The 1958 Fifa World Cup is remembered most for being the tournament at which a fresh-faced Brazilian forward, Pele, arrived on the global stage, where his journey to becoming football’s first global [black] star really begun.
But, while Pele did put in a performance so stellar that it inspired the Selecao to maiden World Cup glory, he didn’t have the tournament all to himself; also claiming a sizable share of Sweden 1958’s spotlight was a certain Frenchman, Just Fontaine.
Some of the records Pele set at that Mundial have since been broken, but the big one Fontaine grabbed remains intact and very formidable, some 65 years later.
Four years prior, Hungarian legend Sandor Kocsis had become the first man to reach double digits in goals at a single World Cup, scoring 11 times as his nation finished runners-up in Switzerland.
Fontaine, though, raised the bar a little higher at the only World Cup he ever graced, closing out with a yet-unmatched 13-goal haul — a tally he achieved by ending the tournament as brilliantly as he’d started it.
He got off the mark in quite stunning fashion, notching a hat-trick in a 7-3 thrashing of Paraguay. It was a statement of intent he never retracted, and by the time France were due to face Brazil in the semi-finals, Fontaine’s fountain of goals was in full flow, with eight already to his name.
Yet that day in Solna would belong to Pele, who’d only first registered among the goals with the solitary strike that had seen his country slip past Wales in the preceding knockout round. The 17-year-old was on target thrice in a 5-2 classic to which Fontaine — though seven years older and certainly more experienced — could only contribute one goal.
Still, despite a famous Pele double in the final that helped defeat the hosts, Fontaine would have the last laugh in the scoring stakes, putting four past reigning champions West Germany in the third-place playoff.
Bronze was the least France deserved, but Fontaine was rewarded with more for his efforts: the Golden Boot, won in the colours of a country he didn’t relocate to until he turned 20, in 1953, from Morocco.
Fontaine’s father was from France, his mother a native of Spain — the two European nations that, until 1956, had split the North African land up into separate protectorates.
Aged 27, Fontaine left Moroccan city Marrakech, his birthplace, for coastal Casablanca, where he joined the now-defunct USM Casablanca. His numbers there — 62 goals in 48 games — and later in French football, his next destination, would prove Fontaine was no one-World Cup wonder.
He played for two clubs in France, Nice and Reims, for whom he scored nearly 200 goals across nine seasons. Fontaine’s haul of silverware was impressive, too, including four top-flight titles and two Coupe de France triumphs.
Even so, it was circa 1958 that Fontaine stood at the peak of his powers.
His World Cup exploits aside, Fontaine also starred in the Reims team that famously went all the way to the final of the 1958/59 European Cup (forerunner of the Uefa Champions League), losing to arguably the greatest Real Madrid side in history.
He still emerged the competition’s topscorer that campaign, and came third in the 1958 Ballon d’Or vote.
Fontaine’s mark was felt off the pitch, too, when he, together with Cameroon-born Eugene N’Jo Lea, formed the National Union of Professional Footballers (UNFP), the main trade union for professional footballers in France, in 1961.
That was the year before which he retired from football, forced to do so at a rather youthful age of 28 — a month shy of his 29th birthday, to be precise — by a double leg fracture he never quite recovered from.
At the end of his international career, Fontaine had scored 30 goals for Les Bleus, a sum that still has him in the top ten of France’s all-time scorers’ ranking — the only player in that elite bracket from the sixties or earlier.
He’d coach the national team in 1967, but that tenure would be rather brief, only two friendly games long.
Fontaine would, however, enjoy a more memorable spell at the helm of Morocco, the first country he ever called home, guiding the Atlas Lions to third at the 1980 Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) and nurturing a generation of players that would make up the first African/Arab side to reach the knockout stage of the World Cup.
Fontaine would live just long enough to witness another special breed of Moroccan footballing talent break further ground for African and Arabian football at last year’s World Cup, when Walid Regragui’s charges advanced as far as the last four.
It’s an achievement that Fontaine — one of the first great exports of African football, if you like, and a man who collapsed a few barriers in his time — would have savoured, just about two months before his passing was reported on March 1, 2023.
Enn Y. Frimpong — Ink & Kicks
