Alfredo De Stefano : The Stolen Barcelonista
Posted by Blograna | Posted in History | Posted on 23-08-2009
Tags: Alfredo di Stefano, General Franco, Real Madrid
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What picture comes to your mind when you think of Alfredo Di Stefano? The Madrid Legend, 5 Champions League Titles, The Honorary Chairman and so on right? A True, Living Football Legend. But Do you know the ‘Real’ Story of how he ended up becoming a Madrid player in the first place? Here is the Story of The Stolen Legend! The Turning point of Spanish Football!
The Start of the Biggest Robbery Of The Century
Alfredo Di Stefano was playing for Millonarios in Columbia from 1949 and was spotted by the Barcelona Scout Josep Samitier in 1953. Clearly impressed with his quality, Barcelona decided to bring him to Spain. Talks were held between not only Barcelona and Millonarios, but also River Plate who were always holding a part of Di Stefano’s Contract. After lengthy negotiations and a bit of Murky play by Millonarios, Di Stefano SIGNED a contract with not only Barcelona but also FIFA in 1953! According to Andres Ramírez, the Spanish Football Federation secretary, both Millonarios (who owned the rights of the player until the end of 1954, according to the agreements reached in the Lima Pact) and River Plate’s consent were needed in order for Di Stéfano to sign up with a Spanish club. Indeed Millonarios had reported FIFA the anomalous situation of the Argentinean, so FIFA itself demanded the Spanish Federation to solve the problem.
The Role of the Madrid ScumBags
Di Stefano was in Barcelona on May 13, 1953 to sign the final deal when Madrid realized what a great player they were going to lose out on. Now Under Franco’s dictator regime, Everything was possible. If Madrid had to re-choose their crest, it surely would have had General Franco’s Fat Nose on it! The then Madrid President, None Other than Santiago Bernabeu’, used all the power he had under the General, to first Ban Foreign Players all together from playing in Spain! Then their greed overpowered them even further and they forced Barcelona Directors under Franco’s threat to sign a deal that allowed them to have De Stefano for 2 out of the 4 seasons he was to be in Spain. They knew they could not steal him completely because of his contract with FIFA so they came up with this devious plan. But Barcelona was not ready to have any compromise with Madrid. So Franco finally forced us to give up on De Stefano all together! Under immense pressure De Stefano was forced to play for Madrid where his talent shown and he ended up winning 5 European Championships.
The Hate and The Rivalry
Things were never pretty between Barcelona and Madrid but this incident blew up the hate between the clubs and took the El Clasico rivalry to unparallel heights. The way De Stefano was robbed from us still is fresh in the memories and reminds the world of the Ridiculous strong arm tactics of Real Madrid using the influence of General Dictator Franco. We will always Hate Madrid for this. Who would not?
FIFA should have never accepted the registration from Barca because Millionairos had never accepted the transfer. We on the other hand had the consent of both Millionairos and River.
Also we were interested in Di Stefano a year before Barca spotted him, as he played in our 50th anniversary game in 1952.
Maybe we did use our influence to get Barca to back out of the sharing deal (although the club has always said Barca’s decision was voluntary), but then Barca’s signing of the player was itself incomplete and it was us who had actually signed the player.
[...] ensure his centrally based Real Madrid got preferential treatment when possible. Initially, Di Stefano was recruited by Barcelona, but the Catalan side soon backed down. Exactly how or why [...]