L’etat, c’est moi,” said the Sun King, Louis XIV, when he ruled France. The state, it’s me. By the same token, albeit centuries later, in football, Alfredo Di Stefano was surely entitled to say: “Real Madrid, it’s me.” The blond, tireless, deep-chested Argentinian was the inspiration and implacably dominant influence in the astonishing Real Madrid side that won five European Cups in a row – the first five – a record that will hardly be equalled let alone surpassed.
Yet to the eternal embarrassment of Barcelona, eternal rivals of Real, standard bearers for Catalonia against the ruling hierarchy of Castile, they could at least have shared the services of Di Stefano.
He had arrived in Spain in 1953, in his mid-20s, not from his native Buenos Aires, where he claimed…