Alfredo Di Stéfano: A Real Madrid legend
CHAPTER 17
Di Stéfano
The Argentine club’s tour laid the seeds for one of the most exciting periods of Spanish soccer club history, with Real Madrid in particular showing greater respect for foreign imports than its triumphalist tones, on beating San Lorenzo, had suggested.
Among those who had watched Real Madrid’s victory over San Lorenzo in that winter of 1946 was Santiago Bernabéu, the Spanish club’s first postwar president and one of the great figures of international soccer. Bernabéu, as well as being a former player and a hugely enthusiastic soccer fan, was a man of ambition and vision, if not opportunism, who managed to harness his allegiance to the Franco regime so as to benefit his club. In 1943 Bernabéu took advantage of Spain’s neutrality in World War II to draft plans for a new stadium as part of Madrid’s post–Civil War urban regeneration. Bernabéu had little trouble in convincing Franco and his ministers that the stadium—planned as one of the largest in the world—once populated with star players, would draw to it Spaniards of diverse social backgrounds and act as a bridge to the outside world.
Bernabéu saw his opportunity to seize on South American skills at the end of March 1952 when as part of its fiftieth anniversary celebrations Real Madrid played against the Colombian team Millonarios in their new stadium along Madrid’s Castellana Avenue. Of the players that played that day, one in particular, Alfredo Di Stéfano, caught Bernabéu’s eye because of his evident versatility and skill as well as strength on and off the ball. Although billed as a center-forward, Di Stéfano showed an extraordinary work ethos, at one moment tracking back into defense, the next leading a fast counteroffensive, and striking with disarming accuracy. “This guy smells of good soccer,” Bernabéu remarked after watching him play.
Di Stéfano, the son of working-class Italian immigrants, was born in Argentina, a country that, like Spain, had learned to play soccer from the British but had developed a style of its own, fast, magical, and mischievous. His first home was just a few yards away from the Boca Juniors stadium, in the port of Buenos Aires, where Argentine soccer’s earliest teachers, the English sailors and merchants, had first made their mark. He learned to play street soccer with the school kids of his barrio while his father earned enough money as a foreman in the local market to buy some land. It was against walls and on hard surfaces, whether on the dusty pavements or on dry grass, that Di Stéfano discovered his talent in dribbling and passing while developing his skills as a sharpshooter with his left and right feet.
Di Stéfano grew up amid the potreros—the small yards and fields of the sprawling metropolis of Buenos Aires, where large groups of kids would often find themselves fighting for the ball with adult men. It was there that he learned to use his individual instincts while fighting for his team. One of the first teams he played for in the barrio was called Unidos y Venceremos (United and We Will Win). It was with them that he learned not only to fight to defend, but also to play to win. He first made his reputation playing for River Plate during the late 1940s when Argentine club soccer enjoyed one of its golden periods, as La Nuestra—“ours, meaning our (Argentinean) style of play”—came into its own.
Di Stéfano in his memoir recognized what he and many others owed to the early pioneers. He wrote, “We should pay tribute to the English, who went all over the world with their railways, but also with their soccer. . . . They went to America, to Asia, to Africa. . . . In Spain, in Huelva, Rio Tinto they were also the first to introduce soccer. . . . [T]hanks to them, we have become a [soccer-playing] family.” But while La Nuestra owed its beginnings to the British Empire, it forged its identity in the social context of postcolonial South America. The soccer came to claim a style of its own, creative and surprising, with players turning into magicians. Their range of tricks included bicycle kicks and scissors kicks, incredible flicks and back-heels, individual juggling and the collective painting of elaborate tapestries with quick, perfectly controlled passes. Such soccer was both elegant and mischievous; it mesmerized and brought smiles to people’s faces, as much ballet as circus, as the players dribbled and passed the ball between each other, each move an attempt to up the entertainment, each goal a surprise.
While playing at River Plate, Di Stéfano’s trainer and inspiration was Carlos Peucelle, who in his days as a player was nicknamed Barullo (Mayhem) because of his tendency to play all over the field in no defined role other than as a constant threat or bulwark. Of Di Stéfano himself, perhaps the best evocative portrait has been written by Galeano, who wrote of the Argentine’s days at Real Madrid in
Football in Sun and Shadow:
The entire playing field fitted inside his shoes. From his feet the pitch sprouted and grew. . . . [H]e ran and reran the field from net to net. He would change flanks and change rhythm with the ball from a lazy trot to an unstoppable cyclone; without the ball he’d evade his marker to gain open space, seeking air whenever a play got choked off. . . . He never stood still. Holding his head high, he could see the entire pitch and cross it at a gallop to prise open the defence and launch the attack. He was there at the beginning, during, and at the end of every scoring play, and he scored goals of all colours.
Di Stéfano signed with Real Madrid on September 15, 1953, after protracted negotiations, made all the more controversial by thwarted counterbids made by FC Barcelona, which the Catalans blamed on dirty dealings in Madrid aided by the Franco government. What is beyond doubt is Bernabéu’s ambition to make Di Stéfano the central actor in Real Madrid’s transformation into one of the world’s great clubs. Three months before the Argentine’s arrival, Bernabéu signed Paco Gento, a young winger from Santander, one of several players who would blossom thanks to Di Stéfano’s inspiration and support.
Gento was lackluster and came close to being dropped from the team in his first season with the Merengues—as Real Madrid was affectionately nicknamed by the popular Francoist radio commentator Matias Prats, for no other reason than that he saw a resemblance between their white colors and one of his favorite desserts. But he survived because Di Stéfano argued, quite rightly as time would prove, that Gento was a winger with extraordinary pace who needed to improve tactically—something that could happen only by playing alongside more experienced players like himself.
Undoubtedly, Gento grew as a player thanks not just to Di Stéfano but to the array of, mainly foreign, talent that Bernabéu brought to the team. It was courtesy of Di Stéfano’s advice that Bernabéu enlisted José Héctor Rial, the Argentine inside-left, who had also played in Colombia. Di Stéfano wanted someone who could help him build up an attack from midfield with a series of quick one-two passes. But Rial also contributed to the team by connecting with Gento, a traditional left-winger, with his long passes, thus widening the team’s attacking options. Rial helped improve Gento’s timing and control while making full use of his speed to tear into defenses. Gento soon earned the nickname Supersonico.
Rial was joined at Real Madrid by other foreigner stars—the Uruguayan José Santamaría, the Frenchman Raymond Kopa, and last but by no means least the Hungarian Ferenc Puskás. “People say of those days that it was soccer played by five or six attackers and defended by the rest—but that’s an outrageous misrepresentation,” Di Stéfano told the Spanish journalist Orfeo Suarez on the eve of the 2010 World Cup. “What we had were wings that moved up the pitch, and forwards that tracked back in defence. It was a collective effort. I was taught that soccer is all about touch and mobility.”
Not everyone had the genius of Di Stéfano. He was ahead of his time. Of all the stars of Real Madrid’s Golden Age, it was unquestionably that of Di Stéfano that shone the brightest. Without him there would have been stars but no firmament. Di Stéfano’s greatness lay in his ability to combine his individual skill with his talent for organization. Miguel Muñoz, his first captain at Real Madrid, once said that with Di Stéfano on your side, it felt like having two players in every position. Di Stéfano was responsible for casting a whole club in his image in a way that impacted the development of Spanish soccer as a whole. He created a whole mythology around Real Madrid’s invincibility that others struggled to emulate and that unwittingly came to contrast with and highlight the underachievement of Spain’s national squad and his inability to inspire it to greatness.
