World Cup Legends: The greatest goalscorer one finals has ever seen 🇫🇷 | OneFootball

As the 2022 World Cup approaches, we are running through 10 of the biggest legends in World Cup history and how exactly they wrote their names into the history books.

Just Fontaine (France)

A goal for your country at the World Cup is, on a personal level, surely the pinnacle? Now imagine leaving the tournament with enough of them to have won the Golden Boot.

No player has hit double figures at a World Cup since Gerd Müller scored 10 in 1970. Since then only Ronaldo, with eight in 2002, has netted more than six times at a single tournament.

But even those tallies don’t get close to the 13 World Cup goals scored by Just Fontaine back in 1958.

It’s the most in World Cup finals history and, despite being his only appearance at the tournament, means he remains the fourth top scorer in World Cup history to this day. Only Müller, Ronaldo, and Miroslav Klose have scored more. Pelé, who played at four World Cups and won three, ‘only’ managed 12 goals in those tournaments before international retirement.

Fontaine’s 13 strikes came in just six appearances, with Hungary’s Sándor Kocsis (11 in five) the only player with a better World Cup strike rate.

Even more remarkably, he was not even particularly well known heading into the tournament. Fontaine had won one France cap in 1953, scoring a hat-trick, and then had to wait until 1956 for another international appearance. He played once then and once again in 1957, failing to score in both matches before finding the net in a friendly against Spain less than three months before the World Cup.

Having waited over four years to score for France again after his international debut, the striker then scored his 13 World Cup goals in the space of 20 days.

And he was not even wearing his own boots, which were too worn out by the time the tournament arrived.

“I like to tell people that some of my goals were inspired by combining two spirits inside the same shoe,” Fontaine later said after borrowing a pair from fellow striker Stéphane Bruey.

With Bruey’s boots on loan, Fontaine netted a hat-trick against Paraguay, then two goals against each of Yugoslavia, Scotland and Northern Ireland. A single strike against a Brazil side inspired by a 17-year-old Pelé wasn’t enough to win the semi-final, but Fontaine consoled himself with four goals against West Germany to win the third-place play-off.

The number 13 is supposedly unlucky. But not for this French striker.