Should there be a statue of Eric Cantona at Old Trafford?

Following on from a recent article here at HITC, in relation to Zinedine Zidane’s immortalisation in bronze in Paris we suggested a few of our own potential statues that could go be erected across the country. Zidane's statue is of his now infamous headbutt.

Zidane is of course one of the greatest to ever play the game but the fiery Frenchman’s structure is actually of his most infamous moment, as he planted his skull like a Pachycephalosaurus, the dinosaur who rammed heads like a musk oxen, straight into the solar-plexus of former Evertonian Marco Materazzi; shutting his gob in the process.

He was sent off, in his final ever appearance in football and France went on to lose the World Cup Final.

Is the Frenchman's statue a one-off or could it be replicated, we asked. Beckham’s highly lethal and super-dangerous laying down backward heel flick that so successively decimated the leg of the Argentine ‘hard-man’ Diego Simeone was suggested along with Wayne Rooney’s nonchalant and ‘accidental’ genital stamp on Ricardo Carvalho, but an equally fiery Frenchman’s moment of infamy too warranted such a mention.

Eric Cantona, the Manchester United legend, who was instrumental in the re-birth of the Manchester United dynasty that we all know and fear now.

Yet his moment of infamy was of course that kung-fu kick on Crystal Palace supporter Matthew Simmons in 1995. Following the Zidane theme; is that how a statue of him should appear?

He has always maintained since that the moment was a ‘great feeling’ that he wanted the fans to treasure so should he be immortalised mid-kung-fu-flight outside Old Trafford?

Here it is, and I still find Peter Schmeichel’s gullet high shorts just as funny today…

I am not condoning violence, simply pointing out the parallels; the French don’t seem to mind.

Yet as silly as this might sound should a statue of Cantona sit outside the ground anyway, perhaps not mid-flight but maybe with the kingly stature of the surveying Cantona after he made a mockery of Sunderland’s Lionel Perez with this unforgettable lob and celebration, collar-up and all.

What do you think, should Cantona be immortalised in bronze? Does he deserve such an honour?

image: © lordcolus