Eric Cantona Parents: Meet Eleonore Raurich & Albert Cantona

Eric Cantona was born in Marseille on May 24, 1966, the son of dressmaker Eleonore Raurich and nurse and painter, Albert Cantona. His mother was Spanish and came from Barcelona, while his paternal grandfather was Italian and had emigrated to Marseille from Sardinia.

The Cantona family home was a cave in one of the hills in the Les Caillols area of Marseille, between the city’s 11th and 12th arrondissement and it was rumored to have been used as a lookout post for the Wehrmacht towards the end of the second World War.

The site was chosen in the mid-1950s by Cantona’s paternal grandmother, whose husband was a stonemason. By the time Cantona was born in 1966, the hillside cave had become little more than a room in the family’s house, which was now up to a habitable standard.

Cantona has two brothers, Jeam Mari and Joel.