- The famous scene of the World Cup
In the first round of the 1974 Fifa World Cup group stage, Haiti, the new world cup team, faced the powerful Italian team. Since the 1970 World Cup final, Italy, which has not conceded a single goal in 19 official matches in four years, is widely regarded as a complete victory against this fish-belly team in Central And North America and the Caribbean. But haiti's tenacity was completely unexpected by the Italians, and the two sides exchanged blanks in the first half. Just after the start of the second half, Haitian striker Emmanuel Sanon, wearing the number 20 shirt, used his personal ability to swing the ball in dino-Zoff to help Haiti take an astonishing lead and set Dino-Zoff's national team record of not conceding a goal at 1142 minutes. Although the powerful Italian team quickly scored three goals in a row to win 3:1, Haiti's tenacity won the respect of the whole world.
Sanon broke through Dino-Zoff's goal
Haitian players celebrating goals
Dino-Zoff and Sanon after the game
- A football legend in Haiti
Haiti, the world's first independent black country, has now become a "dung pit" in the Caribbean, and poor Haitians can only live on the strange existence of the Western democratic world. In the early 1970s, as the second generation of the Duvalier family as a dictator, the younger Duvalier brought a brief period of development for Haiti in the early years of his reign, and the Haitian national team also entered the World Cup for the first time and only time in history.
Haitian dictator Duvalier Jr
Emmanuel Sanon has shown great talent for football since he was a child. In the 1974 World Cup, Sanon scored the only two goals in the history of the World Cup in the group stage of Haiti's 3-1 loss to Italy and Haiti's 1:4 loss to Argentina, becoming a Haitian legend.
After the 1974 World Cup, Sanon entered the Europa League and played for Birchott in the Belgian First Division.
Emmanuel Sanon
After retiring from the army, Sanon coached the Haitian national team from 1999 to 2000. On February 21, 2008, Sanon died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 56. Tens of thousands of fans spontaneously organized a funeral for him, and the President of Haiti also attended the scene.
Sanon's funeral
After Sanon's death, the Haitian legislature voted to grant his family a lifetime tax-free pension as a tribute to his special contribution to the 1974 World Cup.
For the Haitian people who have lost hope in real life because of the rampant gangs in the country and the corruption and incompetence of the government, Sanon is a happy memory of their good life.
Emmanuel Sanon