The Best Footballers

Alfredo Di Stéfano (born July 4, 1926 in Barracas, Buenos Aires) is an Argentine-born former footballer and coach. He is most associated with Real Madrid, and with Ferenc Puskás was instrumental in their domination of the European Cup of Champions during the 1950s, a period in which the club won the trophy in five consecutive seasons from 1956. Di Stéfano also played international football for Argentina, Colombia, and Spain.

Di Stéfano, nicknamed Saeta rubia (”Blonde arrow”), has been inducted into the International Football Hall of Fame. He was a powerful forward with great stamina, tactical versatility, and vision. He is currently the 3rd highest scorer in the history of Spain’s top division, with 228 goals in 329 games, behind Hugo Sánchez (234 goals) and Telmo Zarra (251). Di Stéfano is also Real Madrid’s highest league goalscorer of all time, with 216 goals in 282 league matches between 1953 and 1964.In November 2003, to celebrate UEFA’s Jubilee, he was selected as the Golden Player of Spain by the Royal Spanish Football Federation as their most outstanding player of the past 50 years. He was named by Pelé as one of the “top 125 greatest living footballers” in March 2004. Di Stefano was voted fourth, behind Pelé, Diego Maradona and Johan Cruijff, in a vote organised by the French weekly magazine France Football consulting their former Ballon D’Or winners to elect the Football Player of the Century.

Born to a family of Italian immigrants, though with an Irish maternal grandmother, Di Stéfano began his career at Argentina’s River Plate aged 17, in 1943. For the 1946 season he was loaned to Club Atlético Huracán, but he returned to River in 1947. Due to a footballer’s strike in Argentina in 1949, Di Stéfano went to play for Millonarios of Bogotá in the Colombian league. He won six league titles during the first 12 years of his career in Argentina and Colombia.Di Stéfano is best known for his time at Real Madrid where he was an integral part of one of the most successful teams of all time. He scored a club record 216 league goals in 262 games for Real, striking up a fearsome partnership with Ferenc Puskas. Di Stéfano’s 49 goals in 58 matches was for decades the all-time highest tally in the European Cup, until it was surpassed by Real Madrid’s Raúl in 2005, and Chelsea’s Andriy Shevchenko (then playing for A.C. Milan) and Real Madrid’s Ruud van Nistelrooy in 2006. Perhaps the highlight of his time with the club was their 7-3 victory over Eintracht Frankfurt in the 1960 European Cup Final at Hampden Park, a game many consider to be the finest exhibition of club football ever witnessed in Europe. He was voted European Footballer of the Year in 1957 and 1959.

He moved to Espanyol in 1964 and played there until hanging up his boots at the age of 40.

Di Stéfano played with three different national teams during his career: he played six times with the Argentine national team, four times with Colombia (not recognized by FIFA) and 31 times with the Spanish national team. However, he never played in the World Cup Finals.

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