Post by yenilira on Mar 28, 2011 11:05:07 GMT 1
What teams, and players, do you remember from your misspent youth ?
To me, football was better in many ways 50 years ago - there was none of today’s greed and corruption, no big egos, no ‘divers’, and the word ‘Sky’ was that space above your head with white fluffy clouds floating by.
When a Foreign Team came on the telly, it was a match to be savoured, there was a certain aura about such players as Lev Yashin, the ‘Black Spider’ of Moscow Dynamo, and all those other ‘stars’ on the European stage of yesterday year.
Real Madrid, five-times consecutive winners of the European Cup, culminating with that Final at Hampden Park in the 1959-60 season, in what many say was the greatest final of all time.
Who can forget the likes of Puskas and Di Stefano, Jose Santamaria the centre-half, Luis del Sol, and Francisco Gento parading their skills in front of 135,000 spectators,
and in other years in these two decades of the 50s and 60s?
Then there is Raymond Kopa, who joined Real from Stade Reims in 1956, but left just before their 7-3 win over Eintracht Frankfurt, with ‘Tiny’ Mowat in the middle that day in May..
Just Fontaine of Reims and France was another who caught my eye then.
From Italy, Fiorentina, Torino, and to a lesser extent, Inter-Milan, were the teams for me, with their silky and equisite skills.
There was Alessandro ‘Sandro’ Mazzola, the ‘La Grande Inter’ striker whose only club in a 17-year playing career was I Nerazzurri.
Who will forget how his country adjusted their system to play both him and Gianni Rivera in the Azzuri, with the use of the ‘staffeta’, together with their ‘catenaccio’ which was a big thing in those days.
Gia Facchetti - again, Inter was the only club for this full-back, one of the most effective defenders of Italian football.
And Dino Zoff - reckoned the third best ‘keeper ever, the oldest winner of the World Cup, in 1982, when he was 40 years of age. Another star.
Josef Masopust, he of Dukla Prague, and Czechslovakia, fame, was capped 63 times. A midfielder, he scored ten goals for his country.
He was awarded the ‘European Footballer of the Year’ in 1962, and was named by Pelé as one of the top 125 greatest living footballers in March 2004.
The Magyars of the 50s and 60s had an abundance of gifted players - Ferenc Puskas, Sandor Kocsis, Hidegkuti, Nagy, Norvath, and Florian Albert, amongst others.
CSKA (Moscow) and Ferencvaros TC were two other ‘big’ teams of those eras,
along with -
MTK Budapest – the first Hungarian team to play in the European Cup (1955) – they were taken over by the Secret Police in 1949, but their most successful period was the 1950s.
Hidegkuti also managed them twice.
in 1964 they finished as runners-up in the European Cup Winners' Cup after losing to Sporting Clube de Portugal in the final.
23-times winners of the Soproni Liga, the Hungarian First Division.
Obviously, Pele himself has got to come into the equation, along with those other greats of Brazilian football – Garrincha, Rivelino, Tostao, and Gerson.
The only German who ‘does’ for me is Franz ‘The Kaizer’ Beckenbauer, with only Borussia Dortmund, Koln and Hamburg being teams of interest.
That is not to say that Germany, both East and West, had some very good players.
‘The Black Panther’ or ‘Black Pearl’ of Benfica is the only other ‘Rest of Europe’ player to mention.
He was elected the European Footballer of the Year in 1965 and was runner-up in 1962 and 1966. He played for Benfica for 15 years, and is the team's all-time top scorer. There he won the European Cup once and managed to help them reach three additional finals.
Eusébio da Silva Ferreira - Eusebio as he is more well known - scored 733 goals in 745 games in his career. Although born in Mozambique, he could only play for the Portuguese team, like Matateu and Mário Coluna, among others, before him, since the African country was an Overseas territory and its inhabitants were considered Portuguese.
He was the first ever player to win the European Golden Boot award, in 1968, a feat he later replicated in 1973.
He will forever be remembered for his part in the 1966 World Cup quarter-final win over North Korea.
Another interesting aspect of all those great players is that quite a few have stadiums now named after them.
No article of this nature can be allowed to close without a mention of the Celtic European Cup winning team of 1966-67 – the ‘Lisbon Lions’.
No matter which side of the Glasgow divide you come from, one has to certainly applaud the ‘Hoops’ in beating Inter Milan, with the likes of ‘Jinky’ Johnstone, Tam Gemmell, Ronnie Simpson, Billy McNeill, Bobby Lennox, and of course, their Manager, the late Jock Stein.
Stars of that Italian team that day included Sarti in goal, Facchetti, Corso, and Mazzola.
