Absolution comes in many forms but it can be obtained in few sweeter ways than a late FA Cup final winner against your team’s greatest rivals. Eric Cantona had spent the season searching for redemption in the wake of his eight-month ban and assault charge by leading Manchester United to a third league title in four years but it was his double-clinching volley, a moment of premium beauty on what had been a grim affair, that confirmed his entry into the club’s pantheon.

It was neither Cantona’s favourite nor his most aesthetically pleasing goal – lacking the audacity of his Sunderland lob, or the spectacular control against Wimbledon – but the 86th-minute volley against Liverpool at Wembley would leave a lasting legacy. The impact was multi-layered, for both United and Liverpool’s trajectories dramatically accentuated in the immediate aftermath. Cantona left an indelible impression, altering the landscape. Things have not been the same since.

This was the conclusion of a season that began with Alan Hansen’s “you’ll win nothing with kids” comment and a genuine belief that Liverpool’s squad, full of elan under the tutelage of Roy Evans, were on the precipice of another prolonged spell of success. It did not quite turn out that way.

Step up, Monsieur Cantona. He re-entered from his eight-month ban and 120 hours of community service after kicking the Crystal Palace supporter who told him to “fuck off back to France” against Liverpool in the league at an Old Trafford showered in tricolores in early October. Cantona provided an assist for Nicky Butt inside two minutes and scored the equalising penalty in a thrilling 2-2 draw. The King was back but it took until Christmas for him to ascend to full throttle, at which point Newcastle led the league by 10 points.

Cantona’s canny knack for affecting the crucial games would separate them. Without le Roi, Kevin Keegan may never have wilted under the crippling pressure that saw him deliver his infamous “I’d love it” speech. United’s defining run started with a 1-0 win over West Ham with Cantona scoring. They were two matches into a 12-game unbeaten streak at that juncture but the real turning point arrived at St James’ Park. An imperious Peter Schmeichel had been weathering a hail of pressure before six minutes into the second half a hitherto muted Cantona volleyed home Phil Neville’s cross to knock the wind from Newcastle’s sails. Cantona would score in the next five games including another show-stealing performance against Arsenal. “They seem to take their lead from Cantona,” remarked the Arsenal manager, Bruce Rioch, afterwards. The title still went down to the final game, where they coasted past Middlesbrough, and after that United were then off to Wembley in search of a second double in three seasons.

Steve Bruce had been the club’s captain but struggling to overcome a hamstring injury which also saw him out of the title-securing victory a weekend previous at the Riverside, Cantona became the first captain not from the British Isles to lift the Cup. A leader by example, conflicting with the common vociferous armband-wearer of the day (Bruce has said he barely spoke in his first few weeks at Old Trafford), he became a father-like figure to the younger members of the squad and an inspiration to those breaking through at the beginning of the club’s greatest period of success.

Roy Keane tells a story – though precise details differ between his two autobiographies – of how Bruce arrived at the Cliff one day with a royalty cheque for the first-team squad after they had contributed to “some video”. There was a discussion about how to split the money and it was decided a draw would be made. Whoever’s name came out would take the money, though younger players in the 18-man squad were given an option to take their dividend. The younger members took the cut – apart from Paul Scholes and Nicky Butt, neither of whom would have been earning weighty sums at the time. Cantona’s name was drawn out but the following morning he brought two cheques in for Scholes and Butt as a reward for their hunger. “That was Eric to a T,” Keane recalls in his first book. “The unexpected, a touch of class and an appreciation of the plight of two young lads in need of the money more than himself.”

It overwrites the theory of Cantona the cavalier. He was a flawed genius with a temper he struggled to tame but among the madness, the fighting and the fallouts, there was an air of class. Aloof to strangers but warm to those close to him, there was a reason he became known as The King of Old Trafford. As Denis Law, the other former United player to have such a moniker bestowed on him, says: “I can’t think of anyone who I would rather wear my crown.”

Cantona at White Hart Lane early in 1996. Photograph: Action Images

The Cup final itself had been largely forgettable before his strike, perhaps inevitable considering the hype and excitement prior to kick-off, and for many a buildup consisting of suits, songs and swipes are the more lasting impressions almost two decades later. Few could have foreseen at the time that the Spice Boys were in many ways trendsetters, an acquired taste before their time. Their flash fashion and showbiz lifestyles were balked at and the ensuing negative publicity was exacerbated by shortcomings on the pitch. Two decades on their behaviour would be considered tame in comparison to the life of excess lived by some of the biggest earners nowadays but when they disembarked their coach at Wembley and the world caught a first glimpse of those horrific Armani suits, a new depth was plumbed.

The dodgy sartorial choices spawned accusations that Liverpool were not fully focused on the game. Keane, who would become the captain after Cantona, often spoke of gaining an advantage in the tunnel – if a player was nervous or not fully tuned in he could detect it by their body language – and seeing their opponents decked out during the customary pre-match pitch meander must have given United a psychological boost. “If we had won the game nobody would have mentioned it but we lost and it has become infamous,” Robbie Fowler, who had thrilled for Liverpool that season, told the Mirror in a 2008 interview. “It was David James’ fault we wore white suits, it was his idea. He’s bigger than everyone so nobody questioned him and at the time he was an Armani model.”

