The world’s best club?
WHEN, somewhat rashly, manager Arsene Wenger spoke of his unbeaten Arsenal Premiership team in terms of immortality recently, the reaction was inevitable. The claim seemed wholly excessive to me. Yes, going through a whole League season unbeaten is quite an achievement, but when the bulk of the opposition is so meagre and when your team has failed in the true test, that of the European Cup, how much does it really mean?
So I set myself to deciding which clubs really were, if not immortal - an absurd word to use in the context of what after all is only a game - at least the greatest in the history of the sport. And my first choice, perhaps inevitably, was Real Madrid, certainly not the pallid and pitiful Real Madrid we have seen this season, beaten in their last five Primera Liga games, sometimes by the humblest opposition, so pathetically less than the sum of their expensive parts, sacking their manager, Queiroz, who arguably should never have been appointed in the first place.
No, I am of course referring to those glorious Real teams which won all five of the first ever European Cups. Not always too easily. In the first of those five finals, in Paris in 1956, Real scraped through by just 4-3 against a Reims team inspired by the brilliant little deep lying centre forward, Raymond Kopa, who then joined Real and found himself forced to play out on the right wing, actually his original position, by the dominant, even domineering, figure of that great Real team, Alfredo Di Stefano.
You could never envisage Real doing such great things were it not for the tireless, super-ubiquitous, Argentine, the greatest surely of all Total Footballers, so long before Total Football was invented. He used to say that he built up his amazing stamina running through the streets of his native Buenos Aires, from which he decamped as a young star to join other Argentine defectors in Colombia, then not a member of FIFA and thus able to poach players from elsewhere including you may recall Neil Franklin, the elegant England centre-half, on the eve of the 1950 World Cup.
Di Stefano emphatically called the tune at Real. As great a playmaker as Brazil's Didi, a leading figure of the 1958 World Cup, was not allowed to win a place when he joined Real. The 1958 Final, one might mention, was another in which Real were, in Brussels, given a hard run for their money by a gifted Milan team, eventually winning 3-2 at the last gasp.
But the match for which Real will surely be remembered was the Final of 1960 in Glasgow, which I was lucky enough to see, when they thrashed their German opponents, Eintracht Frankfurt, 7-3. Three goals for Di Stefano, four for the Galloping Major, alias the tubby, lethally left-looted, Hungarian, Ferenc Puskas. They combined superbly though Puskas was a late comer to that Real team, his inside-left position having previously been filled with distinction by Di Stefano's fellow Argentine, Hector Riel.
Over 130,000 Scots stayed on to give Real a tumultuous ovation; a tribute indeed. Eintracht were no negligible team; it was simply that Real were on that May evening irresistible. Above all Di Stefano himself, now clearing from his own penalty area, moving upfield to deliver the perfect through pass to a team-mate. A pity that the first ill-starred so called Intercontinental Championship was not contested by an equal opponent then as it would have been interesting to see that Real team take on equally super opposition. Ideally Pele's Santos.
This was beyond doubt another great team, which for a while dominated South American soccer. If Di Stefano was the supreme inspiration of Real Madrid, so was Pele of Santos team which revolved around him. As it was, the first of those ultimately ill-fated and violent championships took place after Real's famous victory at Hampden, pitting them against Penarol of Montevideo, then the Uruguayan holders of the Libertadores Cup. The first leg was drawn 0-0 in Montevideo, Real being without their speedy left-winger Paco Gento who combined so well with Di Stefano.
But he was playing in the return at the Bernabeu stadium, scoring one of the goals whereby Real thrashed Penarol 5-1, with two goals from Puskas, one from Di Stefano.
One can only speculate on what might have happened had Di Stefano's team met Pele's with both at their peak. Pele, of course, was an utterly different player than Di Stefano, essentially an attacker, who never covered as much ground, a footballer whose finishing power was remarkable, either with foot or head, though he stood only five feet eight inches. Athletic and gymnastic to a degree, many of his goals were spectacular as in the 1958 World Cup Final in Stockholm against Sweden when at only 17 he calmly hooked the ball over his head, controlled it on his thigh then thumped it home. But he made goals, too.
In 1962, Portugal's Benfica actually matched Santos in the first leg of the championship, beaten 3-2, but in the return in Lisbon, Santos played them off the park, winning 5-2, three of the goals came from Pele, who had scored a couple in the first leg in Rio. Pele had outstanding support from Zito, the attacking right-half, and the young centre forward, Coutinho.
Later, I'd nominate Ajax of the early 1970s as another phenomenal team. Once more they were inspired by a single star, in this case the hugely talented centre forward, Johan Cruyff, apostle of Total Football with its emphasis on versatility, admirably supported by the embodiment of the versatile, midfielder (or centre-back, right back, even centre forward) Johan Neeskens. Like their great rivals, Bayern Munich, Ajax deployed an attacking sweeper. A role virtually invented by Franz Beckenbauer, the driving force of Bayern Munich, who followed Ajax with three European Cup wins in a row.
I'd rank Ajax a fraction ahead of Bayern who certainly had luck and a tolerant referee to thank when they beat Leeds in Paris in their third successive win-fling final; Ajax having won the previous three. But this was still a great team. And. I submit, greater like the others named than Wenger's Arsenal
— This article was written by Brian Glanville and first published in the ‘World Soccer’
The ten greatest sporting all-rounders
1. CB Fry
Cricket, football, rugby and athletics
It’s impossible to look at Fry’s life and not wonder why the Almighty couldn’t spread his gifts more evenly. Fry was unbeaten as England cricket captain and played football for his country in 1901, then reached an FA Cup final with Southampton. He also enjoyed a spot of rugby, with Blackheath and the Barbarians, and, for good measure, held the world long jump record. As if that wasn’t enough, he was a novelist and journalist, represented India at the League of Nations, was offered and declined the throne of Albania (would you accept?), and flirted with fascism (he met Hitler in 1934) before deciding that the Liberal Party was the way forward. Apart from that, he led a perfectly ordinary life.
