Just Fontaine, one of the legends of French soccer and holder of the record for goals scored in the final phase of a World Cup, with 13 goals in Sweden 1958, died at the age of 89, his family announced Wednesday.
By: Hernán Galindo M.
Photo: The Colombian
France is mourning the death of one of its sporting icons. At the age of 89, the player who scored 13 goals in the 1958 World Cup in Sweden died. Frenchman Just Fontaine died being the top scorer in the World Cup with 13 goals in 1958.
Born in 1933 in Marrakech, in the former French Protectorate of Morocco, Fontaine was a classic center forward who became, along with Raymond Kopa, the great figure of the Stade de Reims in the 1950s and early 1960s.
In charge of Reims, “Justo”, as he was popularly known, starred in epic duels in the European Cup against Real Madrid, first with Kopa by his side and then with him in the white team.
Both clubs played in the 1959 European Cup final, with Madrid winning 2-0, a tournament in which Fontaine was the top scorer with ten goals.
With the French national team he scored 30 goals in 21 games. His great feat was scoring 13 goals during the 1958 World Cup played in Sweden, an absolute record that remains unbroken 64 years later.
In that World Cup, France was eliminated in the semifinals to finish third, beaten by the Brazil of an emerging Pelé who took the title.
Brazil beat France 5-2 in that semifinal, with a hat trick from Pele, then 17. Fontaine, who scored a goal, later said: “When I saw Pele play, I thought I’d hang up my boots.”
In the French league he scored 164 goals in 200 games. But two almost consecutive fractures in the left leg (a double in 1960 and a simple one in 1961), forced his retirement in 1962 at only 29 years of age.
As a coach, two games stand out as the French coach in two friendlies and three seasons (1973-76) in the almost newly founded Paris Saint-Germain, which he directed during its promotion to the first division in 1974. He was also Morocco’s national coach in 1979 -81 and trained other French clubs.
He also founded in 1961 the National Union of Professional Footballers of France.
During the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, Fontaine received a Golden Boot in honor of his record, in a ceremony in which he was “proud” to receive the award from Ronaldo Nazario and Michel Platini.
In an interview with L’Equipe in 2015, Fontaine confessed that he was tired of talking about his record. “It is not me who speaks, never. It is the others who ask me”.
He also assured that he would have changed that record to be able to play longer, since soccer was his passion, but after his second fracture “we could say that he was almost disabled,” he assured.
And, about his goalscoring ability, he described his game like this: “He was fast but he wasn’t the fastest. He was good with his head but he wasn’t the best. He had a good shot with both feet, but he wasn’t the best. It was the mixture of qualities”.
The announcement of his death, in Toulouse, was followed by a cascade of reactions in French football.
The French Football Federation (FFF) expressed its “enormous emotion” and announced that Fontaine’s memory “will be honored by a minute of silence in all fields” of play in the country, beginning with the three Cup quarterfinal matches that are disputed tonight.
PSG fired their former manager as “a monument of French football” who led the club to the elite of French football.
The same definition as a “monument of French football” was offered by the Professional Football League.
“‘Justo’ is and will continue to be a legend of the French team,” said the coach, Didier Deschamps.
“A star of French football, a goalscorer without equal”, considered the Stade de Reims, the club with which his career is associated, although he also previously played for OGC Nice and US Marocaine.
The French attacker Wissam Ben Yedder defined him as “a great man of football and outside of it”.