Читать книгу 250 Days. Cantona’s Kung Fu and the Making of Man U онлайн

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The true explanation might well have been more simple than that. Ferguson, renowned as a pragmatist, understood that having bought a unique talent and personality, there was very little to be gained in trying to mould Cantona and risk diluting him. Do that, and Manchester United might as well not have bothered at all.

If Cantona’s special treatment could easily have caused resentment within United’s dressing room, Ferguson’s dismissal of that suggestion is gloriously pithy: ‘I did things for Eric … that I did not do for them, but I don’t think this was resented, because the players understood the exceptional talents had qualities they did not possess.’

Whether or not Ferguson’s assessment was accurate is open to interpretation. In his autobiography, Mark Hughes writes that ‘the manager had to stretch a few principles to accommodate a Frenchman who is his own man and obviously has had his problems conforming’, and that while ‘Ferguson didn’t exactly rewrite the rulebook he treated him differently’. But the overwhelming sense is that the Manchester United players understood Ferguson’s reasoning. That is a tribute to both the manager’s man-management and their own maturity.