26-01-2010, 05:43 PM
(14-01-2010, 04:57 AM)andrewcmufc Wrote: is it true that the reason king eric always had the collar up was cause he had a leeds tattoo on his neck, thats what i heard could be bollocks
Remember 1993-94 season? Arsenal come to OT, but were beaten by a single goal, scored from an indirect free-kick. The ball was rolled by Paul Ince to Eric Cantona, who struck an almighty ferocious drive, straight as an arrow, past a bewildered David Seaman. I remember that celebration as he ran to the North stand, bandaged wrist punching the air, but as these extracts from “CANTONA: THE REBEL WHO WOULD BE KING” goes on the say, there is a small matter of an upturned collar!
....And could it be?...yes, the collar was up, for the very first time.
“It happened by chance,” Eric told L’Equipe Magazine in 2007. “One day, I put on my jersey and the collar stayed up, but I can’t remember when it took place.” Was it on 19th September 1993, then?
As Cantona told his friend, Bernard Molino, “Nature made me stiff. My neck and lower back often give me pain, but I haven’t suffered as much of a stiff neck since I began to play with an upright collar.”
His United shirt, still emblazoned with the number 12 while Bryan Robson was fit to play, was now part of King Eric’s regalia. “It became a superstition,” he said in the same interview. “it wasn’t part of a marketing ploy, or to make me stand apart from the others. Many people wondered why I did it. Some said ‘He’s pretending to be the King; he thinks he’s Elvis Presley.’ One day, a Liverpool player even tried to provoke me, make fun of me: Neil Ruddock. He put his collar up and did a dance a la Elvis. But he was the only one who found it funny.”
Some United fans still believe that the actual reason for Cantona’s mannerism was to ensure the cameras caught the swoosh of the sponsor’s logo, but Umbro were the kit makers. Others spread the mischievous rumour that Eric has ‘I LOVE LEEDS’ tattooed on his neck .....In fact the only time Cantona visited the tattooist’s parlour was to have the head of a Native American chief drawn above his left breast.
Extracts taken from CANTONA: THE REBEL WHO WOULD BE KING, by Phillipe Auclair, published by Macmillan
So there it is. An accident that kept his neck warm!