Ok. Maybe this is a stupid thread, but I just saw my very first Eric Cantona match last night on FSC. They replayed a Leeds Utd-Liverpool Charity Shield game from 1992. Eric scored a hat trick (final score Leeds 4 - L'Pool 3) and basically won the game for Leeds singlehandedly. I suppose he went on to play for Man U shortly thereafter and so on and so forth. These two guys are very different players. Eric was big and strong, with a powerful shot and from what I could tell was good with his head. Thierry is like a Gazele, extremely agile, quick and with deft touches and clever moves that seem to happen in slow motion. With all the hype that Henry gets in the Premiership these days I wonder how he would have fared if he had played at the same time as Cantona. Who is better and who would have come out on top?
I saw the tail end of that one ... Very good iniative from FSC to show "old" games with funny looking kits ... Gordon Strachan in his Leeds uniform, priceless ... hehehe. 92 is still a little bit too recent, they need to go down to the 80s. How could Grobelaar not get that cross on Cantona's header (4th goal) ? Game fixed (hehehe) ?
yeah, i have to check their website and see what other "classic" games they're showing. i assumed there would be more Cantona fans on the French boards. i guess i was wrong.
I assume Ballon D'Or's point is that neither player has done much outside of England, which is not quite fair. Canto was exiled from the national team fairly early on in his career, or at least before the team had a chance to win anything (as I recall, he was briefly paired with JPP on a team that was terrible behind the two of them. Ironically, when the rest of the team got to be really good--1996/98--they were both gone...). As for Titi, he's scored goals in the WC and Euro, and if he had half as many chances as Van Nistelrooy, he'd score many more for France (Ruud has a reputation as a great finisher, but in the international games I've seen him in, he misses half his chances). I'd also like to think that Titi still has a chance to be great for France--but perhaps I'm overly optimistic. How's this--I'd have loved to see them together. I think Titi would have benifited from Canto's authority and strength--and Canto would have enjoyed playing with someone that quick and skilled. I'd also say that Canto was much more of a prototypical English-style forward, just more skilled... Just some random thoughts...