How listening to Eric Cantona could save football

When I filmed Eric Cantona publicly shame Sir Jim Ratclffe for the way the owners are running Manchester United a few days ago, it emboldened my belief that football fans are far more powerful than they realise.

Cantona is the ultimate fan. A football icon who backs up his love for Manchester United by wearing his heart on his sleeve.

By vocalising his uncensored thoughts that I believe are shared by the vast majority of our global fanbase his words hit home hard and made the world listen.

Just about every media organisation that reports on Manchester United transcribed the quotes from my film and shared them to a global audience.

When Eric says “I love Manchester United” we know he means it.

When he says Ratcliffe and his people are “destroying everything” he was savagely specific with an honesty that blew away all the spin farmed out by INEOS and their paid for ‘journalists’ who support their narrative

Cantona lashed out at the owners for not valuing the club’s legacy and history. For disrespecting the close-knit community around the club. For alienating fans who have supported this football club for decades with eye watering ticket prices, For cynically squeezing out working class supporters in favour of corporate high flyers and rich tourists.

Football fans around the world nodded in agreement. But what did Eric’s verbal kung fu kick actually achieve?

What made Cantona’s rant so powerful was how he followed up his words.

He signed up himself, his 2 brothers and his 4 kids as co-owners of FC United of Manchester, the football club set up by disenfranchised MUFC supporters 20 years ago when the Glazer family were allowed to leverage debt to ‘buy’ Manchester United.

FC United’s ownership model is simple. One fan. One vote. All fans are equal.

Cantona’s endorsement of this supporters’ co-operative was pure genius.

In one skillful 1:2 that hit the proverbial back of the net, Eric highlighted how the rich have stolen our game. And then offered a solution that is so glaringly obvious that most fans do not realise there is a way out of this madness.

We do not have to live in a world where elite football clubs are the play things of corporations, state sponsored entities and sportwashing investment funds.

As Busby famously said “football is nothing without fans.”

As we saw when public pressure stopped the ill-thought out European Super League in its tracks in the autumn of 2020, fans are all powerful if they stand together.

And that my friends is the key to the problem.

This is not just about Manchester United. This is about saving football.

I’ve long campaigned for a fan ownership model in the United Kingdom like we see in Germany or at the elite Spanish clubs Real Madrid and Barcelona.

Until we see a fan ownership model at all football clubs, not just at FC United of Manchester, fans can whistle in the wind while any given owner can do whatever they choose.

With American owners now controlling the majority of Premier League clubs, I expect we will start to see a gradual increase in ticket prices right across the board. Liverpool – the one elite club with American owners that truly listens to its fans – and Brentford, a genuine family orientated club, are the two clubs that have frozen ticket price rises.

But it’s not just ticket prices that fans want to be consulted about. It’s the whole direction and ethos of the football club that supporters want to have a stake in decision making.

Sooner or later, I believe fans will realise that the democratic governance of one fan one vote is the best way to save our national game. And to protect supporters relationships with their football club.

To make that happen will require government intervention and a strong football regulator beyond the financial control of the Premier League, state sponsored entities, investment funds and large corporations.

What we need now is a political movement that supporters of all football clubs can get behind to lobby parliament and force change. When that happens I believe we will look back and remember that Eric Cantona showed them the way when he called out Ratcliffe and his cohorts and pledged allegiance to FC United of Manchester.

If you’ve not done so already please watch my short Cantona film that documents his Ratcliffe rant and his subsequent allegiance with FC United. https://visionsport.tv/2025/04/16/how-listening-to-eric-cantona-could-save-football/

– JOHN GUBBA