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England’s 1-0 loss to the United States at the 1950 World Cup remains one of football’s greatest shocks – but the striker who earned his living washing dishes and scored the decisive goal that day met a tragic fate.

29 June, 1950. A player wearing a wide smile is hoisted on to the shoulders of jubilant local supporters in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. His name is Larry ‘Joe’ Gaetjens, and his side, the United States of America, have just defeated England 1-0 in the group stage of the fourth World Cup. Gaetjens got the goal, and though it was a header, it soon came to be known as ‘the shot heard round the world’.

Gaetjens was not even a US citizen at the time. He had arrived in New York from Haiti in 1947 after securing a scholarship to study accountancy at the prestigious Columbia University. To help cover his expenses, he worked as a dishwasher in a German restaurant.

Back in Haiti, he had played football for Etoile Haitienne and had also been capped by the Haiti national team. Keen to keep playing in the US, he asked his employer whether he could help him find a club. “I hope you play soccer better than you wash dishes,” he was told, before being sent for a trial with local team Brookhattan, who were competing in the semi-professional American Soccer League.

Gaetjens may not have been especially accomplished in the kitchen, but he was certainly a footballer of quality. A smart and tireless centre-forward, he finished as the second highest scorer in the ASL in the 1947-48 season and led the scoring charts two years later, even though in the World Cup year Brookhattan finished bottom of the league.

Even so, it still came as something of a surprise when he was named in the US squad for their third World Cup finals – they had lost 7-1 to Italy in 1934, but had in fact reached the semi-finals in 1930.

It was not Gaetjens’ lack of citizenship that caused surprise over his inclusion – in those days, a declaration of intent to become a citizen in future was enough – but the fact that he had never previously represented the country.

He had not been selected for the USA’s disastrous 1948 Olympics squad, when they lost their only match 9-0 to Italy. Nor had he featured in the World Cup qualifiers in 1949, when they were beaten 6-0 and 6-2 by Mexico but still managed a win and a draw against Cuba to reach the finals. He also did not appear in the warm-up game shortly before the World Cup, when the USA were thrashed 5-0 by Besiktas.

But Gaetjens had impressed in a trial match played in St Louis to finalise the squad, and he was chosen for the unofficial game the USA played against a touring FA XI, which included Nat Lofthouse and Stanley Matthews, in the week before the team left for Brazil. He must have been thrilled to make the squad, because the USA had been drawn in a mouth-watering group featuring Spain, Chile and England.

For Gaetjens, taking on World Cup favourites England was the stuff of dreams – the Three Lions squad contained a collection of stars including Wilf Mannion, Tom Finney, Stan Mortensen, Billy Wright and Jackie Milburn, while future legendary managers Bill Nicholson and Alf Ramsey were also part of Walter Winterbottom’s group.

England had never before entered the World Cup – an uneasy relationship with FIFA had led to them leaving the organisation altogether between 1928 and 1946 – but they were widely tipped to lift the trophy.

In the most recent British Home Championship, which also served as World Cup qualifying, they had beaten Wales 4-1 in Cardiff, hammered Ireland 9-2 at Maine Road, and then defeated Scotland 1-0 in front of 138,000 spectators at Hampden Park. The top two qualified for the World Cup, though the second-placed Scots chose not to take up their place after declaring they would travel to Brazil only if they won the Home Championship. Despite objections from some of their players, they went on a tour of North America instead.

Football in the USA in the late 1940s and early 1950s was a disorganised affair. There was no national league, with the game only seriously played on the east coast and in immigrant-heavy cities such as Chicago and St Louis. The players were semi-professionals, holding down 40-hour working weeks.

Midfielder Walter Bahr remembered earning $550 a week as a PE teacher, but only $25 for a weekend match. Striker Gino Pariani recalled training twice a week in the local park. “When it was dark, we’d train using the lights from the cars we’d come up in,” he said.

“The pitches were pretty terrible,” Bahr explained. “They were mostly cinder or dirt fields, or real cabbage patches.”

Once the squad had assembled, it took them three days to reach Rio de Janeiro, after which they had only three days to acclimatise before their opening game against Spain. While England started the tournament as 3-1 favourites with the bookmakers, the Americans were 500-1 outsiders.

Their coach Bill Jeffrey, a Scot who had been highly successful at Penn State University, had the task of selecting the side to face the Spanish. “He knew that a lot of the players weren’t used to playing together, but made sure that each knew someone in their part of the field,” Bahr explained.

Jeffrey built the core of his team from the same Italian district of St Louis, an area known as ‘The Hill’. Goalkeeper Frank Borghi was a funeral director who had been decorated for treating a wounded German soldier during D-Day. Charlie Colombo, the centre-half, was known as ‘Gloves’ because he played wearing a pair whatever the weather. Pariani was a gifted inside-right who had been forced to move his wedding forward by a week in order to play in the tournament.

Left winger Frank ‘Pee Wee’ Wallace had spent 15 months of the Second World War in a German prisoner-of-war camp. The only non-Italian among the St Louis players was Harry Keough, who was married to a woman from Guadalajara and spoke Spanish – reason enough for Jeffrey to hand him the captaincy for the opening match.

