The great European Cup teams: Real Madrid 1955-60 | David Lacey | Football | The Guardian
The great European Cup teams
The great European Cup teams: Real Madrid 1955-60
In the first of our six-part series ahead of the Champions League final, we remember the Real Madrid side that hogged the European Cup throughout its first five seasons
Alfredo Di Stéfano scores Madrid's second goal during the 7-3 demolition of Eintracht Frankfurt in the 1960 European Cup final. Photograph: Hulton Deutsch/Getty Images
Wednesday 22 May 2013 04.00 EDT
First published on Wednesday 22 May 2013 04.00 EDT
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On St Crispin's Day in 1960 Real Madrid beat Eintracht Frankfurt 7-3 to win the European Cup in front of a crowd of 127,621 at Hampden Park. It was by common consent one of the finest exhibitions of attacking football ever seen in Britain up to that point and reminded fans on both sides of the border of the shortcomings of the domestic game.
As one commentator, Ivan Sharpe, observed, Madrid's performance "clinched the claim that we must really take stock of the parlous plight into which our football has descended. Insularity has led it to slip far behind world developments in tactics".
Viewed today in grainy black and white , Real Madrid's football, while undoubtedly of a high quality, appears sedate compared to, say, the present Barcelona team at their best. Given the time and space that the likes of Alfredo Di Stéfano and Ferenc Puskas were allowed by Eintracht's defenders, Lionel Messi would have scored half-a-dozen before half-time.
Nevertheless the impact of that match on British football, clubs and fans alike, was considerable. Until then there had been a tendency to regard European competition as a mere diversion from the more serious business of winning leagues and cups at home. The one English team to make serious progress in the European Cup, Manchester United, had been destroyed in the Munich air crash two years earlier.
Football in England was still in the throws of the gloomy reappraisal that had followed Hungary's 6-3 rout of the national side at Wembley in 1953 . Things were improving. In 1960 Burnley's studious passing game had denied Stan Cullis's Wolverhampton Wanderers, devotees of the long ball, a championship hat-trick and a month before Madrid bewitched Hampden the Tottenham team that would complete the double the following season had outplayed Wolves at Molineux.
Madrid broadened the horizons of British clubs who now became convinced that the European Cup and the newly-born Cup Winners' Cup demanded serious attention. The success of Tottenham and West Ham in the latter tournament in 1963 and 1965 were followed by the European Cup triumphs of Celtic and Manchester United in 1967 and 1968. The roaring applause of that huge Hampden crowd that greeted Madrid at the final whistle in 1960 had far-reaching echoes.
The match proved to be this Madrid team's grand finale. It was their fifth European Cup success in as many seasons – nobody else had won the thing – but after that the trophy only found its way to the Bernabéu once in 37 years. Madrid then won the Champions League on three occasions between 1998 and 2002, the last time at Hampden when they beat Bayer Leverkusen 2-1 with Zinedine Zidane scoring the winner, a superb volley that would not have been out of place 42 years earlier.
In 1960 parts of the Madrid team were approaching the veteran stage. Di Stéfano was 34, Puskas 33. Yet such was the multi-national talent at their disposal that Didi, the inspiration behind Brazil's World Cup triumph in Sweden two years earlier, was not even in the squad. Another Brazilian, Canario, who had made few first-team appearances, was brought in with Luis del Sol and the speedy Francisco Gento complementing the skills of Di Stéfano and Puskas.
Eintracht Frankfurt were bound to appear modest by comparison. For a start their team did not contain one current West German international. At the same time they were hardly patsies, having overwhelmed Rangers, the pride of half of Glasgow, 12-4 on aggregate in the semi-finals.
For 20 minutes Madrid's football was nonchalant to the point of careless. Then Richard Kress gave Eintracht the lead from Erwin Stein's cut-back. Big mistake. Madrid changed up several gears and Di Stéfano ran the rest of the match while scoring three goals, Puskas getting the other four. Stein's two for Eintracht were hardly noticed.
The beautiful simplicity of Madrid's seventh goal epitomised the whole character of their football. Di Stéfano gathered a pass from Del Sol in his own half and proceeded to swerve and dummy his way through a tiring defence to put the ball into the net.
That Eintracht would turn up at all had been in doubt, the West German FA having banned any of its teams from competing against sides including Puskas after he had accused their players of being on drugs when they beat Hungary in the 1954 World Cup final . The 1960 final only went ahead after Puskas had formally apologised, for which Hampden and football history, if not Eintracht, will always be grateful.