One of the Eric Cantona stories that sums up his unique place in pop culture came when he first arrived in England as a Leeds United player in 1992. He was asked in an interview who his hero was, and he said, “Rimbaud,” which was written up in the press as ‘Rambo’, leading to idiot Leeds fans (full disclosure, I’m a Hull City fan) holding up pictures of Sly Stallone gunning down Vietcong and chanting ‘Rambo, Rambo’ at matches.
Cantona subsequently signed for Alex Ferguson at Manchester United where he achieved great success as well as notoriety for kung-fu kicking an idiot Crystal Palace fan (no qualifier here, he just was). At a press conference following an appeal hearing about the kung-fu kick at a magistrates court, he said only this: “When the seagulls follow the trawler, it’s because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea.” Cue days of sport sections forgoing tactical analysis for dissections of imagery in surrealist poetry.
