Almost 30 years after he retired from football at the peak of his career, Eric Cantona still has a larger-than-life presence and aura about him. Today, he's impeccably dressed in a luxurious and quite lovely mustard-coloured cardigan, twinned with a bowler hat, exuding the enlightened wisdom and eloquence of a man who thinks deeply about every aspect of his life and the world we live in. "I'm interested by any kind of art," he says as he begins to tell the journey of how he ended up with his debut album. "Since I retired from football, I've been an actor. I love to paint and I love to write. I've been writing since the age of ten. I've always loved music." 

The earliest entry into songwriting in a more professional sense for Cantona came in the form of writing songs for his wife, French actress and producer Rachida Brakni. "I wrote songs for my wife, who is a great artist and a great writer. I wrote the lyrics for her first album and a song for the band she created with French musician Gaetan Roussel, which is Lady Sir. I wrote this song under a pseudonym," he explains.

In this case, the pseudonym is Auguste Raurich. The desire to write under different names is something he regularly returns to, but for this specific project, it was important to do everything under his own name, as the project started organically. "It came during Covid because I had a lot of time, like everybody else," he says. "I said to myself, I will use this time to do something. I started to play guitar." It comes as no surprise that when Eric Cantona says he is going to do something, he turns out to be quite good at it. Or is he? "I'm still a very bad guitar player," he laughs. "I'm good enough to create songs. Sometimes you have a great guitar player but they feel they are not able to write songs or they would love to write songs, and sometimes you have bad guitar players who are able to write songs." 

For Cantona songwriting was a natural extension of his love of poetry and language. "Most important for me is to write the lyrics first because the musicality is in the lyrics. It's like evidence that the melody came naturally," he says passionately. "When I was younger, I listened a lot to The Clash. I've been lucky enough to meet Joe Strummer and Mick Jones. I remember Mick Jones said that Joe came to me with the lyrics and not the music. I'm not Mick Jones or Joe Strummer, but I'm brave enough to try. The talent is also in being brave enough to try. You have a lot of great people who do some wonderful things, but they don't want to try, or they feel shy or not confident enough." 

Bravery is a key word; a tenet Cantona has always lived by. 'Perfect Imperfection', the album's title-track, feels like a mission statement for his life: "You are in freedom boulevard," he croons in his rich husky voice. It's deeply atmospheric and evocative. The freedom he is celebrating is something he has always felt, as the opposite would be too hard to bear. He was the same on the football pitch: he had to create. He couldn't be constrained. Sometimes it would get him into trouble, but that was all part of the magic. Perfect imperfection. "I try to be as free as possible," he enthuses. "I love the feeling of being free. Maybe I love this feeling because in my subconsciousness, in my life I feel like I'm in a kind of jail. I need to express myself." 

He does most of his writing when travelling. He wrote 'We Drive' in Marrakech and 'Of The Sun' in Bangkok. No matter where in the world, all he has to do is pick up a pen and a notepad and channel that freedom. "I write because I want to express myself. I feel it's something that if I don't do it, I will die." 

The sound of the record feels like it comes from the mind of someone who likes to travel. A restless spirit that can't quite be contained. It veers from choppy post punky tracks like 'Avoir le choix' and the Radiohead-like guitar pulse of 'We Drive' to the lilting yearning of 'On se love'. It's a collection that is diverse in mind, body and soul. Cantona's voice is front and centre; at times, he's haunted, but at others, he sounds playful and light. It's a voice full of character that always demands attention.

The album is reflective of the troubled times of the modern world but it has an uplifting spirit of fight and passion. A coursing desire to fight back from one of pop culture's most iconic rebels. This feeling of hope is most literally expressed in the gently stirring track 'Let's Hope', which finds Cantona singing wearily about being "lost in the mess" before resolving to "let's hope that all goes back to normal." "What is normal? I don't know what is normal," he proclaims with a flourish. "What is normal for me is to live in a world of imagination and inspiration, observing the world and realising that we don't live in a normal world." 

Elsewhere, the album is prescient in its discussion of conflict and turmoil, and the importance of community in the face of aggressors. The inspiring highlight 'We'll Believe in Ourselves' has Cantona railing against the people who are "full of lies". "I wrote this song because it seems that we have people in charge of countries like a president who wants to go to war in their office, like they're playing video games," he says, not mentioning any name specifically, but it's not hard to work out who he might be talking about. "They don't realise we are all human beings. A young guy of 18 years old is a human being."

He frames the song using the story of a young couple refusing to take part in the crusades of people who have "the dead in their veins", who will ultimately be "silenced by the angels". "The song is inspired by 'Le deserteur', by the French writer Boris Vian," he explains. "I had this image of a couple completely in love. They want to live their own love story, and they are 18 years old. They don't want to die for somebody who is in an office with 25 mayors and sending the people to war." 

There is a hard-won wisdom to Eric Cantona's songs here. These are the words of a man who has really experienced life and thought about it. It's the sort of album he could only have made at this time in his life as a 60-year-old man, compared to the wide-eyed dreamer kid who chose football as his path as a 16-year-old in Marseille. "It's a real need when I write. Whenever I put some words on a paper it's because of what I am today," says Eric. "The songs reflect my life at the moment I write. Of course, when I was 16, I was different. I had a different vision of the world."

