A lot of us spend many hours and days trying to be ‘cool’, whatever that exactly means, and a lot of us end up failing to convey this aura of ‘cool’.
You either have it or you don’t, you’ve got the swagger or you’re just a little limp.
Eric Cantona had it; a little ‘je ne sais quoi’ shall we say. It showed, too, in the way he played his football (see chip against Sunderland).
But also off the pitch Cantona was a dream for journalists, what with all those trawlers and seagulls, he was a quote machine.
You see him even today doing the advertising for a certain beer looking like a cool old Frenchman who drinks beers and pretends that he is a farmer so as to attract female attention.
Here is a clip of him putting Alan Hansen to the sword over his famous ‘you can’t win anything with kids’ comment. United, of course, went on to win consecutive doubles proving what everybody has known for a long time that Hansen hasn’t got a clue what he is talking about.
Even with half the buttons undone on his shirt, Cantona still manages to look cooler than any of us ever will.
‘What iz hiz name?……..Hanzen?’