🎥 It is 25 years since Eric Cantona's infamous kung-fu kick 🥋 | OneFootball

25 January 2020 marks exactly 25 years since Manchester United icon Eric Cantona vaulted an advertising hoarding and kicked a Crystal Palace fan in the chest.

Where does the time go?

Cantona arrived in England from French football as a virtual unknown in 1992, joining Leeds United and winning the final pre-Premier League era English league title in his maiden season.

The following year he moved to Manchester United and his impact helped a floundering side win the inaugural Premier League by 10 points, becoming the first player to win consecutive English top flight titles with two different clubs.

But it was over the following years that Cantona would truly make his mark on English football, in more ways than one.

He was instrumental as United won the league and FA Cup double in 1993/94, scooping the PFA Player of the Year award in the process, and in the 94/95 season he was responsible for a regrettable act that he would struggle to ever fully live down.

On 25 January 1995, Cantona reacted to abuse (“fuck off back to France you French motherfucker”) from Crystal Palace supporter Matthew Simmons by angrily jumping over the advertising hoarding and karate kicking him in the chest.

The Frenchman was sentenced to 120 hours community service and banned from football for eight months.

But did he regret it? Did he heck!

Speaking in a 2011 BBC documentary, Cantona said: “My best moment? I have a lot of good moments but the one I prefer is when I kicked the hooligan.

“You know, you meet thousands of people like him.

“If I’d met that guy on another day, things may have happened very differently even if he had said exactly the same things. Life is weird like that.”

Cantona scored against Liverpool on his return to action in October 1995 and helped United lift another league and cup double at the end of the 1995/96 season.

And though we are unable to show you footage of the infamous Selhurst Park incident, here it is re-created in Lego instead …

“The most important thing for me is that I was who I was,” added Cantona in that BBC documentary.

“I was myself!”