François Perrin is a talented footballer who also has a talent for not going along to get along. In the small fictional town of Trincamp, the bourgeois factory owner and the petit-bourgeois shop owners are all obsessed with the local football club's success. Irresistible force meets immovable object and conflict ensues: that's basically the plot of Coup de tête, which can mean 'header' in football or a 'headbutt' in a fight. Perrin falls out (literally) with the club's loutish star player and is framed for a rape he did not commit. After being imprisoned on the basis of false testimony, Perrin is released to save the day in a big match, which qualifies the team for the finals and sets up his getting even with the townspeople.

The examination of the group of powerful men (as they all are here) who run the town and the football club is perceptive and unusual to see in a film. The sexual politics was perhaps even in its day a bit more problematic. The assault for which Perrin is imprisoned is not shown on screen, but we are set up to believe him capable of it by a slapstick assault on his girlfriend on a scaffold. Later Perrin breaks in to the assault victim's bedroom and pretends to rape her since he's already been convicted of the crime. When he relents she is overcome by his charm and a sense of the injustice done to him to join forces with him.

Perrin has his revenge in the end, but we're also left wondering whether everyone who called him a salaud didn't also have a point.