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Kylian Mbappe is paid around £14m a year to wear the Nike boots which covered the right foot he used to sweep in his 54th goal of the 2022/23 season – a record for any Frenchman in a single campaign.
Just Fontaine was wearing a pair of borrowed boots when he netted three of his 53 goals to set the previous benchmark in 1957/58.
It has taken 65 years for Fontaine’s single-season tally to be bettered, with the likes of Michel Platini, Zinedine Zidane or Thierry Henry all falling short of the Moroccan-born striker.
Mbappe shares Fontaine’s fleetness of foot – whatever may be covering it – and is the same age as his predecessor when he hit his peak (24) but boasts a completely contrasting profile.
Fontaine was forced to change his footwear during the 1958 World Cup partly because he wasn’t expecting to play a significant role in the tournament. In the training camp ahead of the games in Sweden, Fontaine admitted: “I am our centre-forward only till [Raymond] Kopa arrives.” The then Reims striker was afforded a start in the opening game against Paraguay because Rene Bliard picked up an injury.
By comparison, Mbappe was made captain of France in March and holds such a crushing authority at his club that he has felt compelled to clarify that PSG is not Kylian Saint-Germain.
Fontaine scored a hat-trick against Paraguay as France romped to a 7-3 rout. It’s intriguing that Fontaine arrived in Sweden with such a lowly squad status even though he had finished the 1957/58 league season as the French top-flight’s leading scorer for the Stade de Reims team that won the title.
Reims also won the 1958 Coupe de France, with Fontaine putting his side 2-1 up in the final against Nimes – although, his international rival Bliard was his clubmate and scored twice that day.
In Bliard’s absence, Fontaine formed a formidable partnership with Raymond Kopa, haring onto the future Ballon d’Or winner’s flurry of through balls each game as France reached the semi-finals of the 1958 World Cup.
Fontaine scored against Pele’s Brazil but couldn’t steer his side past the Seleçao. Fontaine consoled himself with four goals in the third-place playoff against West Germany, bringing his tally to 13 in one World Cup – no other player in history has ever bettered such a staggering haul.
Mbappe tried his best to beat Fontaine’s record with eight goals for France in Qatar – you have to spool back to Gerd Muller in 1970 to find the last man to net more in one World Cup.
However, while Fontaine found the net in every game in 1958, Mbappe fell dormant between the end of the last 16 and the closing ten minutes of the final. Yet, the jet-heeled forward sparked into life just at the right time, recording the second-ever hat-trick in the final of a men’s World Cup to force a penalty shootout against Argentina. Despite dispatching his own spot kick against chief irritant Emi Martinez, Mbappe ended an unforgettable night on the losing side.
Even though Mbappe topped the scoring charts domestically for a fifth consecutive season, claiming his sixth Ligue 1 title in seven years at the tender age of 24, 2022/23 carried the stench of disappointment.
Despite seven goals in eight games from their talisman, PSG once again bombed out of the Champions League in the last 16, prompting Mbappe to bemoan the “shortcomings that sooner or later we were going to end up paying for”.
After his annus mirabilis, Fontaine led Reims to the final of the 1959 European Cup. His old friend Kopa helped Real Madrid win the showpiece but Fontaine scored ten continental goals that season, finishing as the competition’s top scorer – Mbappe has never hit double digits in a single Champions League campaign.
Fittingly, at the end of the season in which Mbappe has surpassed one of Fontaine’s records, he scored his 164th league goal – the same tally which Fontaine accrued (in 17 fewer matches) before injury forced him into retirement.
Mbappe will go on to rack up many more goals, perhaps even more in a single season. But he will never possess the same joyful surprise factor as Fontaine and won’t ever come close to his scoring tally in borrowed boots.
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