Sporting Career
Gaetjens joined Etoile Haïtienne at the age of 14 and won two Ligue Haïtienne championships in 1942 and 1944. However, he could not make a living from professional soccer, so he went to New York City in the late 1940s to study accounting at Columbia University on a scholarship from the Haitian government. While there he played for Brookhattan of the American Soccer League, winning the league's scoring title. His success for the team attracted the attention of U.S. Soccer, and Gaetjens made the national team for the 1950 World Cup.
Gaetjens played three games at the World Cup, but easily the most memorable was one of the greatest World Cup upsets in history, in which Gaetjens scored the decisive goal of a 1–0 victory in which the American soccer team defeated the hugely favored English at Belo Horizonte. Walter Bahr had taken a shot from about 25 yards away and the ball was heading to goalkeeper Bert Williams's right. It appeared to be a relatively easy save, but Gaetjens dove headlong and grazed the ball enough that it went to the goalkeeper's left instead, with his momentum preventing him from stopping the ball. Williams later considered the goal to be a result of a lucky deflection, but this view was disputed by Laurie Hughes, who was defending Gaetjens on the play.
Although Gaetjens was not a U.S. citizen, he had declared his intention of becoming one, and under the rules of the United States Soccer Football Association at that time was allowed to play. However, Gaetjens never actually did gain American citizenship. At the end of the World Cup, Gaetjens moved to France where he played briefly for Racing Club de Paris and Olympique Alès, before returning to Haiti in 1954 to become a spokesman and entrepreneur. Gaetjens remained active in soccer, playing for Etoile Haïtienne again as well as the Haiti national team on December 27, 1953, in a World Cup Qualifier against Mexico.
Read more about this topic: Joe Gaetjens
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