It’s a remarkable moment. One of those privileged glimpses of football life in a bygone era, captured like a time capsule in vivid colour. It’s Just Fontaine – yes, that Just Fontaine – speaking to his Paris Saint-Germain players on a lumpy training pitch ahead of the biggest game in the club’s history.
We are back in 1974 and the young side must defeat Valenciennes to earn promotion to the first division. “The problem is simple,” growls the legendary scorer of 13 goals at the 1958 World Cup. “If we go up, it’s the Parc des Princes and 45,000 people. If we don’t, it’ll be Saint-Germain and 400 people. It’s up to you to see the problem.”
The problem was even more severe than that. This being Paris, backroom machinations had ramped up the pressure, leaving the future of the club itself on the line. But before we get on to that, it’s worth pausing to recall another blunt communicator from the club’s past. Zlatan Ibrahimović achieved many great things in France, yet there was much choking on baguettes across the capital when he rewrote history in 2016. “With all due respect for what went before at PSG, I think the club was born the day the Qataris arrived,” he said.
With all due respect to the Swede, that’s nonsense. Yes, the story of Paris Saint-Germain appears more like a novella compared to the weighty tomes of clubs founded at the end of the 19th century. But, as the French giants celebrate their 50th anniversary, they have packed enough highs and lows into their existence to produce a serious page-turner. There are chapters galore, each dripping with compelling characters and intriguing plotlines. And the truth is that Ibrahimović would likely never have been in Paris to begin with had Fontaine’s players lost to Valenciennes on 4 June 1974.
That epic turning point needs a little context. Just two years after their foundation in 1970, the club were in turmoil. Paris Saint-Germain had just ended their maiden top-flight season by staving off relegation and were drowning in debt. The city authorities offered to help but with one fateful proviso: they had to change their name to Paris Football Club.
It was an ultimatum too rich for many, the team having been created as a merger between new entity Paris FC and Stade Saint-Germain, who formed in 1904. As a result the club split, with Paris FC reverting to their original name, retaining first-division status and keeping the professional squad; Paris Saint-Germain were relegated to the third tier, with most of the staff who previously worked for Stade Saint-Germain, and were left to tough it out with an amateur contingent.
The outlook, needless to say, was not good. There was a huge thirst in the capital to fill the void left by faded force Racing Club de Paris, the city’s last French champions in 1936. The opening of the Parc des Princes in 1972 had offered a platform for a powerful new team to become the local standard-bearers – and Paris FC were in pole position. Particularly as they were now the Parc’s permanent residents, with Paris Saint-Germain exiled to the tiny Stade Georges Lefèvre (save for a few high-profile fixtures).
Paris FC seemingly had it made. However, they missed an open goal when approached by a rich and ambitious young fashion designer angling to become their new president. Passionate about football, this was prêt-à-porter pioneer Daniel Hechter – and he had a vision.
“He went to see the Paris FC officials and they thought he was a bit of a charlatan,” says Michel Kollar, author of the Official Dictionary of Paris Saint-Germain and the club’s in-house historian. “He was very angry. He didn’t like being treated as someone who wasn’t serious.” So instead, in 1973, Hechter invested in Paris Saint-Germain, by now in the second tier. He took control of the management committee under president Henri Patrelle – a power struggle Hechter would win by snaring the top job the following year. Of the various people claiming to have created Paris Saint-Germain, he arguably has the most solid argument.
Forward Moderchai Spiegler (above); Just Fontaine is joined by Daniel Hetcher on the bench earlier in the season (top right); Paris Saint-Germain investor and film star Jean-Paul Belmondo with Raquel Welch for company (right)
“Daniel was a very creative personality,” says Mordechai Spiegler, still the only Israeli international to have scored a World Cup goal. The forward signed from Paris FC halfway through the 1973/74 campaign – and it was Hechter who asked him to join. “I said, ‘What do you mean? I’m not a couturier!’ Of course, I was joking with him. And I think I made the right move. Daniel was very involved; together with Fontaine and other people, he was very active. Some games, he used to sit on the bench. I don’t see [current president] Nasser Al-Khelaifi sitting on the bench!”