Robbie Fowler, Steve MacManaman and Jamie Redknapp look smart in their matching white suits. Photograph: Popperfoto/Getty Images

Then there were the songs. Liverpool’s passable Pass & Move (It’s The Liverpool Groove)’ had some dodgy lyrics but at least possessed a catchy chorus. The same could not be said for United’s cringe-inducing synth-influenced Move Move Move (The Red Tribe). The second verse started: ‘You’ll know that we are truly the best/’Cos unity is power/And we are gonna tower/High up above the rest’. For posterity, it should be remembered they outdid themselves three years later with the Oasis-influenced Lift It High (All About Belief).

Liverpool had outscored all but United in the league that season and predictions beforehand were of a high-scoring, gung-ho affair. It was soon apparent that would not materialise. Jamie Redknapp and John Barnes were limiting Cantona’s influence, while Keane and Butt silenced Steve McManaman. Extra time loomed and enthusiasm was being sapped from those packed inside the rickety old ground as they endured lengthy spells where nothing seemed to be happening.

From Liverpool’s point of view the goal could have been easily avoided. A succession of errors led to the ball dropping in front of Cantona. It was frantic and when all that was needed was a cool head in a green shirt, the team suffered a collective brain fade. First Phil Babb sliced out for a corner with James waiting to collect a harmless ball under little pressure. Then when David Beckham swung the ball in the goalkeeper came to punch it clear but misjudged the flight of the ball and it cannoned off Ian Rush, making his last appearance for the Merseysiders.

Cantona was stood on the edge of the area. The ball came in his direction but the trajectory was far from ideal. He was forced to backtrack to stand any chance of a clean connection. A stride later he manages to arc his body over the ball and send a right-footed volley with the outside of his boot into the net. Appreciation of the skill involved increases with each viewing. His ability to strike with such venom from an unorthodox angle amid despairing but ineffective lunges of Liverpool defenders as the ball somehow makes its way through a phalanx of bodies and into the net is remarkable. As Philippe Auclair points out in his forensic biography about his compatriot, The Rebel Who Would Be King: “16 players were encamped in the box at this point, most of them directly in his line of vision.”

“I don’t think another player could have scored a goal like that,” Ferguson said afterwards. Cantona declared it as “one of the truly beautiful moments of my life, adding “I had a lot of things to prove this season”. He had done so emphatically.

Cantona becomes the first captain not from the British Isles to lift the Cup. Photograph: Christian Liewig/TempSport/Corbis

Although over the 90 minutes they were separated by a solitary moment of brilliance, the psychological impact was one that Liverpool team could never overcome. Talk of being close to a league title was muted and United only became more dominant for the remainder of the millennium. It certainly affirmed the different directions both were going in. “That United team came through at the same time as us and we were always second best to them. That’s how it is sometimes,” Redknapp said in a 2010 interview in the Evening Standard. “We were branded [Spice Boys] because at Liverpool we underachieved.”

Ferguson had let go of Mark Hughes, Andrei Kanchelskis and Paul Ince at the beginning of the season and decided to mould his team around Cantona – how well it paid off. “Just look at what a guiding force he has been,” Bryan Robson said. “He has been one of the club’s greatest players.” And his influence was to grow further. Bruce departed for Birmingham City in the summer and Ferguson decided to award Cantona with the captaincy on a permanent basis.

“Captains are all different,” Ferguson said at the time. “Bobby Moore wasn’t a shouter – he led by example. It’s the same with Eric.” His influence and impression cannot be overstated. When he arrived, preceded by that combustible reputation and short-fused temper (the Guardian’s David Lacey described him once as “nitro-glycerine in human form”), few could have envisaged the lasting legacy he would leave. Some wonder if the treble would have happened in 1999 without Cantona’s laying of foundations and the role he had in developing his younger team-mates a few seasons before.

Yet nobody could have imagined 12 months later Cantona, at the peak of his powers, would be gone. Football had taken too much out of him, he had fallen out of love and saw no point in continuing. “I loved the game but I no longer had the passion to go to bed early, not to go out with my friends, not to drink, and not to do a lot of other things – the things I like in life,” he told reporters after winning the Premier League’s overseas player of the decade award in 2003.

Cantona has taken on almost mythical qualities since departing. He arrived with the air of a Gypsy according to Ferguson but left as a legend. “If ever there was a player in the world who was made for Manchester United, it was Cantona,” Ferguson said. “I think he had been searching all his life for somebody who looked at him and made him feel that a place was his home. He had travelled around so many countries; there is a wee bit of the Gypsy about some people. But when he came here he knew this was my place.”

His name is still sung with gusto on the Stretford End and flags bearing his name are flown at Old Trafford – he may not return often and has previously spoken against the Glazers’ ownership of the club but he remains the king of M16 and will be for generations to come.