ERIC CANTONA, AN ENIGMATIC 'MARSELHÉS' IN THE UK

Eric Daniel Pierre Cantona

Today, The Grandma has had breakfast with one of her idols and most admired football players, Eric Cantona. They have celebrated Eric's birthday.

The Grandma loves football and talking about it to Eric Cantona is one of the most incredible experiences she has ever had. She has a Manchester City t-shirt signed by Eric, a shirt that she adores and keep in her particular museum of fantastic things.

Eric Daniel Pierre Cantona (born 24 May 1966) is a French actor and former professional footballer. He played for Auxerre, Martigues, Marseille, Bordeaux, Montpellier, Nîmes and Leeds United before ending his career at Manchester United where he won four Premier League titles in five years and two League and FA Cup Doubles. He won the league championship in seven of his last eight full seasons as a professional. At international level, he played for the France national team.

A large, physically strong, hard-working, and tenacious forward, who combined technical skill and creativity with power and goalscoring ability, Cantona is often regarded as having played a key role in the revival of Manchester United as a footballing force in the 1990s and having an iconic status at the club.

He wore the number 7 shirt at Manchester United with his distinctive upturned collar.

Cantona is affectionately nicknamed by Manchester United fans as King Eric, and was voted as Manchester United's greatest ever player by Inside United magazine. Set against his achievements in football was a poor disciplinary record for much of his career, including a 1995 conviction for an assault on a fan for which he received an eight-month suspension.

Eric Cantona & Sir Alex Fergurson, Manchester

Following his retirement from football in 1997, he took up a career in cinema and had a role in the 1998 film Elizabeth, starring Cate Blanchett, the 2008 film French Film, and the 2009 film Looking for Eric.

In 2010, he debuted as a stage actor in Face au Paradis, a play directed by his wife, Rachida Brakni. Cantona also took an interest in the sport of beach soccer, and as player-manager of the French national team, he won the 2005 FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup.

Charismatic and outspoken, Cantona was an inaugural inductee into the English Football Hall of Fame in 2002. The museum states: The enigmatic Frenchman was one of the Premier League's most controversial players ever. At the Premier League 10 Seasons Awards in 2003 Cantona was voted the Overseas Player of the Decade. In 2004 he was named by Pelé in the FIFA 100 list of the world's greatest living players.

More information: @CANTONA_276

Eric Cantona was born in Marseille, to Albert Cantona, a nurse and a painter, and Éléonore Raurich, a dressmaker. The family home was a cave in one of the hills in the Les Caillols area of Marseille, between the city's 11th and 12th arrondissements, and it was rumoured to have been used as a look-out post for the German Army, towards the end of the Second World War. The site was chosen in the mid-1950s by Cantona's paternal grandmother, Lucienne, whose husband, Joseph, 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, Jean-Marie, who is four years older; and Joël, who is 17 months younger.

Cantona came from a family of immigrants: his paternal grandfather, Joseph, had emigrated to Marseille from Sardinia, while his mother was from Barcelona. Pere Raurich, Cantona's maternal grandfather, was fighting the armies of General Franco in the Spanish Civil War in 1938 when he suffered a serious injury to his liver, and he had to retreat to France for medical treatment with his wife Paquita. The Raurichs stayed in Saint-Priest, Ardèche, before settling in Marseille.

Cantona began his football career with SO Caillolais, his local team and one that had produced such talent as Roger Jouve and had players such as Jean Tigana and Christophe Galtier within its ranks. 

Eric Cantona in Auxerre

Originally, Cantona began to follow in his father's footsteps and often played as a goalkeeper, but his creative instincts began to take over and he would play up front more and more often. In his time with SO Caillolais, Cantona played in more than 200 matches.

Cantona's first professional club was Auxerre, where he spent two years in the youth team before making his debut on 5 November 1983, in a 4–0 league victory over Nancy. In 1984 his footballing career was put on hold as he carried out his national service. After his discharge he was loaned out to Martigues in the French Second Division before rejoining Auxerre and signing a professional contract in 1986.

Having struggled to settle at Marseille, Cantona moved to Bordeaux on a six-month loan and then to Montpellier on a year-long loan.

Cantona joined Leeds United, making his debut in a 2–0 loss at Oldham Athletic on 8 February 1992. At Leeds, he was part of the team that won the final Football League First Division championship before it was replaced by the Premier League as the top division in English football.

Cantona left Leeds for Manchester United for £1.2 million on 26 November 1992.

In 1997  he announced that he was retiring from football at the age of 30. His final competitive game came against West Ham on 11 May 1997, and his final appearance before retiring was five days later on 16 May in a testimonial for David Busst, whose career had been ended by an injury suffered against Manchester United the previous year, against Coventry City at Highfield Road.

More information: Manchester United

Cantona scored a total of 64 league goals for Manchester United, 13 in domestic cup competitions, and 5 in the Champions League, bringing his tally to 82 goals in less than five years.

He focused his later career mostly as an actor in French cinema, having had his first role as a rugby player in Le bonheur est dans le pré, shot during his 1995 suspension from football.

In the late 1990s, he accepted a role as a French ambassador in the English film Elizabeth (1998). In 2002, he directed a short film, Apporte-moi ton amour. He guest-starred as a mysterious barroom philosopher in independent British film Jack Says. He co-starred as director Thierry Grimandi in French Film (2009), and is co-producer and a lead actor in Ken Loach's Palme D'or nominated film Looking for Eric (2009). He stars as The Corsican in the Danish western The Salvation, which premiered at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival on 17 May 2014.

Cantona called for a social revolution against the banks and encouraged customers of the major retail banks to withdraw their money on 7 December 2010 in protest at the global financial crisis. This proposal then became the base for an online campaign calling for a bank run.

More information: Goal

I see the world become so uniform.

Everybody has to be the same.

I like people who are different.

Eric Cantona