Just Fontaine will camp ad vitam aeternam in front of the Auguste-Delaune stadium.
A year after the death of the French striker, the Peruvian artist Juan Carlos Carrillo, based in Champagne for around thirty years, was chosen to create a sculpture of the emblematic Reims player, reports France Bleu.
Erecting a statue of him in Reims like Raymond Kopa in 2018 seemed inevitable for the man who left so much of a mark on the history of Stade de Reims.
Indeed, the striker won three championships with Stade de Reims, where he finished top scorer in 1958 and 1960. The 1958 Ballon d'or was especially distinguished by scoring 13 goals in a single World Cup, organized during of that same year in Sweden, an unrivaled record which seems incomparable.
Read also Death of Just Fontaine: French football pays tribute to his legend
The human-sized bronze sculpture will take place during the next school year, at the end of summer, near the access to the Germain stand.
As with the Kopa statue, the City appealed for donations to partly finance this statue which will cost nearly 200,000 euros.
To date, 23,790 euros have been collected out of a goal of 50,000 euros.
“In bronze, on a base and on a human scale”
For the moment, the representation of the legend of Reims is only at the model stage.
In a few months, the bronze sculpture of Just Fontaine immortalized at the Delaune stadium will see the striker dressed in a football jersey of the time, ball on his foot, but not just any football shirt.
“A somewhat special ball because this ball will also be a terrestrial globe in which we will be able to record the 13 goals he scored during the World Cup,” explains Juan Carlos Carrillo.
The sculptor would like to be able to design his work in Reims, in a workshop open to the public “so that people can follow the creation of this work as it progresses”, he tells France Bleu.
On its website, the City of Reims mentions “a bronze statue, on a base and on a human scale (Fontaine measured 1.74 m), in harmony with that of Kopa (1.68 m) will remind or teach the different generations which scorer was Just Fontaine.