Cantona still backs flair to beat the system

With his bushy beard and impassioned rhetoric, Eric Cantona makes a convincing revolutionary. The charismatic Frenchman was in London last night, spreading the word about the need for more artistry in football, even recruiting Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo to his campaign for flair.

Before meeting up with the modern generation of Manchester United's dream-weavers, Cantona paused in the library of an elegant Covent Garden hotel, sipping mineral water, and enthusing about everyone from Johan Cruyff to Jose Mourinho, Diego Maradona to Ronaldinho. Artists all.

Turning serious, he also voiced deep concerns for the sport he once graced, beginning with Otto Rehhagel's well-drilled Greek team who won Euro 2004. "Greece had a kind of heart and a kind of soul but not the heart and soul I like," said Cantona.

"Their manager is passionate about his [4-5-1] system. I don't like this kind of system. Brazil have the heart and soul. Brazil have everything. They are very passionate, and skilful. When they give a ball to someone, it's like a gift.

"Great players do that. Like Cruyff. He was a real artist. He created things on the pitch. He participated in the revolution of football in the Seventies with Ajax, not only as a player, but he was very involved with the [total football] system. Even at 20, he had a lot of ideas. Cruyff was a real visionary.

"You cannot be a great player without being intelligent. You need to be very quick to read the runs of team-mates. In one second, you have to imagine a lot of possibilities and decide immediately. It's like geometry in your head. Sometimes, there are 60,000 people in the stand and you give a good ball to somebody to score and nobody could see the ball.

"Why? Because you have something special and can read things nobody else could. Maradona was like Kasparov. He could see 10 moves ahead. Platini was like a chess player. So was Cruyff. So is Zinedine Zidane. It is about creativity. I don't like people who say: 'I paint so I am an artist'. You are an artist if you create something. Mourinho is an artist. Not on his [tactical] system but the way he drives the team. He creates things.

"Mourinho manages Chelsea who have great players, lots of money, so all the players are under pressure. So he speaks a lot, provokes the media, other players and managers, and all the media speak about him. They all forget the players. Nobody speaks about the players, so the players can play without pressure.

"That's deliberate. The media help Chelsea to win. Speak about the players! Try to put the pressure on the players and I am sure there will be a lot of difference. Alex Ferguson only does it [make provocative comments] sometimes when they lose. But with Mourinho, it is every day, every week.

"I like Mourinho. Everything he says or does is because he thinks it will help the players. He knows the players need to play relaxed.

"If he comes in at half-time, and throws a cup of tea, he does it because he knows it will help the players, not because he feels angry. Pyschologically, he is very clever. It's a strategy."

But is Mourinho's Chelsea a creature of beauty? "Not really," Cantona replied. "I watched some Chelsea games and I don't really like the way they play."

What the maverick Frenchman craves most is what he calls Joga Bonito, The Beautiful Game of Pele, a theme he explores in his latest Nike television ad which parades the skills of Ronaldinho, Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo.

Cantona loves the ethos of attack and be damned embodied by the club of Rooney and Ronaldo. "Since the club were created, Manchester United are strong, and always have the same kind of [creative] football," said Cantona. "They take a player at 14, who they know has the ability, the skill and the strong personality to play for Manchester United.

"I love Rooney as a player. But I am a bit worried. Rooney can become the best player in the world at 25, 26, if he knows that in football you need to be strong, train hard, go to bed early, be careful what you are eating, what you are drinking, what you do in life. That is very, very important. All the best players in the world knew all the time these kinds of things are very important.

"If he realises that at 25, 26, then Rooney will be in the best three players in the world. At the same time, I am a bit worried, that at 25, 26, he could be out of the best teams, out of England, out of the best 100 players. Completely out. I am sure Alex Ferguson is very strong and will help. Rooney is still young. But somebody needs to say it to him. The last time I saw him I wanted to say it but I saw him only quickly."

He wants young talent protected. Robbie Fowler currently rebuilds his career with Liverpool but lacks that astonishing free-scoring verve Cantona remembers. "Fowler was so good at 18, and four, five years later, at 23 or 24, finished, not even [playing regularly] for England, not even for the best teams. Finished. Completely. Out. Why?"

Cantona is not being critical about Fowler, merely quizzical about the general theme of some young thoroughbreds not carrying on. "Clubs should ask why this kind of player is out. They say in England it is very difficult because of the media pressure. But it is not more difficult than in Italia, Spain or Brasilia.

"You drink to forget? Forget what? Because the pressure is difficult? What is difficult? You are paid to play your dream, the dream you had when you were five. Do you need to go to the pub and drink? Don't you think it is more difficult for people who work very hard from 8 in morning to 6 in the evening?"

The right "lifestyle" is the key to longevity. "Some footballers who are clever enough, like Roy Keane, Ronaldinho, and Zidane, realise that. You cannot be a great player without being a great trainer. I was the first at training and last out of training at United because I wanted to practise everything for the game. I was ambitious to play better every time. I achieved a lot."

He nodded at the reminder of that fabulous chip in off the underside of Sheffield United's crossbar in 1995. "Yes!!" The volley against Wimbledon. "Yes!!" The FA Cup final winner of 1996. "Yes!!" The artist briefly turned pragmatist. "It's important to score for the team. Ronaldinho is so great because he is an artist who plays for the team, who gives the ball as a gift, and he scores 15 or 20 goals a season. Platini was the same. Maradona was the same. It is a talent.

"Cristiano Ronaldo could score more goals. He gives the ball, a nice cross from left or right, and he doesn't care. He doesn't go to the goal. What does he have to do? He has to run 30 metres. He is young. He can improve. Cristiano Ronaldo will become - could become - one of the best if he wants to score goals. He does a lot of things right. He will score maybe 10 more goals during the season. And it is important to score goals."

With that, the rebel with a cause turned his final thoughts to the World Cup. "I would love Brazil to win, or a team with this kind of artistic players. But there are not a lot of artists out there." Certainly not of Cantona's calibre.