Cantona’s anti-bank ‘revolution’ flops

Eric Cantona’s bid to destroy global banking appeared to have failed yesterday as his French compatriots ignored his call to withdraw cash en masse and it emerged his wife had appeared in a TV bank ad.

The football icon warned his own bank to expect a large withdrawal but there were no reports from anywhere else in France of people lining up to take out their money.

The wealthy former Manchester United player told a branch of BNP Paribas in the northern town of Albert that he intended to make a withdrawal of “more than €1,500”, branch manager Antoine Poissonier said.

French and European politicians and bankers have criticised the striker-turned-actor, saying his call for citizens to empty bank accounts and punish the financial sector was irresponsible, naive and misguided.

But tens of thousands of people in France and beyond had promised on social networks like Facebook that they would take up Mr Cantona’s call to bring down the “corrupt, criminal” banking system that sparked the global economic crisis.

By midday yesterday – the day Mr Cantona suggested his anti-capitalist revolution should begin – very few appeared to have kept their promise.

“We have seen no change,” said Didier Borriello of Credit Lyonnais bank in the southern city of Marseille, Mr Cantona’s home town, echoing reports from around France of business as usual in the nation’s banking institutions.

Mr Cantona’s apparent failure was compounded when it emerged yesterday that his actress wife Rachida Brakni had starred in a television advertisement for Credit Lyonnais that was widely broadcast earlier this year.

Minister for Solidarity Roselyne Bachelot was quick to point out what she said were the contradictions in the anti-capitalist campaign launched by a rich ex-football star whose “wife does advertising for the banking system.”

She noted that Mr Cantona had himself appeared in many television, cinema and magazine ads for products ranging from L’Oreal cosmetics to Renault cars. Mr Cantona first made the withdrawal suggestion in October as millions of trade unionists took to streets in France to protest extending the retirement age in a series of ultimately futile protests.

“What is the system?” he asked, in a video interview with a local newspaper. “It revolves around the banks, the system is built on the power of the banks, so it can be destroyed through the banks.”

“The three million people in the street, they go to the bank, withdraw their money, and the banks collapse. That’s a real threat, there’s a real revolution,” he said in the video that went viral on the web.

“No weapons, no blood, nothing at all. It’s not complicated. Then we’ll be listened to in a different way,” said the former footballer famed for kung-fu kicking a Crystal Palace fan because of a racist insult.

European Union Economic Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn, once a director of a Finnish first division club, said yesterday he considered himself a Manchester United fan.

But he added: “I think Mr Cantona is a better footballer than he is an economist.”