Reuters Soccer Blog

Real Madrid great Di Stefano turns 85

Looking back 60 years at grainy footage of his playing days, it is hard for us to get a clear sense of how good a player Alfredo Di Stefano, who turned 85 on Monday, really was.

Those who were privileged to see the Real Madrid great performing in the flesh say he was one of the most complete footballers to have graced the game.

An accomplished defender, a midfield workhorse, a playmaker and a prolific striker rolled into one, he could be seen covering back in defence, charging forward through midfield, laying on goals for the forwards and smashing shots into the net all in the same game.

Known as “La Saeta Rubia” (the blond arrow), Buenos Aires-born Di Stefano remains in robust health, regularly appears at club events in his capacity as honorary president and has a lively newspaper column in Marca sports daily.

His achievements as a player helped turn Real, whom he joined in 1953, into one of the world’s leading sides, transforming them from insignificant underachievers into the kings of the continent when he guided them to five successive European Cups between 1956 and 1960, scoring in each of the finals.

He is frequently bracketed with Pele, Diego Maradona and Johan Cruyff among the greatest exponents of the game.

“People argue between Pele or Maradona,” Pele was quoted as saying on a visit to Madrid in late 2009. “For me, Di Stefano is the best. He was much more complete.”

Cosmos and Cantona could take MLS to the next level

For all the progress made by Major League Soccer since it began in 1996, there is not one team in the league that can match the old New York Cosmos for name recognition – not globally and not in the United States.

But when the new owners of the Cosmos name announced in August that they planned to bring the team back to life and take them into MLS, there was a good deal of scepticism in the American soccer community. Now they have named former Manchester United great Eric Cantona as director of soccer.

Such a cynical reaction was understandable – for years there had been rumours of a return for the Cosmos name, which was owned by Peppe Pinton, an official of the old club, but nothing beyond youth soccer camps ever materialized.

When MLS announced a team in New York, there were attempts to make that team the Cosmos but no deal was ever struck with Pinton, who was reported to be holding out for a big pay-off at a time when MLS was very careful with every dollar.

The other cause for scepticism is a reluctance by some to embrace American soccer’s past. The old NASL, with the Cosmos, the Tampa Bay Rowdies and the Los Angeles Aztecs, collapsed in the early 1980s with the league unable to keep up with the costs of paying top international players such as those Cosmos brought in.

MLS has been careful to avoid any repeat of the past – it has used a conservative salary cap system to limit costs, it has wisely encouraged clubs to invest in stadiums, facilities and youth development, rather than expensive imported players and it has expanded gradually, keen to avoid the boom and bust of the NASL.

The Cosmos may mean glamour, excitement and a seat at the top table of the global game for many fans who remember them but for those who have devoted years to the painstaking task of reconstructing professional soccer in North America, they also symbolize a reckless waste of potential, the kind of flash-in-the-pan faddishness that the sport can ill-afford to repeat in this market.

Soul of soccer survives in Florida

One of the most appealing aspects of football is that, unlike with most sports, you can find the passion of the game in almost every corner of the world, often hidden away in the most unlikely places.

What separates football from, say Formula One or tennis, is that even at the lower levels of the game you can still get the buzz of being a fan even without the top stars or the fully-serviced facilities.

On Saturday, after a long wait, I got my fix again watching Miami FC.