Cantona: The Rebel Who Would Be King

Football, and art. Eric Cantona – legend, maverick, troubled artist or just plain trouble – never saw a need to make a distinction between the two. For all the heat and noise surrounding his infamous Crystal Palace ‘kung-fu kick’, it is for the sheer exuberant beauty of his play that Eric Cantona is chiefly remembered by English football fans. At Leeds United he transformed the team into title contenders, but became a true talisman at Manchester United, where to this day fans sing of ‘King Eric’. And yet the effortless style of Cantona’s play could not hide a darker side to his temperament. In his own words, ‘I play with passion and fire. I have to accept that sometimes, this fire does harm.’

In Cantona: The Rebel Who Would Be King leading French football journlist Philippe Auclair has interviewed over 200 key protagonists in Cantona’s career, searching for the man behind the myth. Marrying a deep knowledge of Cantona’s impact on the pitch with soulful, pin-sharp insight into the heart and inner thoughts of this most complex of characters, this is nothing less than the definitive biography of a one-time rebel of the French game, who rose to be the King of Old Trafford.