Alongside Bahr in midfield was Eddie McIlvenny, a Scotsman from Greenock who had played for Wrexham in the Third Division North before emigrating. At left-back was Joseph Maca, a Belgian who moved to the US after serving in the resistance during the war.

When the USA met Spain in Curitiba, a heavy defeat was expected. Yet against the run of play, Pariani put them in front, and they still led with 10 minutes left. “But we weren’t in shape,” Bahr admitted. “We all had full-time jobs – we couldn’t keep up with their pros for the full 90 minutes.” Spain scored three late goals to turn the game around.

On the same day, England had laboured to a 2-0 win over unfancied Chile in their opener, with goals from Mortensen and Mannion. A comfortable victory was expected against the USA in their second match, ahead of a showdown with Spain to decide the one team that would progress, with goal difference potentially proving decisive.

Their preparation for the USA game carried a whiff of complacency. They had not bothered to scout their opponents, nor had they even inspected the pitch. Matthews was flown in from the FA’s tour of North America specifically for the USA match, only for a decision to be made that he was not needed on the field.

England changed at a tennis club outside Belo Horizonte and then travelled in, but were dismayed by the state of the playing surface when they came out to warm up. “A lot was made of the state of the pitch,” Bahr later said. “But I don’t remember it being particularly bad. I guess we were used to a lot worse in the States.” The Americans’ laid-back mood was reflected by the fact that some of the team had stayed up late partying the night before the match.

The crowd of 10,151 inside the stadium included a handful of American soldiers and workers from a nearby British-run mine, but the overwhelming majority were Brazilians. “We could tell they wanted us to win,” said Borghi. “They wanted England out of the tournament so Brazil would have a better chance of winning it.”

England created six clear chances in the opening 12 minutes, striking the post twice, while Borghi was in outstanding form. The Three Lions kept coming forward, until the moment that stunned the stadium arrived six minutes before half-time.

McIlvenny found Bahr, who moved ahead and hit a shot from outside the area. “It was maybe 25 yards out, a decent shot,” Pariani remembered. “The England keeper moved right to cover it, but suddenly Joe Gaetjens jumped in and deflected it in the opposite direction. Before the goalkeeper realised what had happened, it was in the back of the net.”

Gaetjens himself did not see the ball go in – when it hit the net, he was lying face down in the mud. “Joe didn’t celebrate madly, you never did in those days,” Bahr said. “We just shook his hand and he jogged back to the halfway line with a big grin on his face.”

The Americans’ goal knocked the wind out of England, and their attacks became less relentless in the second half. The USA might even have added another when Wallace broke through on goal.

Late in the game England rallied, aware that their opponents were tiring once more. Mortensen burst through the USA defence and was preparing to shoot when Colombo hauled him down from behind with what amounted to a rugby tackle. “Charlie should have been thrown out of the match – nobody on our side would have complained,” Bahr later admitted. “The English wanted a penalty, but the Italian referee gave them a free-kick outside the box.”

From the resulting kick, Jimmy Mullen’s header seemed to loop beyond Borghi and into the goal, but the goalkeeper produced a full-length dive to somehow claw the ball around the post. England claimed it had crossed the line. “It definitely wasn’t a goal,” Bahr insisted. “It could have been on the line, but it definitely wasn’t over it.”

At the final whistle, hundreds of ecstatic Brazilian supporters poured on to the pitch, lifting two American players and carrying them towards the clubhouse. One was Borghi. “I didn’t know what was going on,” he laughed. “They just picked me up and carried me off.” The other was the match-winner, Gaetjens, who had now written his name permanently into World Cup folklore.

Back in the USA, the result barely made an impact – only one American reporter had been present. Three days later, they lost 5-2 to Chile in the heat of Recife and were knocked out, finishing bottom of the group on goal difference. England needed to beat Spain 3-0 in their last game to qualify, but instead lost 1-0.

After returning home, the Three Lions were criticised by the press, though not to anything like the extent they would be today after a similar exit. More attention was given to the West Indies cricket team’s first ever victory over England at Lord’s, which took place on the same day as the defeat by the USA. “It was just one of those games,” Tom Finney later told FFT about the USA loss. “We could have played for nine hours and still wouldn’t have scored.”

Gaetjens would never become a US citizen. In fact, he never played for the USA again after that World Cup, moving to France to play for Racing Club de Paris before later returning home to Haiti. He again represented the Haitian national team in a qualifier for the 1954 World Cup – they lost 4-0 to Mexico.

In 1964, after retiring from football and running a dry-cleaning business, he was arrested by Haiti’s secret police, acting on behalf of president Francois Duvalier, who had come to power seven years earlier.

“Joe didn’t have a political bone in his body,” insisted his former USA team-mate Bahr. His family did, however, and their support for opponents of Duvalier’s dictatorship was enough to determine his fate under the regime.

Gaetjens was last seen alive two days later in Haiti’s notorious Fort Dimanche prison. His body was never found.

This article first appeared in the April 2006 edition of FourFourTwo magazine.