The perfect imperfection by Eric Cantona

Eric Cantona he has always been an artist. It was for the many years that he successfully played on the football pitches where with his great talent, his overflowing personality and originality, he, a Frenchman, dominated British football in the first part of the nineties, becoming a symbol of the Manchester United. And he would most likely have continued to dominate the football scene if he had not decided, at only thirty, to abandon sporting activity.

Just as he revealed himself to be a true artist in shorts and a T-shirt on the green rectangle of the football pitch, so he was also one outside of sport, once he hung up his boots. Eric Cantona he developed a great interest in art, especially in cinema and in acting, appearing in over twenty films. Among these we can mention the cameo in “Elizabeth”2002 film starring Cate BlanchettAnd “My Friend Eric” (where Eric means Cantona) directed by the British director Ken Loach. He was also the protagonist of some commercials that went down in history.

What has always distinguished him and made him unique has always been, above all, his irrepressible personality, his often incomprehensible but certainly effective phrases. Like the one he said in the press conference called to explain why he had hit the fan of an opposing team guilty of insulting him with the violence of a football borrowed from martial arts: “When seagulls follow a fishing boat, it’s because they think the sardines will be thrown into the sea.” These are his unique and enigmatic words. Then he got up and left.

Coming to the present day, yesterday during a television interview he put forward a proposal to eliminate wars: “An international law that establishes that if a president decides to start a war, he must be the first to go to the front, instead of sending eighteen year olds. So I think there would be much fewer wars. They all stay in 25 meter long offices and then send eighteen year olds to their deaths. When you are the oppressor, you send eighteen year olds from your own country, but often there are none on the other side 18 year olds. There are innocent people, civilians. But there would be fewer wars if we did this only to encourage others to go to war.

In 2020, Cantona won the sympathies of another person with a not bad temper like Liam Gallagher (among other things, a huge fan of Manchester City, United’s eternal rival of which Eric was the symbol) who called him to play the part of the king (after all in England he is called ‘King Eric’) in the video of his “Once” included in the album “Why Me? Why Not” (read the review here).

More than cinema, Eric became passionate about theatre. When he was still playing he produced a theater piece, so it seemed completely natural to him, once free from sporting commitments, to go on stage and act in person. But there’s much more. Cantona also published a book of photographs (the proceeds went to charity for an organization helping the homeless of which he was a member). Among his interests there was also an active commitment to painting and poetry.

Naturally, music could not fail to be among the interests of the almost 60-year-old born in Marseille. In 2023 he released the EP “I’ll Make My Own Heaven” and recently wrapped up the tour ‘Cantona sings Eric’ in which, on stage, he was accompanied only by piano and cello.

Now Eric is making his long-distance debut with the album “Perfect imperfection”which will be released on the market on March 13th, whose release was anticipated by the single “On if love”. Of the eleven songs that make up the album, nine were written and composed by Cantona himself, while “Avoir le choix” and the title track are co-signed with Johan Dalgaard (formerly a collaborator of Johnny Hallyday), while “Droigts” was composed by Gaëtan Roussel.

Tracklist:

Avoir le choix

On Se Love

Let’s Hope

Perfect Imperfection

Droigts

Les Déchirures

We’ll Believe In Ourselves

Que Je Travestis

We Drive

Of The Sun

À La Gorge Des Loups