Josef Hügi (23 January 1930 – 16 April 1995) was a Swiss international footballer who played as a striker from the late 1940s to the early 1960s.
Josef Hügi
Personal information
Date of birth
(1930-01-23)23 January 1930
Place of birth
Date of death
16 April 1995(1995-04-16) (aged 65)
Place of death
Basel, Switzerland
Height
1.73 m (5 ft 8 in)
Position(s)
Senior career*
Years
Team
Apps
(Gls)
1948–1962
320
(244)
1962–1963
2
(0)
1963–1964
FC Porrentruy
33
(19)
1964–1965
Total
355
(263[1])
International career
1951–1960
34
(22)
*Club domestic league appearances and goals
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, whom he signed for in 1948. He would spend the next fourteen years of his life playing for the RotBlau, playing 320 league 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.