes and Nicky Butt. David Beckham and the Neville brothers, then in their youth, felt they could not afford to risk the £800 so chose not to participate; Butt and Scholes also could not but Cantona was rewarding their courage for taking the risk.
- Cantona is a prolific reader, and his three favourite books are Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, Hermann Hesse's Narcissus & Goldmund, and a collection by Antonin Artaud.
- His career began at S.O. Caillolais. While there, most of Cantona's appearances came as a goalkeeper.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here