from three yards off his line, chucked the ball into the opposition half for Ole Gunnar Solskjær, who raced clear of the defence and finished calmly.
Not until Pepe Reina, who joined Liverpool in 2005, did the Premier League witness a goalkeeper so adept at these immediate, accurate long-range throws to launch counter-attacks. By this stage goalkeepers were generally also extremely comfortable with their feet, the majority growing up accustomed to the modern laws. ‘I was ten years old when they changed the back-pass rule,’ said Reina, who won the Premier League Golden Glove award three consecutive times. ‘I was still young enough, thankfully. It caught me just in time, as I was beginning to develop my skills.’ But even by this stage, in the mid-2000s, Reina’s kicking received significantly less attention than his throwing, indicative of how Schmeichel had created the template for the Premier League goalkeeper. ‘Schmeichel’s long throws were so powerful and allowed his team-mates to create danger at the other end … his approach was clearly ahead of his time,’ said Serie A veteran Samir Handanović. Nigeria’s Vincent Enyeama summarised the thoughts of a generation of keepers: ‘Even though Edwin van der Sar was my role model, Schmeichel brought in a different kind of goalkeeping.’ Schmeichel was the first Premier League player to provide inspiration across the world.
Van der Sar, who excelled for Manchester United around the same time as Reina was doing so for Liverpool, was famed for his quality in possession, primarily because he grew up at Ajax, where the visionary Johan Cruyff had insisted that the goalkeeper be an eleventh outfielder long before the back-pass change. Van der Sar became the accepted goalkeeping role model, with Thibaut Courtois and Manuel Neuer citing him as their inspiration because he was so comfortable on the ball. Kicking had become an essential part of modern goalkeeping, and those poor in possession found themselves marginalised.
Meanwhile, Schmeichel also helped revolutionise the Premier League in a different manner entirely. Of the 242 players who started a Premier League match on the Premier League’s opening weekend, just 11 were foreign. By virtue of simple probability, you’d expect only one of the 11 to be a goalkeeper. Instead, it was four: Schmeichel, plus Wimbledon’s Dutchman Hans Segers, Canadian international Craig Forrest at Ipswich and Czech Jan Stejskal for QPR. A year later, with overseas outfielders still rare, there were six more foreign regulars between the posts: Australian Mark Bosnich at Aston Villa, Russian Dmitri Kharine at Chelsea, Norwegian Erik Thorstvedt at Tottenham, Zimbabwe’s Bruce Grobbelaar, who had regained his place at Liverpool, and two more Czechs, Luděk Mikloško of West Ham and Pavel Srníček of Newcastle. Jim Barron, then the goalkeeping coach at Aston Villa, noted how foreign goalkeepers were more proactive than their English counterparts, commanding their box better and possessing superior distribution. England had always prided itself on the quality of its goalkeepers, but foreign imports were evolving the role.
Goalkeepers in the Premier League’s first couple of seasons were therefore significant for two clear reasons. First, the change to the back-pass law meant they broadened their skill set and became all-rounders rather than specialists, a development subsequently witnessed in every other position. Second, there was a concerted shift towards foreign players at the expense of homegrown talent, another process that would be replicated across the pitch. Goalkeepers were traditionally considered outsiders, but now they were leading the way into football’s modern age.
2
‘Being French, to me, is first and foremost being a revolutionary.’
Eric Cantona
Upon the formation of the Premier League, Manchester United hadn’t lifted the league trophy in a quarter of a century, which made their dominance of its early years even more remarkable. Alex Ferguson’s side triumphed in four of the first five seasons.
These five years coincided with the half-decade reign of Eric Cantona – and United’s only failure during this period, finishing second in 1994/95, came when the fantastic French forward was suspended for half the campaign. His impact upon United was extraordinary, turning them from also-rans to consistent champions almost overnight, and his influence on the Premier League was unparalleled. Cantona, more than anyone else, popularised technical football.
At a time when foreign players were still rare, this was a Frenchman of Italian and Spanish descent who strolled into English football stadiums, collar upturned, as if he owned them. Cantona was unlike anything England had previously encountered: when listing his inspirations, he mentioned Diego Maradona and Johan Cruyff, but also Pablo Picasso, Jim Morrison and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Brilliantly, when he referenced French poet Rimbaud, journalists mistakenly believed he was talking about 1980s action movie character Rambo. Cantona was almost a satirical character, a French philosopher trapped in English dressing rooms, where cutting up teammates’ clothes was considered the height of wit – and he clearly played along with the act. Teammates said he spoke English well, yet when quizzed by tabloid reporters his language skills suddenly deserted him, preserving his status as the baffled outsider. When Manchester United’s squad went for a post-match drink, the standard round was 17 lagers and one glass of champagne.
It wasn’t entirely about Cantona being from abroad, however. He’d earned a similar reputation in France, where he bounced between various Ligue 1 clubs with alarming regularity, usually after serious breaches of discipline. In his enlightening biography of the man, Philippe Auclair notes that in the late 1980s Cantona had become ‘the first celebrity footballer in his country’s history’, known primarily for his peculiar cultural references rather than his pure footballing ability. He’d risen to national prominence following his displays for France’s U21 side, who featured heavily in the sports programming of the new, innovative subscription TV channel Canal+. Cantona was the perfect protagonist for the trendy channel’s focus and, sure enough, he became the ideal figurehead for Sky and the Premier League, too.
Cantona’s most infamous moment in English football came in January 1995. Just after being dismissed for kicking out at Crystal Palace defender Richard Shaw, he reacted to abuse from Palace supporter Matthew Simmons by launching himself over Selhurst Park’s advertising hoardings to perform an extravagant ‘kung-fu’ kick on Simmons, an incident that brought an eight-month worldwide football ban and effectively ended his international career. While a disgraceful act, it was nevertheless a momentous incident for the Premier League; it featured heavily on news bulletins in countries as distant as Australia and New Zealand, the first time that England’s new top flight had become a genuinely global story.
It was probably inevitable the division would initially receive attention for negative reasons, considering the problems of the 1980s, but as reports explained Cantona’s background, they introduced viewers to the most intriguing character in English football, someone who clearly bucked the stereotype. British newspapers went to town: the Sun featured the incident on their front page two days running, on the second with a panel reading ‘The Shame of Cantona: Full story pages 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 22, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47 & 48’. The Premier League was big news. After Cantona successfully appealed against a two-week prison sentence for his attack, he reluctantly attended a press conference, where he slowly, thoughtfully told the assembled press: ‘When the seagulls … follow the trawler … it’s because they think … sardines … will be thrown into the sea. Thank you very much.’ He then stood up, shook the hand of his lawyer and swiftly departed to stunned laughter.
The crucial factor in Cantona’s image, however, was that he wasn’t simply different to every other Premier League player in terms of personality; he was also different to every other Premier League player in terms of footballing style. The references to philosophers and artists worked precisely because he was a footballing genius who boasted guile, creativity and unpredictability. He thrived upon space between
