It was meant to be quite simple. The 2019/20 Champions League group stage draw would start out with Eric Cantona being presented with the President’s Award, as decided by UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin, and then the Manchester United legend would say a few words.
But with Cantona, saying a few words is never an exercise in simplicity. It’s a chance to toy with the status quo. And on the stage in Monaco, he did exactly that.
Wins the 2019 UEFA President's Award… Gives bizarre cryptic speech to confuse everyone in attendance.
Eric Cantona, ladies and gentlemen 😂 pic.twitter.com/qNgZB0cFoW
— Football on BT Sport (@btsportfootball) August 29, 2019
Although awards of greater significance were handed out and the Champions League groups were decided, this was the true high point of the night. So Adam Snavely and I decided it was our duty to take a deeper look at what Cantona said, and how it impacted his audience.
The attire
Brooks: Since this event was part awards show, I think we first have to address what Cantona was wearing. With everyone else in suits and gowns, Eric shows up looking like your dad popping out for a coffee on a Sunday morning. That said, I think we should be thankful he was wearing clothes at all. There was about a 40% chance he got on that stage wearing just the Peaky Blinders cap and nothing else.
Advertisement
Adam: This is classic Pub Dad attire. He might as well have been holding a Stella Artois or something. It seemed like most people dressed somewhat down for the event, though. I usually expect to see Messi and Ronaldo in some sort of velvet floral wonder-tux that hugs their every athletic curve, but even those guys were dressed pretty sensibly. I’m willing to give Father Cantona the benefit of the doubt on this one.
Brooks: Yes, if this was The Best FIFA Football Awards, he would’ve worn his glasses atop his hat and done up one more button like a gentleman.
The prompt
Brooks: Can we agree that “What’s going on through your mind right now?” was not the best thing to ask Eric Cantona at the start of a UEFA event?
Adam: Four months ago this man gleefully hop-scotched over Instagram’s terms of service by posting a video of a phallus cracking an egg. Any open-ended question you give him is daredevil Socratic Method.
The speech
Brooks: Given how quickly Eric begins his response, it’s clear that he came well prepared for what he was about to say. Ever since his seagulls/trawler speech, he knows that people expect him to say weird things. Now, almost 25 years later, the bar is set very high. So of course he begins his acceptance of the UEFA President’s Award with a quote from King Lear (“As flies to wanton boys, we are for the gods. They kill us for the sport.”). Adam, as a seasoned stage actor and an expert on Shakespeare, what can you glean from this choice?
Adam: Cantona is quoting the character Gloucester, who is probably the most tragic figure in King Lear outside of, you know, King Lear. He viciously and unfairly has his eyes cut out on-stage by Lear’s daughter Regan and her husband, the Duke of Cornwall. As luck would have it, I played the Duke of Cornwall in a production of King Lear, and I can say with absolute certainty that Gloucester and Cantona are both extremely familiar with the senseless brutality of day-to-day existence. Gloucester being blinded for simple hospitality to his former King; Cantona planting his foot into the chest of a fan who had a go at him. Personally, I love it. It’s a little palette cleanser of misery before we dive into the deep nihilistic dread. Great choice, Eric. 10/10.
Advertisement
Brooks: Exactly. After that quotation, he takes the obvious step of foretelling a dystopian future borne of scientific achievement… as one does at any UEFA event. “Soon the science will not only be able to slow down the aging of the cells; soon the science will fix the cells to the state, and so we’ll become eternal. Only accidents, crimes, wars will still kill us. But unfortunately, crimes and wars will multiply,” he says. I’m guessing Eric has been keeping up with the developments of CRISPR-Cas9, which “works like a pair of molecular scissors that can insert, delete, modify or replace DNA in the genome of a living organism,” in between watching RoboCop on repeat.
Adam: Can I just say, I love that they named the DNA modifying project after the drawer in your fridge that keeps your veggies fresh? But back to Cantona: why not go full 1984 during a UEFA event? Look at the set design for these things every year. Ceferin has a little Big Brother in him. The ghostly pallor, the stare that says “I would watch you warm up during breakfast and then report to a superior on whether or not you still seem physically and economically viable to help the nation-state.” Which brings us to our next logical question: is Cantona crazy, or is he the hero here?
Brooks: Again, I think he knows that people both expect and want him to say wacky things, so there is some calculation at work. That said, at this point in his performance, I think he realized that he had completely lost his audience. So instead of reciting the next 15 minutes of humanity’s future hellscape, he abruptly shifted gears and closes with “I love football… thank you.” The man knows how to read a crowd.
Adam: And yet, I’m left wanting more. Tell me of the oncoming eternal wars of light and darkness that will sweep us up in their wake. Show me how my dreams will become 1s and 0s blinking along the backs of my eyelids. Regale me with the connecter between the science-fiction-reality and “I love football.” You know he definitely had a way to connect that in his head that he just cut out when he realized he was going over the length of a Joga Bonito video.
Brooks: He only wanted to give us a taste, saving the rest for his inevitable Netflix special.
Advertisement
Adam: It’s just 30-minute episodes of him saying “this is you, and this is the universe” as he throws small berries and assorted food items into a blender. Like Neil deGrasse Tyson, but way drunker and more fun at parties.
The reaction
Brooks: While Eric was spitting truth, the cameras graced us with several magnificent reaction shots. First, there was Messi and Ronaldo.
Messi seemed concerned that he had somehow walked into the wrong theater — like a new university student realizing he is in advanced astrophysics instead of the intro to film class he signed up for.
Adam: He’s got his first day of school haircut. Messi will always be adorable.
Brooks: But the best part of this shot is the guy in the top right corner. He appears to be seriously considering whether Cantona is revealing a mind-bending truth or talking complete nonsense.
Adam: Just the same as I am seriously considering whether his finger is resting on his nose inquisitively, trying to push those philosophical thoughts across his synapses a little bit quicker, or if he got caught digging for gold and was confronted with the bleak future of his existence part-way through.
Brooks: Like a squatting deer getting beamed up by an alien mothership (see, I can do it too, Eric). Then there was Pavel Nedved, smiling like he was in on the joke, and the two men sitting next to him, who most definitely were not.
Adam: Look at him. He’s so happy. He looks like he and Cantona wrote this speech together and he’s just bursting at the seams with pride over seeing his hard work said to this crowd of predominantly men who all seem to be wearing the same suit.
Brooks: Finally, there’s PSG president Nasser Al-Khelaifi, who apparently blocked out Cantona’s ramblings as he cursed Neymar’s name over and over and over again.
Adam: I have seen that type of focus in only two instances: attempting to level some unknown curse on a person, and Candy Crush. Which makes sense, since both acts revolve around selling off bits of your soul in the name of crushing your enemies.
Advertisement
The final thoughts
Brooks: My only takeaways from this experience are that 1) we are all doomed, and 2) you should always save Eric Cantona’s remarks for the end of the night, rather than the start of it.
Adam: I couldn’t disagree more, Brooks. These big football events are mostly known for being supremely dry affairs that only get coverage when a presenter decides to get extremely sexist on stage. I won’t say that Cantona is the safest choice in that regard, but you do know that he’ll immediately make your event into a viral moment on the internet, and what do any of us really have apart from viral moments on the internet? Besides the promise that all of our cells will be turned into self-repairing, self-sustaining systems that will never allow us to die, endlessly experiencing the horrors of existence as the new gods of the universe? Speaking of which, if mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell, does that make the new cyber mitochondria microscopic nuclear reactors? These are the questions that keep me up at night.
Brooks: Thank you, Adam.
(Photo: Harold Cunningham – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images)