Ooh, ah, Cantona! The reinvention of a football genius

Eric Cantona thrilled Man United fans, impressed film critics and now – as a singer-songwriter – is being hailed as the new Leonard Cohen. No matter that his lyrics sound like they were written by a depressed teenager on ChatGPT, writes Jim White, his latest reincarnation is a sell-out success, and he’s on his way back to Britain…

His goal celebrations, his presence, his rare gnomic utterances: to Cantona, everything is an opportunity for theatre (AFP via Getty Images)

Over the weekend, a 57-year-old singer-songwriter new to the scene made his concert debut with a performance in a small club in Auxerre, southern France. In normal circumstances, his two-hour set would have garnered little attention. But the French media was there in force. This, after all, was no ordinary debutant, rumbling gruffly behind the microphone. This was Eric Cantona.

Among those present, the critic from Le Parisien reckoned the former footballer’s stripped-back show was magnificent: smart, intriguing, his material and performance comparable, they insisted, to Leonard Cohen and Nick Cave. Well, there certainly wouldn’t have been a lot of laughs involved. This is a man who has long taken his work seriously indeed.

“When I was a kid, I had two passions: for art and sport. So I started with football, better I think,” he told the BBC’s Colin Paterson, who was at the gig. “Now I can sing until the end of my life. I have a deep need of expressing myself.”