Cantona says he would have rejected Man Utd move if Ratcliffe had been owner

Eric Cantona has said he would have refused to join Manchester United had Sir Jim Ratcliffe been a shareholder at Old Trafford, becoming the latest high-profile figure to publicly rebuke the club’s co-owner following Ratcliffe’s recent comments that “nobody’s tough enough to deal with the immigration problem”.

Cantona, 60, was asked directly in a video shared on TikTok by well-known United fan Pete Boyle whether he would have been willing to sign for a club part-owned by Ratcliffe. His initial answer was a single word: “No.” Pressed to elaborate, the four-time Premier League winner added: “Of course not. You know what I think about all of this, with this kind of politics. I cannot understand how someone like this can say something like that when he’s one of the club’s owners.”

The Frenchman went on to argue that football itself is built on the contributions of immigrant communities. “Football is made — all the greatest players come from different waves of immigration. Everywhere, in France, in England, everywhere,” he said. Cantona cited Raymond Kopa, the son of Polish immigrants who became one of France’s finest players in the 1950s, Michel Platini’s Italian heritage, and his own family background — his mother came from Spanish refugees — as examples of that history.

“I made a documentary on that, French Football: An Immigrant History,” Cantona added. “I cannot accept this kind of thing.”

The remarks carry a particular irony given Ratcliffe’s well-documented admiration for Cantona. The INEOS founder named the vehicle company he used to acquire his 25% stake in United “Trawlers Limited” — a direct reference to Cantona’s famous 1995 press conference quip: “When the seagulls follow the trawler, it’s because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea.”

Cantona’s intervention follows similar criticism from Gary Lineker, who described Ratcliffe on his podcast as “not a particularly pleasant human being” and suggested the United co-owner was “even worse than the Glazers”. Lineker said: “I must congratulate the Glazers on finding someone even worse than them that they can blame and getting him in there and getting all the stick: Jim Ratcliffe. It’s a bit of a shambles of a football club the way it’s being run at the moment.”