Flynn signs Cantona for match

IRELAND'S EU Commissioner for Social Affairs, Padraig Flynn, took his first steps towards a career in international football management when he yesterday signed up Eric Cantona and two all star teams for football's contribution to the European Year Against Racism.

While the commissioner is understood, to the amusement of his guests, to have extolled the virtues of Castlebar as a potential venue for the match, it is likely to end up in Barcelona sometime this autumn.

All Castlebar will get is a Cantona signed football, The Irish Times suspects. Another similarly engraved ball is likely to be donated to Brussels' Gaelic football club, the only such club in the world that actually only plays soccer.

An awestruck spokesperson for the commissioner, the usually unflappable Ms Barbara Nolan, who sat beside the French philosopher footballer for an hour, was afterwards barely able to speak and vowed not to wash the hand he shook for a week.

A similar reaction was discernible among the hordes of Eurocrats, well used to brushing up against the leaders of the world, but reduced to the state of gibbering Boyzone fans as they crowded the corridors in the hope of a glimpse.

When Ms Nolan had composed herself she was able to say that Cantona met P as part of a delegation from the 300 strong International Association of Professional Footballers (AIFP), of which the former Argentinian captain, Diego Maradona is the president.

They were hoping to contribute on behalf of players to the debate on the future of the game in the wake of the Bosman transfer decision by the European Court of Justice, the union's secretary general, Didier Rustan, said.

The union, which has now been recognised by FIFA and is open to all professional players, will also be involved in campaigning for better facilities and training for young players in poorer soccer countries. Cantona, himself, and the rest of the delegation responded enthusiastically to Mr Flynn's suggestion of an anti racist match.

Mr Flynn, who is out of his current job in January 2000, will then himself be on the transfer market with little hope of a place on Bertie's team. Little wonder then he has done so much to break the three foreigner rule.