Josef Hügi

Who was Josef Hügi?

Josef "Seppe" Hügi was a Swiss international footballer who played as a striker during the late 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s.

Hügi was born in the town of Riehen on 23 January 1930 and played football from an early age but did not start to take the sport all that seriously until he went to the University of Basel in the late 1940s. His first professional club was FC Basel, who he signed for in 1948. He would spend the next fourteen years of his life playing for the RotBlau, playing over 300 matches and scoring 224 goals. In 1962, he signed for FC Zürich but he played just two games there and went on to spend the rest of his career in the lower divisions with FC Porrentruy and FC Laufen. He became a coach at FC Basel after his retirement from playing.

He was capped 34 times for the Swiss national team between 1951 and 1960, scoring 22 goals. At the 1954 FIFA World Cup, he scored six goals, tied second-best for the tournament, which makes him the all-time top goalscorer for Switzerland in World Cups.