I’ve wrote about him before. So why am I writing about him once again ?
Well it is because he’s one of these players who… If only there was a very famous quote…
No, can’t think of one right now.
This post isn’t going to be about that though. This entry is about what he did after.
Just as with Robbie Savage’s post-playing career, we’ve also stopped paying attention to what Cantona went on to do after he retired from football.
There were a few footie-related activities. He took up beach soccer and managed a French team, taking them to the Beach Soccer World Cup Finals. There was some talk about him going into actual management. He once said that he’d only take over at the top, not as an assistant or anything.
In 2002 with Fergie’s first retirment attempt there was some talk of Eric replacing him, but Cantona was not a fan of the Glazers and it never went any further.
And as you will know he was associated with the relaunched New York Cosmos. (Whatever happened to that… Is he still with them…? *wiki* No, not any more.)
Additionally you’ll have seen him in a few adverts for Nike and most recently for Kronenberg.
But what young Eric really wanted to do was to be a thespian.
Cantona’s other career has been on the big screen with appearances in productions such as Elizabeth (1998), Mookie (1998) – where he acted opposite a chimp. In 2003 for the film L’outremangeur (The Over-Eater) he played an obese detective
, alongside Rachida Brakni who eventually became his wife.
Then in 2009 he took on the difficult role of playing himself in the Ken Loach film Looking For Eric.
There’s been some music along the way with Cantona too. He has appeared in/been involved with/influenced the following:
2007 With his brother Joel, they appeared at the beginning of a music video by French rapper Soprano. In the scene they are both in a bar and they calm down some local rednecks:Also in 2007:
The French group Dionysos (who also sing in English) released the album: La Mécanique du Cœur.
Monsieur Cantona is featured on the last track. Epilogue:
(This album has a theme running through. You need to listen to the full thing.)
– Additionally the album was adapted into an animated movie: Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart.
You thought you misheard, but you didn’t. They did mention Sunderland in the lyrics. If you’ve watched the video you’ll have seen that King Eric re-enacts a famous “non-celebration” after he scored that goal against Sunderland in 1996.
The pertinant lyrics in the song:
And score that goal against Sunderland (against Sunderland)
And raise arms”
That wasn’t the first time Cali had performed in front of Cantona though, in 2006 he did an acoustic performance on a Canal + Sports TV programme:
A couple of years ago she released an album and that man Cali pops up again – He composed the music and her husband wrote the lyrics.
This is from an article in Paris Match about her influences and about the album (Google translated):
“When she was a teenager, the French of Algerian origin listened “Cure, Siouxsie and The Banshees, Joy Division “and was” dressed all in black…”
“…she needed her husband came to him. He “heard me sing all the time, he offered me to write the lyrics. I gave him the themes, I told him stories and he came back with texts, “she continued. These speak of “thwarted love stories”, of “betrayal” of “winding and crooked things” … “Funny things are never very interesting,”
There are rednecks in France? I didn’t know rednecks has the intelligence to fill our passport applications.