Chris Waddle thinks he 'scared' Sheffield Wednesday boss into not signing Manchester United legend

The Owls famously took Cantona on trial after he’d been handed a ban for throwing the ball at the referee during a Nimes game against Saint-Etienne, and he subsequently announced his decision to retire. Michel Platini persuaded him otherwise, and after Liverpool decided against signing him he spent some time in South Yorkshire with Trevor Francis’ side.

He was still 25, and would go on to sign for Leeds United before becoming a legend at Manchester United, but he’s often seen as ‘one that got away’ for Wednesdayites having played in a Transatlantic Challenge match against Baltimore Blast at the Sheffield Arena during his brief time in blue and white. Waddle believes he may have had something to do with Francis’ final decision.

“He can be awkward. I said, he's a nice kid”

“I was at Marseille,” the Wednesday great told yaysweepstakes.com. “Eric had a trial at Sheffield Wednesday, but the pitches were frozen so he ended up playing a little tournament on AstroTurf and Trevor rang us up and said I've got Eric Cantona on trial.

“He says, what's he like? I said, look, he's a very good footballer, tall lad, big, strong kid. I said, technically very gifted, but he is a bit of an individual. He can be awkward. I said, he's a nice kid.

“If he wasn't playing, he wanted out. I just said, look, he can be temperamental. He's a talented footballer, but he can be very temperamental. So I think that scared Trevor off him. Howard Wilkinson signed him at Leeds without watching him play, I think. And he wasn't Howard's type of player. I don't know how he ended up at Leeds.

“Obviously he went to Man United where the rest is history, as they say. But Eric’s a Marseille lad. The crowd fell out with him because he took his shirt off once and threw it away when he got subbed. He took his shirt off and threw and when you do that you're disrespecting the shirt so the fans turned on him.

“They loaned him out to Bordeaux and he came back and he was in the team, he hurt his knee. Franz Beckenbauer couldn't put him back in. It was me, Abedi Pele and Jean-Pierre Papin as the front three. Eric couldn't get in the team and he had to leave... And that's when he went to Nîmes.. It fell apart there and he got banned.”

Cantona would end up playing over 150 games in the Premier League, scoring 70 goals and getting 56 assists, winning four league titles along the way.

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