Hechter reimagined the club kit as well (see panel). Moreover he brought glamour, which is now a central strain of the club’s DNA. His group of investors included cinema icon Jean-Paul Belmondo, advertising heavyweight Francis Borelli and Charles Talar, a producer of musicals. “When Hechter presented the people around him, one journalist called them the ‘pink-shirt gang’ because they were very fashionable,” says Kollar. “They represented what Paris Saint-Germain is now: a brand, a club and above all a city known throughout the world. They kind of invented that way of speaking about PSG.”
Today, actors and musicians lineup to be photographed at the Parc des Princes, but the buzz began with Hechter and Belmondo, star of French New Wave classics including À Bout de Souffle and Pierrot le Fou. “I saw Belmondo a lot; he was there for every game, every party, every meeting,” says Spiegler. “It was like it was more than a game – it was the creative creation of a club. A football team is not yet a ‘club’. A great club, a traditional club, can have a bad season and recover. But without the tradition of a club, if you have a bad season you disappear.”
Having a charismatic coach helped too. Fontaine joined shortly after Hechter arrived, though previous coach Robert Vicot stayed on in a less frontline role. “They were good friends but everyone knew who was number one,” says Spiegler, who raised Fontaine’s brow by cheekily describing himself and the boss as the World Cup’s two greatest marksmen, ‘Justo’ with his 13 goals and Spiegler proud of his historic strike at Mexico 1970.
“He had an aura and he did not hide it,” says Spiegler. “He was a very proud character and it was good to have a leader like him, very natural. He was not a big-headed star; he was human, nice and humble. The charisma was always there – and he used his charisma – but tactics were important too, because it must be a combination.”
Tactics were key, in fact, because Fontaine took over a squad containing just three professional players. The leading light of that select group was captain and playmaker Jean-Pierre Dogliani, who paid the last year of his contract with Monaco to join in 1973. “That just shows how much he wanted to be with Just Fontaine,” says Kollar. “Dogliani was passionate about attacking football. You can’t really compare them, but to an extent he was the Johan Cruyff of the team. He was a tall No10 who always wanted to attack. He was a lovely player to watch. When you think of the club’s No10s, you think of Ronaldinho, Raí, Neymar. He’s symbolic because of that.”
“He was a real captain,” adds Spiegler. “He was a tactical player and a hard worker and he was always aware of others. He used to talk, he used to help. He used to be there. Sometimes he was a noisy leader; at the same time he had a big sense of humour. I remember, after training, that Justo, he and the others were like a family. A very good relationship. And then, on the pitch, serious.”
‘Family’ is a word that dominates Spiegler’s recollections. He stayed only six months (later playing alongside Pelé at New York Cosmos) but still feels a deep connection to that side – despite having also spent a year and a half with city rivals Paris FC. “PSG was more than a club,” he says. “There were always people coming to training. It was more a family than at Paris FC. There we used to train at open grounds – sometimes in Colombes, sometimes Saint-Germain. We had no real home. To this day, when I go to Paris, I’m welcomed and this is my club.”
For all that, Spiegler’s debut could hardly have gone worse. Starting against Le Havre in a French Cup game on 6 January 1974, with fans eager to see what he could offer, he was rapidly thwarted. “I got injured after 35 seconds,” he says. “I had a cartilage injury. I limped out and all the people on the committee looked at Daniel Hechter, with their eyes like, ‘You brought us a dead horse.’ Then after two weeks I came back and played against Ajaccio – and in the last minute I scored. Daniel Hechter became the king of the family again.”
Better was to come when Spiegler plundered a six-minute hat-trick away to Avignon in March of that year, still a club benchmark. “I have to meet Mbappé and Neymar to give them my blessing to break my record,” he says, laughing. Alas, the result of that game is remembered less fondly. “In the 60th minute I felt a little bit injured, so I asked Justo to replace me,” says Spiegler. “I went into the dressing room and had a shower; when I came out, it was 3-3. I told them, ‘Lucky I didn’t have a bath.’”
