BBC Blog
The great European Cup final of 1960 rememberedPost categories: Football
Phil Minshull | 17:03 UK time, Wednesday, 19 May 2010
Saturday's final evokes memories of Di Stefano and Puskas.
Real Madrid's failure to make the Champions League final in their own Santiago Bernabeu stadium this Saturday only makes it more poignant that, almost 50 years ago to the day, they were involved in what many consider to be one of the best club matches of all-time.
Real president Florentino Perez spent hundreds of millions of euros last summer with virtually the sole objective of winning a record 10th Champions League in front of the club's own fans and he is apparently still grinding his teeth at the team's failure to do any better than the last 16.
The only consolation for Perez is that their bitter rivals and this season's La Liga champions Barcelona will not be there either, having lost in the semi-final to Inter Milan, so instead let's now turn the clock back half-a-century to a bygone era.
Real Madrid 7 Eintracht Frankfurt 3 was the score line that emerged after 90 minutes of pulsating action at Hampden Park on 18 May, 1960.
It gave Real Madrid a fifth consecutive European Cup, a streak that has never been equalled.
Despite the time that has elapsed, it's not difficult to find in the shops, so go and get it and enjoy.
The outstanding individual contributions of giants of the game like Alfredo di Stefano and Ferenc Puskas are rightly acknowledged - the pair scored all of Real's goals between them - but it was also a collective triumph for team and has contributed to them going down in history as possibly the best club side ever.
Alfredo di Stefano scores Real Madrid's first goal
In a break from the prevailingly myopic view of football elsewhere in the world by many sections of the British media half-a-century ago, even The Times was moved to comment, "Real Madrid, with its brilliant performance on Scottish soil, has maintained the suggestion that it is the best club in the world."
Clearly, despite four European Cup wins in the preceding four years it was still only a suggestion, but Hampden Park finally confirmed in most people's minds that these lazy latinos, although Puskas was, of course, Hungarian, could play football.
The Daily Mail also wrote: "It's just a pity that the thousands of people at the game, and who have to return to watching Scottish football, must have thought that they were dreaming."
Among the 134,000 people who walked out stunned at what they had seen and amazed at the artistry of both sides was an 18-year-old amateur player called Alex Ferguson. I wonder what happened to him?
The black-and-white footage demonstrates that despite some astonishing defensive lapses by the Germans, by modern standards at least, that it was actually far from a one-sided affair.
Rogelio Dominguez, Real's goalkeeper, had to make several great saves from the Eintracht forwards Erwin Stein and Richard Kress and they could easily have been 2-0 up before Real got into the game.
Eintracht opened the scoring through Kress after 18 minutes but two goals from Di Stefano just before the half-hour, a game which he himself considers to be arguably the best of his many extraordinary performances, followed by a Puskas strike from a tight angle on the stroke of half-time gave Real a 3-1 lead.
A questionable penalty after 56 minutes, for a foul by Hans Weilbacher on Gento, was converted by Puskas. I have often wondered whether Frankfurt could have turned the game around if that decision has not gone against them, but I doubt it.
Puskas then himself scored two more in the next 15 minutes, including a rare header, to make the score 6-1.
At this point Real started to relax, or tire, or probably both.
Stein got one back for Eintracht after 72 minutes but Di Stefano responded for his hat trick three minutes later, before Stein nipped in to intercept a bad back pass by and again slot the ball past Dominguez.
It was a game of its own era with five men up front, the classic formation of outside and inside forwards on both wings and a centre forward.
Neither side apparently considered any other tactical formation up front, and dropping men into defensive positions in the midfield was a rarity, a naivety often exposed by Real when Marquitos and Francisco Gento tore Eintracht apart down the flanks.
There have been other great games in recent times when serious silverware has been on the line not least, from a British perspective, the Liverpool-Milan Champions League final in 2005.
However, these were games of passion and drama but didn't revolutionise the thinking of coaches as much as this game.
Real Madrid parade the European Cup after their success at Hampden Park
The failure of the three Eintracht defenders to contain Real could be seen as the eventually leading to European clubs moving towards four men at the back.
Curiously, with the Europe seemingly at their feet, it was to be the final brilliant flourish of that great Real side.
The next season they won La Liga by 12 points but they were drawn against Barcelona in the last 16 of the 1961 European Cup and, after being beaten 3-1 in both legs of the semi-finals the following season, the Catalan club was still smarting from the defeats.
An inspired Luis Suarez, still the only Spaniard ever to be the European Footballer of The Year, got both goals as Barcelona drew 2-2 in the Santiago Bernabeu and then beat Real 2-1 in the Camp Nou to bring the curtain down on their golden era.
Real were never quite the same again. Di Stefano and Puskas got older and the rest of Europe caught up with them.
They did reach the European Cup final twice in the next three years but Benfica and Inter Milan had the measure of Saturday's hosts and no side has dominated European football in the same fashion since.
A) Comments on this blog in the space provided. Other questions on European football to: europeanfootball@hotmail.co.uk. I don't need your full address but please put the town/city and country where you come from.
Here is one from this week's postbag, which is appropriately about a German team as Bayern Munich fans are already starting to flood into Madrid.
Q) I was wondering what has happened to Hertha Berlin, who finished fourth last year and were relegated this season? What has gone wrong?
Richard Browne, St Andrews, Scotland.
Hertha's relegation leaves Germany as the only major European football nation whose capital is not represented in their top division. You might also have seen that on Monday they appointed the former German international and Stuttgart coach Markus Babbel, who also played four years at Liverpool, so I think they will be strong candidates to go straight back up.
What went wrong this year seems to be that behind-the-scenes turmoil lead to confidence and motivation in the dressing room going downhill.
They are debt to the tune of 33 million euros, and are under pressure from their banks to reduce the players' wage bill from 30 million euros a year to about half of that amount.
Nobody knew whether they were going to get sold or even if the club was going to be wound up. The club captain and German international defender Arne Friedrich, who is likely to be going to Wolfsburg, seemed to go through the motions for much of the season in response to the problems and many players appeared to follow his lead.
www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/philminshull/2010/05/the_great_european_cup_final_o.htmlHi, I'm Phil Minshull. I've lived in Spain since 1997 and covered Spanish football since the first day I got here. My blog aims to provide some insight into what's happening in La Liga, and there is much more to it than only Real and Barcelona, as well as elsewhere around Europe.
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