1960 FINAL REAL MADRID v EINTRACHT FRANKFURT: SEÁN O'FARRELLreflects on a time in British soccer when Burnley and Wolves were teh top dogs, but English soccer was considered second rate in terms of the world game.
WHEN CRISTIANO Ronaldo was presented by Real Madrid last July, the figure beside him, old, and on a stick, needed no introduction. Whatever Ronaldo may or may not achieve in his career, it is a reasonably safe bet he will never equal Alfredo Di Stefano’s achievement of scoring in five successive European finals.
It is just 50 years, more than half a lifetime, since he and the mighty Ferenc Puskas demolished the German champions, Eintracht Frankfurt, in what some have called the greatest ever footballing display, the 1960 European Cup final. Real ran out winners 7-3, showing skill and style which has set a standard rarely equalled. The game, watched by 135,000 in Glasgow, and by millions more throughout Europe on television, enthralled all who viewed it and remained long in the memory.
The grainy black and white TV images of the game on YouTube could almost be a metaphor for the Britain of the time. The 1950s had been a grey decade, and even if the Tories had won the 1959 election with the slogan “You’ve never had it so good”, prosperity was hardly evident. Britain’s heavy industry was in terminal decline. In Lancashire, where I lived, men still wore clogs to work. National service was just ending.
I was a football-mad 13-year-old in 1960, living just a few miles from Burnley and Blackburn, where I went to school. Every Saturday I trekked in turn to Turf Moor or Ewood Park. That season there was cause to support them both. Burnley, there or thereabouts for several seasons, won the League Championship in their last game, away to Manchester City 2-1, pipping Wolves (champions in 1958 and 1959) for the title by a point, with the much fancied Spurs a further point behind.
Rovers, meanwhile, had battled through to Wembley, where they lost the cup final disappointingly 3-0 to Wolves, who were thus within a whisker of becoming the first club in the 20th century to win the league and cup double (Spurs would do so the following year).
My interest went beyond domestic. I had watched, fascinated, on television,the European Cup quarter-final second leg at Molyneaux between Wolves and Barcelona, one of the first European Cup matches televised live in Britain. Wolves were down 4-0 from the first leg. On a rain-soaked quagmire of a pitch, they were overwhelmed 5-2 at home in an exhibition which left me awe-struck. Burnley played good football – probably the best in England at the time – but this was something else.
Barcelona included two of the great Hungarian side of the early 1950s – accorded sainthood status in our household – and seemed to me invincible. Yet they were defeated by Real in the semi-final, 3-1 in both legs.
Real Madrid were well known. They had won the European Cup every year since its inception and had seen off the Busby Babes 5-3 on aggregate in the 1957 semi-final. Money was no object, they could buy the best and pay the best. Real were marshalled by the Argentinian superstar Alfredo Di Stefano and also fielded another of the anointed Magyars – the most famous of all, Puskas. Eintracht Frankfurt were virtually unknown – certainly to schoolboys like me – until their semi-final against Rangers.
They won the first leg in Germany 6-1. In the second leg, at Ibrox, they again put six past Rangers for a total aggregate of 12-4.
The story of the final is well known. Real came from a goal down to score six in half an hour, winning comprehensively and unlucky not to score more. Di Stefano scored three, the third after a marvellous solo run. Puskas got the other four. The game ended as a contest early in the second half when Real were awarded a dubious penalty to go 4-1 up. As a spectacle it endured, long after the finish.
There was more to it than just a game, of course, particularly in Britain, home of football. It was the era of the maximum wage, under which players’ wages were capped at a level roughly equivalent to the average industrial wage – £20 per week.
The players, almost universally working class and with no freedom to break their contracts, put up or shut up. The decade had been dominated by Manchester United, cruelly destroyed at Munich, and Wolves, with three championships each.
There was, however, general acceptance that, in world terms, English soccer was second rate, following poor World Cup performances and defeats by 6-3 and 7-1 to Hungary. Real’s victory, following on the demolitions of Wolves and Rangers, emphasised just how far British football was behind the best.
Was the game a watershed? There’s always a danger that nostalgia lends a rosy hue. At school next day my history teacher declared flatly: “No English team could ever play like that.” Certainly it was a wake-up call, and football, in England and elsewhere, was never quite the same. A new bar had been set. More thoughtful, skilful (and successful) football gradually became the norm.
Wolves, exponents of the “powerhouse” game fell rapidly from grace and were never again a major force. Many successful coaches and pundits subsequently pointed to inspiration from Real’s display. Yet Real were gone, almost as quickly as Wolves. There was one other epic match, the 1962 final which they lost 5- 3 to Benfica. May 18th, 1960 was a pinnacle they never reached again. In the words of a newspaper headline next day, it was “Real Magic”.
