Les Grenadiers, Haiti’s national soccer team, is in the World Cup this year for only the second time — the first was in 1974. But Haiti’s World Cup history goes back much further than that, to 1950.

That year, a Haitian player brought about what would later be described as the greatest upset in World Cup history.

In the first round of the Brazil-hosted tournament that year, the US was to play England. It was an almost comical idea — the country that invented the sport up against one that didn’t pay it much attention.

Team USA was largely made up of the children of immigrants. They played when they got off work from jobs like hearse driver, mail carrier and mill worker. And then, a striker named Joe Gaetjens tried out for the US national team. As Haiti plays in the 2026 FIFA World Cup — hosted by Canada, the US and Mexico — Gaetjens is remembered as a hero, as Haitians reflect on his life and legacy.

Gaetjens was studying accounting part-time at Columbia University in New York, while working as a dishwasher. He was not American. He was born and raised in Haiti, but was allowed to play for the US on the condition that he promise to apply for citizenship.

The team managed to qualify and went to Brazil. After putting up a surprisingly good fight against Spain, it had to face England.

What happened would become known as “the miracle on grass.”

Shortly before halftime, a teammate kicked a ball toward England’s goal. Gaetjens leapt, and the ball swiped his head, flying off at a new angle, so fast and unpredictable, it eluded the goalie.

The score was 1-0, and it stayed that way, thanks to a shockingly strong US defense.

At the end of the match, the mostly Brazilian audience went wild. Gaetjens had taken down Goliath. Photos from the time show a joyous crowd lifting him high and carrying him off the field.

Gaetjens went on to play professionally in France before returning to Haiti, a hero, in 1954.

He then married, had threesons and opened a drycleaning business.

Gaetjens’ oldest son, Lesly, said he heard his father was homesick when he was in the US and then France, and that might be why he never actually applied for US citizenship.

“I think that he didn’t apply because he really loved Haiti,” Lesly explained. “He wanted the joy of having his friends … things like that.”

But François Duvalier became Haiti’s president in 1957, and over the years he grew increasingly intolerant of dissent. He even developed a practice of going after an entire family to punish one of its members.

Gaetjens was not political, but two of his brothers, in exile in the Dominican Republic, were involved with groups that were accused of plotting a coup.

On July 8, 1964, men picked Gaetjens up at gunpoint from his business. No one in his family ever saw him again.

His wife and children went into hiding and then fled to Puerto Rico when Lesly was 8 years old. 

Lesly said he recalls just a few things from that dark period of his childhood.

“I remember every night I used to kneel next to the bed and pray that my dad would come back,” he said. “For many, many years, I still had hope and still believed that he would come back.”

The family would later find out that Joe was executed shortly after arriving at Duvalier’s notorious Fort Dimanche prison.

Joe Gaetjens’ story has captured the imagination. This year, novelist Dimitry Elias Léger published a fictionalized version of Gaetjens’ life, called “Death of the Soccer God.” He said he was inspired by a Sports Illustrated article on Gaetjens in 2010.

“It captured the spirit and the contradictions of Haiti and Haitians quite a bit,” Léger said during a break from a sweeping book tour. “Haitians are capable of tremendous, extraordinary feats, like beating Napoleon.”

In 1803, in one of the greatest upsets of all time, an army of mostly enslaved Africans, led by the French, defeated Napoleon’s troops, leading to the establishment of the Republic of Haiti. 

“And also, they’re incapable of banal things like running a country and diplomacy with rich neighbors,” Léger added. “Thirdly, they occasionally get struck by serious bad luck. … These are the contradictions of being Haiti, extraordinary and also unlucky.”

Lesly, Joe Gaetjens’ son, has returned to Haiti only once since he left some six decades ago. It was in 2010, when ESPN flew him to Haiti for a documentary.

When they tried to visit the stadium where Joe used to play in Port-au-Prince, it was closed, but staff opened it after learning they were in the presence of a Gaetjens.

The video shows a gathering crowd, and a man producing a picture he had kept on his office wall. It was the Associated Press photo of Joe Gaetjens being carried off the field in Brazil in 1950.

Forgotten by the US and disappeared by a dictator, Joe Gaetjens still received immortality among Haitian soccer fans — a population that will be hoping for another miracle on grass when the Grenadiers hit the pitch in their final World Cup match this week.