JUST MAGNIFIQUE
The French know a thing or two about producing tournament goalscorers all right. For a start there’s Kylian Mbappé, whose eight in Qatar last year was the biggest haul at a single World Cup for 20 years, since Ronaldo scored the same number in South Korea and Japan. No other player in the last half a century has come close. Then there’s Michel Platini, whose nine at Euro 84 remains an all-time record in that particular competition. No small achievement, either of those, and yet they both pale into insignificance when compared to the way Just Fontaine, who has died aged 89, swanned around Sweden at the 1958 World Cup.
Paraguay! Fontaine, playing as a lone striker, makes two defence-splitting runs, slamming home each time, then dinks his way around the keeper for a tap-in. Yugoslavia! Fontaine whips a low left-wing cross into the bottom right, then elegantly lobs the keeper. Scotland! Another romp down the middle ends with a forensic missile dispatched into the bottom left. He also hits the bar twice. Northern Ireland! An unstoppable header followed by a defender-and-keeper-confusing swivel and slot. Brazil! Around the keeper and do-se-do. West Germany! A tap-in, a spin and shoot, a long-range daisycutter tight into the corner, and finally an insouciant pass into the net, taken early from the edge of the box to flummox the keeper. Thirteen goals, all told, and France might have won the whole damn thing had that hoodlum Vavá not crocked Monsieur Robert Jonquet in the semi.
This guy knew what he was doing. Fontaine only played 20 times for France, yet contributed 30 goals, a scoring rate that borders on the outrageous, then crashes over that border and performs donuts on foreign soil. His last four matches for Les Bleus produced nine of those goals, the final three coming against a Spain side featuring Alfredo Di Stéfano, László Kubala and Paco Gento, and the Chile team that would come third at the following World Cup. Fontaine was none too shabby at club level either, winning three French titles with Reims, for whom he also played in the 1959 Big Cup final. He was the leading scorer in Big Cup that year, too. Of course he was.
Fontaine went on to manage Morocco, the country of his birth, which at the time was under French colonial rule. He led the Atlas Lions to a third-place finish at the 1980 Africa Cup of Nations, then very nearly took them to the 1982 World Cup, only to be denied at the final qualifying hurdle by Roger Milla and Cameroon. It’s dreadfully sad that, a mere two months after the passing of Pelé, the 1958 World Cup has lost its other star performer in quick succession. But there’s a heart-warming coda too: how fitting that Fontaine was still around when the two countries he loved so much, and served so gallantly, played each other in the World Cup semi-final. Adieu, Justo. That record of yours won’t be beaten any time soon.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Unfortunately, the fourth official doesn’t have the honesty to say what he said to me, how he said it and the way he treated me, which obviously triggered my reaction. I want to see if there’s an audio recording of what he said to me. I don’t want to get into the fact that he’s from Turin, that we have to play Juventus and he wants me off the touchline. I don’t want to get into that” – José Mourinho there, definitely not getting into it, after being sent off during Roma’s 2-1 defeat at Cremonese, who won their first game in Serie A this season. He’s now been fined and banned for two games.
For some reason, we’re reminded of this …
FOOTBALL DAILY LETTER
Thanks for the photos of Feethams (yesterday’s Memory Lane, full email edition). I am a Sunderland fan but live near Darlington and in my youth, me and my mates spent a couple of happy seasons going along to watch the team in the Brian Little era when he got them promoted back into the Football League. It was a beautiful ground to watch football, town centre location, five minutes’ walk from the station so we could get there easily. We walked around the cricket pitch to get to the ground and changed ends at half-time. It was a tragedy that George Reynolds was allowed to rip the club out of the town centre and move it to his vanity stadium, in the middle of nowhere on the edge of town. It is very fitting that Feethams is now a housing estate while the ‘new’ stadium sits slowly rotting away on the edge of town and is not even used by the football club” – Ben Herbert.
Send your letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’ the day is … Ben Herbert.
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