He was the first world star of the French football team in history. Legend Just Fontaine died on Wednesday 1is March at the age of 89, his family announced. He is the greatest holder of the number of goals scored in a single final phase of the World Cup (13).
International 21 times, Fontaine had been one of the heroes of the Mondial-58 in Sweden, where the France team had reached the semi-finals for the first time in its history, beaten by Pelé’s Brazil.
The Mondial-58 as a masterpiece
The fame of Just Fontaine is due to this almost unbeatable record. He is the only man to have scored 13 goals in a single World Cup, all in just seven matches (against eight now). This 1958 World Cup in Sweden is the masterpiece of “Justo” and will be for a long time the absolute reference of French football before the advent of the Platini, Zidane and Mbappé generations.
Last representative of the attacking trident he formed with Raymond Kopa and Roger Piantoni, who died in 2017 and 2018, Fontaine, alongside the two other stars of Reims, had taken the Blues to the semi-finals where a certain Pelé, 17, had shattered their dream with a hat-trick.
Brazil, future winner of the tournament, wins 5-2 and the legend of the “King” is on the move, but France will console themselves with a third place, carried by a Fontaine in a state of grace and author of a fabulous quadruple against Germany (6-3). The Blues hold their first feat of arms on the international scene and Just Fontaine goes down in history.
Never stingy with good words with his southwestern accent, he was amused by the longevity of his record in 2014 with the Télégramme de Brest: “It’s a little story that Mario Zatelli (former player and coach of OM, Editor’s note). It takes place in 3015. Egyptologists discover a mummy in a sad state. By cleaning it a little, the mummy is agitated. It is not in fact dead, wakes up and poses then this question: ‘And the record of goals in a single World Cup, it’s still Just Fontaine who has it?'”
A short club career
Born in Marrakech in 1933 to a French father and a Spanish mother, Just Fontaine began playing football in what was then the French Protectorate of Morocco. He then had as idols Larbi Ben Barek and Mario Zatelli. He made his debut for US Moroccan Casablanca at senior level and was even selected several times with the team representing the Moroccan League. He notably won the North African Championship in 1952.
Himself a former US Moroccan player, Mario Zatelli spotted him and sent him to OGN Nice where he was a coach. Between 1953 and 1956, he won with Nice a Coupe de France (1954) and a title of champion of France (1956).
He then left for Reims where he remained until the end of his career. He won three additional French championship titles (1958, 1960, 1962) and Coupe de France (1958). Above all, he played in a European Cup final for champion clubs with Reims lost in 1959 (2-0) against the great Real Madrid of Di Stefano, Puskas and Kopa.
However, Fontaine’s career as a player came to an abrupt end in 1962, at only 28 years old, after a double fracture of a leg.