Di Stefano still sure about the Real thing

"I'M NOT interested in knowing how much I would earn if I were playing today... The last time I won the European Cup I got a match bonus of £220. But that doesn't matter, Ronaldo and all the other players of today will never be paid too much. They're the ones who lay on the show... If. there's a scandal, it is in the amounts that club presidents, UEFA and FIFA take out of the game."

Argentine legend, Alfredo Di Stefano, 70, struck a chord or two with these word in an interview with the Italian sports daily, Gazzetta Dello Sport, last week. Di Stefano will, of course, be forever associated with the Real Madrid side of the 1950s and early 60s. He won five European Cup medals and eight Spanish titles with the club, the first modern superclub.

However, Real Madrid's remarkable success story has always been slightly sullied by the widespread belief that the club enjoyed a privileged status under the Fascist regime of General Franco, who was keen to use sport as a means of asserting the superiority of the capital city in Spain. Even today, Barcelona fans are never slow to remind their Madrid rivals of that accusation.

Di Stefano is all too familiar with the Franco related accusations. "Real Madrid did not represent the Franco regime. It was only that, then as now, politicians were quick to jump on the bandwagon for their own propaganda purposes. Then it was Franco. Nowadays, now that soccer has become a business, we've had a whole host of businessmen and entrepreneurs taking over clubs.

"Real Madrid gave Spain a sense of pride and a positive image at a time when Franco's regime had marginalised the country on the world stage. I well recall how, on the eve of a European Cup tie against Juventus in Turin, the Italian Communist Party tried to have the game banned. They argued that we were ambassadors for Franco."

To the modern eye, Di Stefano's Real Madrid may seem quaint. The pace of their game, as it comes across on grainy, old film clips, seems not so much slow as dead slow. Defenders played only bit parts as all the attention was focused on a fiveman attack. Man to man marking, the offside trap, midfielders pressurising... they were all unknown concepts.

Mind you, as an eight year old, I watched Real's historic 7-3 defeat of German side Eintracht Frankfurt in the 1960 European Cup final, at Hampden Park, live on TV and it seemed like greased lightning wizardry to me.

Di Stefano's Real will always be remembered for its front line. He filled the centre forward role, the great Hungarian Puskas was at inside left, Mateos or Del Sol at inside right, with Frenchman Kopa and Argentine Gento blasting down the wings.

That Real side represented the ultimate in "fancy football". Their style of football was swept aside by a faster, fitter and more cynical approach. Curiously, Di Stefano dismisses that assessment and argues that his team did not go missing when conditions got rough, but could in fact do everything, even kick shins if necessary . . . "That side had everything - technique, tactical awareness, physical force, a willingness to get stuck in. It was a `macho' Real, full of class players, but also full of battlers, players who could run and play in any area of the pitch. And if it got to be a kicking match, then we kicked. Indeed, sometimes we started the kicking."

Perhaps times have not changed quite as much as the grainy old filmclips might have us believe. Even Di Stefano, however, does acknowledge one major difference between his Real Madrid and almost all modern sides. That difference concerns the role of the manager or coach.

"Ours was a team of terrific players who decided themselves what to do on the pitch. We had manager after manager - Villalonga, Carniglia, Fernandez, Munoz - and none of us took much notice. Today's game sees managers frustrate talented players, individual initiative is imprisoned by rigorous game plans. I disobeyed my coach by trying back heels, even if I knew I would be fined for doing it. Anyway, the club boss, Santiago Bernabeu, always cancelled my fines afterwards."

Fortunately, as Chelsea's Italian Gianfranco Zola reminded us in last Saturday's FA Cup final (for Chelsea's second goal against Middlesbrough), the back heel has survived. Times have clearly changed a great deal, but Di Stefano's talk of back heels and pre emptive retaliation suggests that the game has perhaps changed less than we sometimes like to think.