There is perhaps an intriguing alternate reality where Cantona didn't take up football or move to England, and is on his 15th album by now. But not only was he a precocious artistic kid, he was also pragmatic and made the choice he felt was right at the time. "When I was young, I was very interested in art," he recalls. "My father was a painter and took me to galleries. He's an artist. He was always using his imagination and inspired us. He told us how wonderful it is to look at these colours. I've been lucky to grow up in that world.

"I was very passionate about football, and I was very passionate about art. I think it's more clever to start with the football," he chuckles. Despite the exhilarating highs of his football career with multiple trophies, medals and moments the call to his other childhood passion became increasingly hard to resist. "It's also why I retired so young, because I was so passionate about art. In my career, I wanted to be 100% concentrated on football, and I felt that I would not improve more. I could have played on 5, 6 or 10 years more, but because I was passionate about art, I wanted to express myself in another world. I expressed myself in football. Football is art. I wanted somewhere to take risks. I'm a player. I love all kinds of playing. Acting is playing. Football is playing. Sometimes we forget that if we win, we live, and if we lose, we die. I love this excitement. I love this world of expression." 

All these years later the excitement he feels about creativity and the power of art is still as strong as ever. "I love to go to the museum, I love to listen to music because when I see something so wonderful, I can cry. I can be like this for hours in front of something nice." When he talks about art of any form you always get the sense that he is talking about the most precious, sacred and beautiful thing in the whole entire world. This man truly understands devotion. So often put on a pedestal himself and lionised as The King, Cantona himself treats his own passions and obsessions with the same level of reverence. 

The album is a product of the freedom Cantona enjoys in his life now. "It's very personal," he reflects before describing the idyllic process of actually making it. "I've been very free to work on this album, I've been very free from the beginning until the last day. We shared some moments, and I loved the experience when we went to the studio.

"I worked with producer Johan Dalgaard. We work from the beginning in his small studio and play the instruments and create the atmosphere around the songs. The studio was called La Frette outside Paris, a famous studio where a lot of great singers came. It's a very powerful place with a lot of energy.

"We stayed together for fifteen days. We had breakfast, lunch and dinner together, and at midnight we would go to mix everything. I love the adventure of creating something and sharing the moments with the people who give you ideas. It's maybe the most beautiful moment of the album." 

There's a dichotomy about Eric Cantona the musician that no matter what he tries to do he's always going to be Eric Cantona and that generally conjures up a specific image. It might be him standing stock still in a transcendent wonder like state after his famous chipped goal against Sunderland, or it might be him wading into the front row of the crowd at Selhurst Park, or wheeling away in delight after scoring an FA Cup final winning goal. There's always an image of Cantona that immediately comes to mind. Going forward, part of him wants to do whatever he can to slightly obscure that image while being aware he can never escape it.

"For me, it's pseudonyms," he says. "I think about that more and more. I'm interested in many things, and I have a lot of projects. For each project, I'd like to use a pseudonym. The young people might not know me, but maybe they've heard my name, but they're not like the people of my age - they have this image of me as a footballer, and sometimes it's difficult to get over. I want to use a pseudonym because, of course, you know this is me, but even if you know it's me, we have created something. I have a lot of people inside my head." Maybe it was important to get this debut statement out under his own name to draw a line. "People can listen or watch something without pollution and being polluted by the past and the image of someone like me," he adds of his desire to change things up. 

The similarities between Eric Cantona the footballer and Eric Cantona the musician become more and more evident the more you engage with his work and immerse yourself in his world and his passions. It's direct and powerful but also mysterious and combustible. For Cantona himself, music is the only thing that has given him a similar feeling. "Nothing can be compared to football," he admits. "After football, I haven't tried everything, but I've been on stage as an actor, I've been on set for movies, I've performed. After football, the strongest feeling is music. To be in front of the people and share this moment. It's my own words, and the music is the story of the human being. It's very strong. We all become entranced in another realm. It's like when you score a winning goal, only music after football can give that." 

Before we get on to his next grand artistic statement, it's important for Cantona to reflect on how 'Perfect Imperfection' relates to the world right now. He cites 'Of The Sun' as the song that encapsulates the album and what he wanted to say. "We wake up in the morning and feel we are in a dark and completely crazy world. I want to have this feeling of the sun. I'm the son, we are the sons of the sun," he says, his voice rising with swelling pride. "This world is wonderful, so why would we destroy it? Why would we destroy human beings?" 

He despairs at the actions of some of the people he sings about on the album. "I am 60 years old, and I've never seen what I see," he laments. "Go to the country, take the country, colonise the country and be proud of injustices and kill people. It's the first time that people do these kinds of things so easily and they are so free to do these things. There is reaction from people on social media, but there is no effect. Even less than in the past.

"I wasn't born during the Second World War, but maybe it started like this in the thirties. Crises after crises; it's like the solution is killing certain kinds of people. Maybe we will go there. Maybe we can take this part of the world, you will be more free with us. I would love to listen and debate with philosophers and other people about what is democracy and what is a dictatorship, it could be a very interesting day."

Eric Cantona isn't afraid to have that debate, and he's not afraid to express himself in his purest form. Bravery was with him on the football pitch, and it still is now, with a burning passion undimmed by new creative pastures. He still has the ability to stop everyone in their tracks and think that little bit deeper. His world is anything but empty.  ■

Taken from the May 2026 issue of Dork. Eric Cantona's debut album 'Perfect Imperfection' is out now.