FIFA World Cup History: Just Fontaine's unbreakable record

Ronaldo has scored more World Cup goals than any other player has to his name. But O Fenomeno’s 15 have come in three separate tournaments: 1998, 2002 and 2006.

His goals in Gerd Muller’s Germany saw him overtake Der Bomber’s record of 14, which came at the 1970 and 1974 World Cup.

Just Fontaine however holds the record for the highest number of goals scored in a single tournament: representing France at the 1958 World Cup in Sweden, Fontaine scored 13 as Les Bleus finished third in Scandinavia.

He may be 80 years old but Fontaine remembers the 1958 World Cup as if it were yesterday. Fontaine had spent the days before his training session in Orly celebrating the double success of his league and cup triumph with Stade de Reims, for whom he’d found the back of the net 39 times in 32 matches.

To Fontaine, who’d been born to a Norman father and Spanish mother in Marrakech in Morocco, which was then a colony of France, playing at the World Cup meant he was living the dream that many strive towards but few ultimately achieve.

But he was brought back to earth with a rather sharp bump when his boots broke in training one day. “We just had two boots at the time, and no sponsor,” recalls Fontaine in an interview with UEFA.com. Fortunately for him, team mate Stephane Bruey wore the same size of boot and lent them to him. “I tell people that my goals were inspired by a meeting of two minds inside one boot,” Fontaine quips.

Despite his free-scoring achievements, however, Fontaine was only a last-minute call-up to the tournament. The French squad that arrived in Stockholm, in typically French fashion, had been greeted with very poor expectations of success by their own press, with one newspaper saying the French were the first to arrive in Scandinavia because they would be the first to leave.

This, however, meant that the French did not have to worry about external pressure and were free to prepare for their matches in a relatively relaxed manner. And relax they did: the France squad found plenty of time to have several rounds of cards, go on bowling trips and spend hours together fishing in Sweden’s lakes.

In between these activities, they found time to beat Scotland 2-1 and thrash Paraguay 7-3. Fontaine plundered a hat-trick against the South Americans and opened the scoring against the Scots. Despite their 3-2 loss to Yugoslavia in which Fontaine scored both goals, France made it through to the quarter finals.

After putting four past a Northern Ireland side – two of which were scored by Fontaine – France made it to the semi-finals of the tournament where they would face Brazil.

Despite Fontaine turning heads with his free-scoring marksmanship, the group stages of the 1958 FIFA World Cup saw the rise of one Edison Arantes do Nascimento. Fontaine’s France faced Pele’s Brazil with a place in the FIFA World Cup final up for grabs.

It is a game for which Fontaine has bittersweet memories to this day. Although Fontaine equalised after Vava’s first-half opener, the French had played nearly the entirety of the second half with virtually ten men on the field after their captain Robert Jonquet had picked up an injury.

“We lost that match 5-2 but we were down to ten men for the entire second half,” Fontaine recalled, in that UEFA.com interview. “I had just equalised at 1-1 when Jonquet was injured, and in those days you couldn’t replace an injured player. I still have real regrets about that match.”

Fontaine would go on to score four in a 6-3 demolition of defending champions West Germany, breaking the record for the most number of goals in a tournament set by Hungary’s Sandor Kocsis in Switzerland in 1954, but that was to provide little consolation to the man who’d received a lap of honour after the game to commemorate what he’d done.

“I preferred to think about our third place rather than my first," he says in the interview. “Back then, no one gave much thought to the top scorer’s prize. I scored goals because I hit it off with [fellow striker> Raymond Kopa, we were happy together and the team was playing attacking football. In six matches, we managed to score 23 times.”

His strike partner Raymond Kopa – voted best player of that tournament - was of a similar mind set. “‘Justo’ was the striker who best suited my style of play,” he recalled, in an interview organised by FIFA. “He knew exactly what I was doing and I could be sure of finding him at the end of one of my dribbles.”

Although there was no Golden Boot to honour his achievements at the World Cup, a Swedish newspaper presented him with a rifle to celebrate his marksmanship in front of goal. 28 years later, he would finally receive a Golden Boot: Gary Lineker wholeheartedly gave him the one he’d earned as top scorer at Mexico 1986.

Although Fontaine’s top-flight professional career only lasted 12 years, he is still remembered as one of France’s most prolific strikers. He scored a total of 165 goals in 200 club matches, topping the domestic scoring charts in 1958 and 1960, and coming second in 1957 and 1959.

In 21 appearances for his country, he scored 30 goals: easily more than a goal a game, and was also the top scorer during the 1958-59 European Cup, scoring 10 goals as Stade de Reims finished runners-up to Real Madrid.

Unfortunately, a leg injury cut short his career at the age of just 26. He suffered a double fracture of his tibia and fibula during a championship game with Sochaux and despite enduring the gruelling rehabilitation he was put through, the same leg gave way when he made his comeback against US Limoges.

“It’s a shame,” says Fontaine on his retirement, speaking to FIFA.com. “My best years were ahead of me.”

After a spell as France’s shortest-lived national team coach during which he oversaw two defeats, he was appointed coach of Morocco in 1979, with the aim of getting them to the World Cup.

“We did not qualify for the World Cup, we lost against Cameroon in difficult circumstances, since I did not have half my team, including my goalkeeper,” he says in an interview with a Paris Saint-Germain fanzine, having managed the club from 1973 to 1976. ”Because at the time, there were only two who qualified in Africa, and not five like we have today.

He was also named one of Europe’s 50 greatest players during UEFA’s Jubilee Poll in 2004 and was picked by Pele as one of the world’s top 125 footballers to grace the beautiful game on the occasion of FIFA’s 100th anniversary.

These days, Fontaine resides in the famously numbered house number 13 on a Toulouse street. He attends conferences and public relations events and is often called to unveil and inaugurate shops and boutiques.

Fontaine is very critical of the manner in which modern day football has evolved.

“It is our ultramodern television screens that give the impression that the current football is faster than football of yesteryear. It is more physical, it’s true,” he once told FIFA.com. “More rough, more demanding, but it is not more rapid Do not forget, we already ran 100 meters in 10 seconds in the 30’s. In addition, it was our aim and technique: we ran very fast, both to score and to intercept.”

“Like many of my illustrious colleagues such as Alfredo Di Stefano, Johan Cruyff and Raymond Kopa, I think the technical level has declined in modern football, that values are levelled,” he continues.

“What players have won in physics, impact, endurance, they’ve lost in finesse and creativity. This is why the lovers of football like myself can only love and support FC Barcelona as their players get to show us that even today. Today, we can play good football, and win against tactical and physical monsters.”

Having both played for and managed France, Fontaine was also in pole position to blast the France team and coach Raymond Domenech when they humiliated themselves at the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

“Two days before their last game, they go on strike,” he says of the French team. “They read their statement to Domenech and then were training to save face! They had an important game. But no, he had prepared the car to leave. This is the first time I’ve see such a mode of preparation and fortunately it did not work. The others would have mocked their method!

Just Fontaine however is very confident that he will take his record to the grave, with good reason: his is a record that has stood unbroken for more than 70 years.

“Teams are less attacking now. To beat my record, a side would really have to go for it, or a player would need to go on a goal spree in the group matches,” he told the BBC. “Because the group games are like a mini-tournament, teams tend to be very calculating, so it becomes very difficult.”

More than 55 years after his exploits in Sweden, the bond that cemented those Frenchmen that were lambasted by their own press and ended up taking the tournament by storm but falling just short in the end is still strong. Says Fontaine to UEFA.com:

“You know, all the lads who were in Sweden, we still see each other.”