Monday, 7 July 2014
Alfredo Di Stefano Death
MADRID -- Alfredo Di Stefano, the forward Real Madrid has hailed as being the most important component in its mid-20th century ascent to becoming a global powerhouse, has died. He was 88.
"I think he was one of the greatest, if not the greatest, football player ever," England great Bobby Charlton said.
Born July 4, 1926, in the Barracas suburb of Buenos Aires, near the port where British sailors introduced football to Argentina, Di Stefano learned the game while playing free-for-all soccer in what he called "the academy of the streets."
"In our neighborhood we used to hold major football sessions that went on until it got dark, with everyone playing against each other," he said.
"Pope Francis and I went to the same school," Di Stefano said when childhood neighbor Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected pontiff, adding the two likely played together as children.
Di Stefano's father, Alfredo, the son of an immigrant from the Italian island of Capri, was a loyal fan of River Plate. De Stefano's mother, Eulalia Laulhe Gilmont, was of French and Irish ancestry.
Having trialed successfully for River Plate, he turned professional in 1945, joining Colombia's Millonarios six years later. He won six league titles for the two clubs.
His turn of speed soon had fans chanting, "Help, here comes the jet-propelled 'blonde arrow,'" ("Saeta Rubia," in Spanish) a nickname Di Stefano retained all his life.
He played in Spain for the first time in 1952 and dazzled the crowd at a tournament commemorating Real Madrid's 50th anniversary, a fateful encounter.
Barcelona signed Di Stefano in 1953 after agreeing a transfer with River Plate, but the move was thrown into doubt when Madrid also negotiated his transfer -- with Millonarios.
Although the Spanish federation authorized Di Stefano to play half of his four-year contract with each club, Barcelona opted out, alleging pressure from the Madrid-based ruling military dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco.
In his first season Di Stefano helped Madrid win its second league title, ending a 21-year drought.
Within three years of his arrival, he enabled Madrid to lift the first European Cup by scoring in a 4-3 win over France's Stade Reims in Paris.
The arrival at Madrid of Hungarian great Ferenc Puscas in 1958 led to an attacking partnership of dynamic effectiveness which allowed the club to retain the European title through to 1960, a record yet to be beaten.
Di Stefano's last final in 1960 at Glasgow saw possibly his finest match. Before 127,000 fans, he scored three times in Madrid's 7-3 demolition of Eintracht Frankfurt.
The same year, he helped Madrid win the inaugural Intercontinental Cup between European and South American champions with a 5-1 aggregate victory over Uruguay's Penarol.
In his remaining four years at Madrid, Di Stefano helped his team lift a further four league titles.
He topped the Spanish league's scoring standings in five of his 11 seasons with Madrid. He scored 49 times in 58 European matches, a record in the competition that stood for more than four decades.
Di Stefano left Madrid in 1964 to join Barcelona-based Espanyol for a two-year spell before his retirement as a player, aged 40.
"Football brought me so many beautiful moments. It built my life," said Di Stefano, who was also an Argentina and Spain international. But World Cup glory eluded him. Argentina declined to take part in Brazil 1950 and failed to qualify for Switzerland 1954, while Spain did not qualify for Sweden 1958. Di Stefano carried an injury to Chile 1962 and did not play. So, his only international success was a 1947 Copa America victory with Argentina.
In 1963, Di Stefano was held captive by a guerrilla group during Madrid's tour of Venezuela. He was taken at gunpoint from his hotel room by the publicity-seeking National Liberation Army Front and released unhurt two days later.
As a coach, he led Boca Juniors and River Plate to Argentine league titles, and won the European Cup Winners' Cup, the Spanish league title and the Copa del Rey with Valencia. He also managed Madrid between 1982 and 1984.
Madrid appointed Di Stefano honorary president in 2000 and named its new training complex stadium after him six years later, with a statue erected in his honor in 2008.
A diabetic, Di Stefano fought ill-health in old age and underwent a quadruple bypass with a pacemaker implanted in December 2005 after a heart attack.
In May 2013 his children asked a court to rule him mentally incapable after he announced plans to marry a woman 50 years his junior.
"I don't care that my children are against it," Di Stefano, then 86, said of his plans to marry 36-year-old Gina Gonzalez.
His interest in football never diminished. At 86 he still maintained a regular column in Spanish sports newspaper Marca.
It was there he revealed that he had missed Pope Francis' appointment. "I must confess that while everyone else watched the white smoke live, I saw it later," he wrote. "I was, as always, watching a football game."
source: http://www.mercurynews.com/sports/ci_26102740/real-madrid-great-alfredo-di-stefano-dies-at
