Joseph Edouard Gaetjens (b. March 19, 1924, Port-au-Prince, Haiti – presumed dead July, 1964, Haiti) was a Haitian American football (soccer) player who played for the United States national team in the 1950 FIFA World Cup, scoring the winning goal in the 1–0 upset of England.
Born in Haiti to a Haitian mother and a Belgian father, Gaetjens went to New York City in the late 1940s to study accounting at Columbia University on a scholarship from th...
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Joseph Edouard Gaetjens (b. March 19, 1924, Port-au-Prince, Haiti – presumed dead July, 1964, Haiti) was a Haitian American football (soccer) player who played for the United States national team in the 1950 FIFA World Cup, scoring the winning goal in the 1–0 upset of England.
Born in Haiti to a Haitian mother and a Belgian father, Gaetjens 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.
Although Gaetjens...
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