Manchester United legend Eric Cantona's plans for a banking revolution appear to have collapsed.

Cantona's plans to destroy global banking failed Tuesday as his French compatriots ignored his call to withdraw cash en masse. It also emerged his wife previously appeared in a bank's TV ad.

The football legend had warned his own bank to expect a large withdrawal, but there were no reports from anywhere else in France of people taking out their money.

Politicians and bankers lined up to criticise Cantona, 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 promised on social networks like Facebook that they would take up Cantona's call to bring down the "corrupt, criminal" banking system that sparked the global economic crisis.

By midday Tuesday, the day 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 -- Cantona's home town -- echoing reports from around France of business as usual at the nation's banking institutions.