ALFREDO Di STEFANO

One of my first "television" football memories was watching Real Madrid play on a TV, in black and white in the 1956-7 European Cup, as it was called then. In the Final, Real beat Eintracht Frankfurt 7-3.

Real were already holders of the cup, having won the first final at the end of the 1955-6 competition, beating French champions, Reims 4-3.The English involvement in the 1956 Final was referee, Arthur Edward Ellis, aided by two linesmen, J. Parkinson and  READY FOR THIS?? Tommy Cooper!!! Arthur, not Tommy, is pictured below with the two captains-central! 

Alfredo Di Stéfano Laulhé, usually known as Alfredo Di Stefano, was a star for Real Madrid. (He is the one with the ball above). The match was played at the Santiago Bernabeau, Madrid, a home match sort of !

After playing the first 12 years of his career in Argentina and Colombia, Di Stéfano moved to Spain, signing with the powerhouse, the Real Madrid club, one of the most successful teams of all time. He scored 216 league goals in 282 games for Los Blancos (The Whites!!) in his career.
Alfredo scored in 5 consecutive European Cup Finals for Real between 1956 and 1960 and struck up a famous partnership with Hungarian star, Ferenc Puskás (above on Stefano's left hand). 

The young Bobby Charlton watched Di Stéfano from the stands as a Manchester United reserve, at Real's Bernabéu stadium in 1957, and later wrote that his first impression was: "Who is this man? He takes the ball from the goalkeeper, he tells the full-backs what to do; wherever he is on the field he is in position to take the ball, you can see his influence on everything that is happening … I had never seen such a complete footballer … It was as though he had set up his own command centre at the heart of the game. He was as strong as he was subtle. Having "learned from the maestro, Charlton didn't do so badly himself. Real beat United in ther semi-final 3-5, on aggregate. There were only three rounds then. Alfredo's record was:

Five European Cups	1956, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1960 (all for Real Madrid)
Eight Spanish leagues	1954, 1955, 1957, 1958, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964 (Real Madrid)
One Spanish Cup	1962 (Real Madrid)
One Intercontinental Cup	1960 (Real Madrid)
Two Argentine leagues	1945, 1947 (River Plate)
One America Cup	1947 (River Plate)
Four Colombian leagues	1949, 1951, 1952, 1953 (Millonarios Bogota)

Back on the other side of the Atlantic, the success of the European Cup was making people curious. Could there conceivably be a better team than Real Madrid somewhere across the ocean? Did the continent that produced Di Stefano have "any more" where he came from? Uefa, then, proposed to the South American Federation that an annual game should be staged between the annual champions of the two continents. All South America had to do was find a method of deciding its champion. And thus was born the Copa Libertadores. 

STEFANO Died: July 7 2014 (aged 88) Cause of Death: Heart attack.