Real Madrid and Barcelona were once told to share Di Stéfano
In 1953 two Spanish giants both claimed the Argentine striker Alfredo Di Stéfano. A FIFA-appointed mediator proposed a strange compromise: he would alternate seasons, playing one year for Real Madrid and the next for Barcelona. The plan caused such anger among Barcelona's members that their club president resigned that September, and Di Stéfano became a Madrid legend.
Born on 4 July 1926 in the Barracas district of Buenos Aires, he was the son of a former River Plate defender who introduced him to the game and later wrote the letter that got him a trial there. His first-team debut in 1945 was a lone appearance, a 2 to 1 defeat to Huracán. Loaned to Huracán the next year, he scored against River after about ten seconds, the fastest goal in Argentine championship history. Back at River, the journalist Roberto Neuberger nicknamed him the Blond Arrow, and he topped the 1947 league scoring charts with 27 goals. Once he even filled in briefly in goal and kept a clean sheet against Boca Juniors.
In 1948 he helped lead a players' strike for professional rights that lasted eight months and drove Argentina's best players abroad. Di Stéfano joined Millonarios of Bogotá during Colombia's lucrative El Dorado era, starring in the side nicknamed the Ballet Azul. He scored 267 goals in 292 games there and won three league titles.
Fate turned on a friendly. In March 1952 Real Madrid invited Millonarios to its 50th anniversary tournament, and Di Stéfano scored twice in a 4 to 2 win over the hosts while Santiago Bernabéu watched. Barcelona had struck a deal with River Plate, which still held his rights, and the tussle led to FIFA's mediator and his time-share scheme, which Barcelona soon abandoned.
At Madrid he played in all five European Cup triumphs of the 1950s and 1960s, scoring 49 goals in that competition, a record at the time, and 216 league goals. He won the Ballon d'Or in 1957 and 1959. Oddly, though he represented Argentina, Colombia and Spain, he never played a World Cup match. In 1989 he received the only Super Ballon d'Or ever awarded. He died on 7 July 2014.
Source: Alfredo Di Stéfano
