Without boots, Fontaine faced the coach’s bad will – 03/01/2023 – Sport

The longest lasting World Cup record might not have happened. Moroccan Just Fontaine shouldn’t even have played for France in Sweden in 1958.

Coach Albert Batteux didn’t want him in the team. He took it to the tournament anyway knowing he wouldn’t use it. The starting striker, René Bliard, suffered an injury shortly before the opener against Paraguay.

In the last training before the partaken, the only boot taken by Fontaine practically disintegrated. He only managed to enter the field because fellow striker Stéphane Bruey wore the same number and lent him the shoe.

If the 1958 World Cup was marked by the appearance of Pelé on the international scene, at the age of 17, it also made history due to the unrivaled mark of Just Fontaine. He was top scorer with 13 goals in six matches. After 64 years, no one has matched the mark.

Hungarian Sándor Kocsis was the record holder until then, with 11, in 1954. Gerd Muller scored 10 in 1970. In the last World Cup, held in Qatar, the top scorer was Frenchman Kylian Mbappé, with eight in seven games.

Fontaine died on Wednesday at the age of 89. The cause has not been revealed by his family.

“There is no secret. I played for an offensive team, and in 1958 all teams played offensively. I was in top form. I had an operation on my menisci in December. Before the Cup, I had scored 34 goals in 26 games. I was the top scorer in the championship. That was my year”, said the top scorer in an interview with Sheet in 1997.

Fontaine was the first footballer to score a goal for the Brazilian national team that year in what is considered the best match of the tournament. In the semifinal, Brazil won 5-2. It was the first time he met Pelé (1940-2022) on the field.

“I regret having played Brazil with only ten players. Our central defender [Jonquet] got injured and we had to play with ten for over an hour. The game was 1 to 1. If 11 against 11 was hard enough, with ten it was mission impossible. If we were 11, I can’t say what would happen. Probably Brazil would win, as it was a great team, but less easily”, he added.

The meeting also made an impression on the King of Football. For FIFA’s centenary, in 2004, Pelé chose the 125 greatest players who were alive at the time. He placed Fontaine among the forwards.

Born in Marrahech, Just Fointaine grew up in another Moroccan city: Casablanca. The French father and Spanish mother did not want their son to be a football player. They wanted the boy to study medicine, which never came close to happening. In 1953, close to turning 21, the future star moved to France and signed a contract with Nice.

In eight years in the country, Fontaine was four times national champion (1956, 1958, 1960 and 1962). For the last three years at Stade de Rems. He scored 165 goals in 200 league appearances. He reached the 1959 European Cup (current Champions League) final, when Rems faced Real Madrid and lost. To keep the custom, the striker was the top scorer of the competition, with ten goals.

On his debut for France in 1953, he scored a hat-trick against Luxembourg. In 21 games for the country he adopted, he scored 30 times.

Dubbed the Marrakesch Express, it seemed to have a premonitory sense of where the ball would land in the penalty area. Ambidextrous, he was capable of sprints that the marker could not follow.

France did not qualify for the next World Cup, in 1962, in Chile. Lost the decisive match of the qualifiers to Bulgaria. But even if it went forward, Fontaine would not participate. He suffered a broken left tibia in 1960 and was out of football for almost a year. He suffered a new injury in the same place a few weeks before the World Cup and decided to end his career at the age of 29.

“A lot is said about my record of 13 goals, but I would definitely trade it for another five or six years of football, which was my passion. I was at the top and making a lot of money. It wasn’t the money you see in football today. day, it was about five times more than the minimum wage. Today it would be much more”, he concluded, in an interview given in 2013.

On social networks, Fontaine’s death was commented on by the main football entities.

“A record yet to be beaten,” wrote the French Football Federation, referring to the 13 goals in 1958.

Fifa posted an image of the flags in front of the entity’s headquarters at half-mast, in honor of the top scorer. On Twitter, UEFA called the striker “legendary”.

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Fontaine goals in the 1985 World Cup

• France 7 x 3 Paraguay – three goals
• Yugoslavia 3 x 2 France – two goals
• France 2 v 1 Scotland – a goal
• France 4 x 0 Northern Ireland – two goals
• France 2 x 5 Brazil – a goal
• France 6 x 3 Germany – four goals