2. Deion Sanders
Baseball and American football
Described as ‘an obnoxious, self-promoting, egomaniacal prima donna’, Sanders certainly lived up to his own hype. He is the only man to play in a Super Bowl and in a World Series. In 1989, he hit a home run and scored an NFL touchdown in the same week. His dress sense was as outrageous as his talent (he usually wore enough gold to keep the International Olympic Committee in medals for a century) and the inevitable rap single followed.
Then, in 1997, his suicide attempt was thwarted by miraculous intervention. Or so he claimed: ‘God had his hands on me. I ran the car off the cliff, and it was like a 40-foot drop. The car went down and hit and there wasn’t a scratch on me or it.’
3. Eddie Eagan
Boxing and bobsleigh
Destined to remain the answer to a trivia question to which no one knows the answer, Eagan is the only Olympian to win gold at both summer and winter Games. He defeated Sverre Sørsdal of Norway to take the light heavyweight boxing gold in Antwerp in 1920, before turning to the four-man bobsleigh 12 years later in Lake Placid, where his bulky frame presumably hastened his sled’s descent. Not bad for a lad from a poor family in Denver who, at the age of one, lost his father in a railroad accident.
4. Ian and Liam Botham
Football and cricket; rugby union, cricket and rugby league
When not touring, England’s greatest all-rounder spent an occasional winter playing for Scunthorpe United, where he served as a striker from the Kevin Pressman school of conditioning. Son Liam followed in his footsteps by playing county cricket for Hampshire but, perhaps realising he would never be as good as Dad (who would?), he became a rugby union wing for Cardiff, then Newcastle, and briefly made the England squad. When Leeds Rhinos came calling, Liam completed an unlikely sporting hat-trick by switching codes to rugby league. The pair were last seen together advertising Shredded Wheat, though the idea that the first thing Beefy reaches for after a hard night is a dry-as-dust cereal product stretched credibility.
5. Eddie Charlton
Snooker, surfing and Australian Rules football
As ‘Steady Eddie’, Charlton was one of the most ponderous players ever to wield a snooker cue. After one match, Cliff Thorburn observed: ‘Before the match I had a suntan - now it is gone.’ And yet, away from the green baize, this was the man who was part of a winning team in the Australian surfing championship and who also played in the Aussie Rules first division for 10 years. In 1956, he was selected to carry the Olympic torch on its journey to Melbourne. He died in 2004.
6. Chris Balderstone
Football and cricket
Combining professional football and cricket hardly distinguishes Balderstone. What does make him unique is the day in September 1975 when he turned out for Leicestershire during the morning and afternoon and for Doncaster Rovers in the evening. After a night’s rest, he returned to the crease to complete the most unlikely of centuries against Derbyshire and take three for 28 in a match his team won with five minutes to spare. After celebrating Leicestershire’s first county championship title, he ran out for Doncaster again the following Saturday. Balderstone became a first-class umpire on retirement. He died in 2000.
7. JPR Williams
Rugby and tennis
Somehow it doesn’t seem right that rugby’s most aggressive full-back should also have been a Wimbledon junior champion, but JPR Williams became exactly that in 1966. A career with the oval ball was more in keeping with his scruffy demeanour, awesome sideburns and socks rolled around his ankles, even if he did maintain a last vestige of his tennis days by wearing a headband that would have sat proudly around John McEnroe’s temple. A trained surgeon, he once stitched up a hole in his cheek before returning to the field against New Zealand. Now you don’t get that on Centre Court.
8. Tonya Harding
Figure skating and boxing
The American figure skater became a hate figure in 1994 when her Olympic rival Nancy Kerrigan was assaulted with a metal bar. Harding’s husband later admitted being involved in a plot to attack Kerrigan. After refusing to co-operate with the investigation, Harding received a fine and community service, not to mention the odd stream of phlegm from enraged Americans. Such vitriol toughened her up for the less aesthetically pleasing career of boxing. After winning a ‘reality TV’ fight, she turned professional in 2003. She has had six bouts as ‘America’s Bad Girl’, winning three and losing three - and not a metal bar in sight.
9. Denis Compton
Football and cricket
When David Beckham became the new ‘hair’ of Brylcreem in 1997, it was unlikely that any of the brand’s youthful target market knew of Denis Compton. But 50 years earlier, the original Brylcreem Boy was the most celebrated double international of them all: as a Test cricketer he scored 17 centuries for England, averaging 50 in 78 matches either side of the Second World War, and as a footballer he played for Arsenal, winning an FA Cup winner’s medal in 1950, and appeared in 12 wartime internationals. Explaining his success, Compton showed considerably more self-deprecation than one might expect from Beckham: ‘Lucky... went to a decent school, you see.’ He died in 1997.
10. Rudi Van Vuuren
Rugby and cricket
The first man to play in the rugby and cricket World Cup finals tournaments in the same year (2003), the white Namibian also works as a doctor and runs a wildlife sanctuary. Part fly-half, part medium-pacer, he admits he is ‘not that talented at cricket’. He was proved right when Australian Darren Lehmann hammered him for 28 in one over. Never one to be discouraged, Rudi overcame injury to play against Romania in the rugby World Cup that same year. Namibia lost 37-7, then lost to Australia by what can be only described as a cricket score. In fact, they lost all their games in both tournaments by cricket scores. At least he kept a sense of
perspective: ‘How can I compete with Jonny Wilkinson? He would not expect to walk into my surgery and treat my patients.’
— This article was first published in the ‘Observer Sport Monthly’ magazine
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