The good old fashioned pig’s bladder, when it got wet and muddy……….
YL.
To me, football was better in many ways 50 years ago - there was none of today’s greed and corruption, no big egos, no ‘divers’, and the word ‘Sky’ was that space above your head with white fluffy clouds floating by.
When a Foreign Team came on the telly, it was a match to be savoured, there was a certain aura about such players as Lev Yashin, the ‘Black Spider’ of Moscow Dynamo, and all those other ‘stars’ on the European stage of yesterday year.
Real Madrid, five-times consecutive winners of the European Cup, culminating with that Final at Hampden Park in the 1959-60 season, in what many say was the greatest final of all time.
Who can forget the likes of Puskas and Di Stefano, Jose Santamaria the centre-half, Luis del Sol, and Francisco Gento parading their skills in front of 135,000 spectators,
and in other years in these two decades of the 50s and 60s?
Then there is Raymond Kopa, who joined Real from Stade Reims in 1956, but left just before their 7-3 win over Eintracht Frankfurt, with ‘Tiny’ Mowat in the middle that day in May..
Just Fontaine of Reims and France was another who caught my eye then.
From Italy, Fiorentina, Torino, and to a lesser extent, Inter-Milan, were the teams for me, with their silky and equisite skills.
There was Alessandro ‘Sandro’ Mazzola, the ‘La Grande Inter’ striker whose only club in a 17-year playing career was I Nerazzurri.
Who will forget how his country adjusted their system to play both him and Gianni Rivera in the Azzuri, with the use of the ‘staffeta’, together with their ‘catenaccio’ which was a big thing in those days.
Gia Facchetti - again, Inter was the only club for this full-back, one of the most effective defenders of Italian football.
And Dino Zoff - reckoned the third best ‘keeper ever, the oldest winner of the World Cup, in 1982, when he was 40 years of age. Another star.
Josef Masopust, he of Dukla Prague, and Czechslovakia, fame, was capped 63 times. A midfielder, he scored ten goals for his country.
He was awarded the ‘European Footballer of the Year’ in 1962, and was named by Pelé as one of the top 125 greatest living footballers in March 2004.
The Magyars of the 50s and 60s had an abundance of gifted players - Ferenc Puskas, Sandor Kocsis, Hidegkuti, Nagy, Norvath, and Florian Albert, amongst others.
CSKA (Moscow) and Ferencvaros TC were two other ‘big’ teams of those eras,
along with -
MTK Budapest – the first Hungarian team to play in the European Cup (1955) – they were taken over by the Secret Police in 1949, but their most successful period was the 1950s.
Hidegkuti also managed them twice.
in 1964 they finished as runners-up in the European Cup Winners' Cup after losing to Sporting Clube de Portugal in the final.
23-times winners of the Soproni Liga, the Hungarian First Division.
Obviously, Pele himself has got to come into the equation, along with those other greats of Brazilian football – Garrincha, Rivelino, Tostao, and Gerson.
The only German who ‘does’ for me is Franz ‘The Kaizer’ Beckenbauer, with only Borussia Dortmund, Koln and Hamburg being teams of interest.
That is not to say that Germany, both East and West, had some very good players.
‘The Black Panther’ or ‘Black Pearl’ of Benfica is the only other ‘Rest of Europe’ player to mention.
He was elected the European Footballer of the Year in 1965 and was runner-up in 1962 and 1966. He played for Benfica for 15 years, and is the team's all-time top scorer. There he won the European Cup once and managed to help them reach three additional finals.
Eusébio da Silva Ferreira - Eusebio as he is more well known - scored 733 goals in 745 games in his career. Although born in Mozambique, he could only play for the Portuguese team, like Matateu and Mário Coluna, among others, before him, since the African country was an Overseas territory and its inhabitants were considered Portuguese.
He was the first ever player to win the European Golden Boot award, in 1968, a feat he later replicated in 1973.
He will forever be remembered for his part in the 1966 World Cup quarter-final win over North Korea.
Another interesting aspect of all those great players is that quite a few have stadiums now named after them.
No article of this nature can be allowed to close without a mention of the Celtic European Cup winning team of 1966-67 – the ‘Lisbon Lions’.
No matter which side of the Glasgow divide you come from, one has to certainly applaud the ‘Hoops’ in beating Inter Milan, with the likes of ‘Jinky’ Johnstone, Tam Gemmell, Ronnie Simpson, Billy McNeill, Bobby Lennox, and of course, their Manager, the late Jock Stein.
Stars of that Italian team that day included Sarti in goal, Facchetti, Corso, and Mazzola.
The good old fashioned pig’s bladder, when it got wet and muddy……….
YL.