Between 1955 and 1960, Alfredo Di Stefano and Real Madrid won five European Cups in
consecutive years. To this day, the club are entwined with the competition in a unique
way and, until his death in 2014, Di Stefano remained Real Madrid’s footballing godfather.
Not just their finest ever player, but the silhouette of their identity.
But he might have been a Barcelona player. In Catalonia, there are still many who argue
that he should have been and that, rather than in all white, Di Stefano might have been
immortalised in blaugrana.
But the greatest transfer controversy of the 20th Century had its roots in an historical
quirk.
In 1949, along with some of the finest players in the world, a 23 year-old Di Stefano had
joined a new professional league in Colombia. At war with its own federation, DiMayor was
de-affiliated by FIFA and not constrained by its statutes – with the unwitting consequence
that its clubs and owners, operating under a pirate flag, were able to act independently
of the global transfer market.
A year before, in 1948, Argentinian football had ground to a halt because of a players’
strike. At exactly the same moment, Colombian football was entering its new era, full of
government subsidies, wealthy benefactors and – crucially – no obligation to pay
transfer fees.
Di Stefano, who had already won the Primera Division twice with River Plate, was low-hanging
fruit. When he departed for Millonarios a year later, in August of 1949, it was for
a decadent contract, a bounteous signing-on fee, but after no negotiation between the
two clubs.
The golden age of Colombian football – or El Dorado – wouldn’t last. The Lima Pact
of October 1951 agreed a compromise, under which all players would have to revert back
to the previous clubs by the Autumn 1954. But in the meantime, the spectacle of Millionarios
and Di Stefano only grew. The Ballet Azul – or Blue Ballet – as they would become
known, were the dominant force in what quickly became known as the best league in the world.
With the compromise reached at Lima, Colombian football was re-affiliated by FIFA and DiMayor’s
finest side were able to strike out beyond the country’s borders. In 1952, Millonarios
set out on a lucrative world tour, fluttering their eyelashes in – among other countries
– Spain.
Barcelona were initially more determined in their pursuit of Di Stefano. By the beginning
of 1953, he had grown disillusioned with life in Colombia and, having returned to Buenos
Aires, was threatening retirement. A negotiating party was dispatched from Catalonia to convince
Di Stefano to remain in the game.
It was a success. In May 1953 he and his family moved to Spain while Barcelona negotiated
with River Plate. According to an El Pais article from 2017, a $108,000 asking price
was haggled down to $87,000, and a deal was struck.
But there was a problem: under the terms of the Lima Pact, Di Stefano was not Real’s
player to sell until the Autumn of 1954, making him ineligible to play for nearly a year-and-a-half.
Barcelona needed an agreement with Millonarios, too.
It was one they wouldn’t find. According to Sid Lowe’s account, in Fear & Loathing
in La Liga, Millonarios’ president Alfred Senior set an asking price of $27,000 which
Barcelona refused to meet. From there on, relations between the two sides deteriorated,
with Senior complaining publicly of being disrespected.
By July of 1953, Real Madrid were already engaged in the process. In fact, board meeting
minutes from April 1953 record their desire to prise Di Stefano away from Barcelona, with
president Santiago Bernabeu determined that the club should ‘do whatever is necessary
to sign the best players’.
Understandably so. Barcelona had snatched Hungarian great Laszlo Kubala away from Real
just two years before and, with the Catalans having won three La Liga titles between 1947
and 1952, and his own side without a championship since 1933, Bernabeu was in no mood to watch
Barcelona strengthen their hand.
An agreement with Millonarios was quickly and eagerly found. creating an impasse between
the player, the clubs, and a whole raft of intractable egos.
Initially, the position of the Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) and then president Sancho
Davila was that Real Madrid’s claim was worthless and that the player’s rights belonged
to Barcelona. But that was to change, creating controversy which would never fully dissipate.
Barcelona’s failure to reach an agreement for the player remains hard to understand-
especially given the amount they’d already agreed to pay River Plate. The Catalan lawyer
who acted on their behalf, Ramon Trias Fargas, claimed to have reached multiple accords in
Colombia, only for the Barcelona board to then reject the proposals. Why that was remains,
to this day, a question without answer.
The saga rumbled on – and a further layer of complication arrived in August 1953 when,
at the request of the National Sports Delegation, Franco’s government imposed a ban on Spanish
clubs signing foreign players. It was a clear nationalist policy, but also very obviously
aimed at diffusing what had become an increasingly public and inelegant squabble between the
country’s most visible clubs.
With a ban in place and no further room for manoeuvre, Barcelona tried unsuccessfully
to retrieve their money from River Plate. Then they attempted to sell their rights to
Di Stefano on to Italian side Juventus. With Real Madrid unwilling to relinquish their
own claim, though, that proved impossible.
The two clubs headed for arbitration, with both also petitioning for an amnesty on the
ban on foreign players.
The solution, arrived at by former RFEF president Armando Muñoz Calero, would be unusual, unworkable
and ridiculous. The clubs were to share Di Stefano, with him alternating between Real
Madrid and Barcelona on a season-by-season basis for four years, at the end of which
they would have to reach a private agreement.
It would never happen. Theoretically, or in reality. In September 1953, Barcelona president
Enric Marti resigned, citing the fiasco of the past six months. In October, with an interim
board in control at Camp Nou, an agreement was reached to sell Barcelona’s share of
Di Stefano to Real Madrid for 4.4m pesetas.
It was the end of the transaction, but not the discord. In the decades since, numerous
sources claimed that Barcelona had, at different times, been pressurised into giving up their
claims. Directors were reportedly followed, offices were apparently bugged, and a variety
of threats were made against Marti, according to – among others – Di Stefano himself.
As Sid Lowe reasonably points out, however, the veracity of those claims is difficult
to establish. Nor, if in fact true, could any intimidation be linked with Franco, his
regime, or Real Madrid.
It’s tempting to join the dots, though, and many continue to do so. Given what Di
Stefano would achieve in Madrid and how that success changed the club’s complexion, there
exists an obvious and seductive narrative, implying government interference and favouritism.
Franco’s troops had stormed Barcelona at the end of the war. Santiago Bernabeu was
also a right-winger who had been part of those forces. Added to which, of course, Madrid
was the regime’s centre and its heart.
There’s plenty of innuendo, but there are also genuine anomalies. Why were Barceloana
so loathe to find an agreement with Millonarios? What causes the RFEF to alter their initial
position? Why, if there were an agenda against Barcelona, had those same forces conspired
to help them snatch Kubala away from Madrid just a few years previously?
The only real clarity is found in Di Stefano’s greatness and his place in the game’s history.
He would win the Pichichi Trophy in his first season with Real Madrid, and then four more
times in consecutive years between 1956 and 1959. Alongside his 5 European Cups, he would
also lift 9 Primera Division titles and, in 1957 and 1959, he would twice win the Ballon
d’Or.
He is the foundation block upon which modern Real Madrid are built.