Alfredo Di Stéfano: the complete forward

Alfredo Di Stéfano, born in Buenos Aires in 1926, was a forward like no other. Nicknamed the Blond Arrow, he did not stay up front waiting for the ball; he roamed the entire pitch, dropping deep to build play, surging forward to finish, and tracking back to defend. He seemed to be everywhere at once, conducting the game like an orchestra while also being its most dangerous soloist. Contemporaries struggled to categorise him, because he was, in effect, playing several positions in a single body.

At Real Madrid he became the central figure of the club's first golden age. Di Stéfano led Madrid to the first five European Cups in a row, from 1956 to 1960, an achievement of sustained dominance that no club has repeated. Remarkably, he scored in all five of those finals — a personal record that captures how completely the competition ran through him. In those years Madrid were the undisputed kings of the continent, and he was unmistakably their king.

The 1960 final against Eintracht Frankfurt, won 7-3, stands as the defining showcase of that team. Di Stéfano scored a hat-trick and Puskás four, and the match is still cited as one of the greatest exhibitions of attacking football ever played. Watched by a vast crowd, it announced to the world what this Madrid side could do. For Di Stéfano it was the summit of a partnership and a period in which he had redefined what a single player could mean to a team.

For all his greatness at club level, Di Stéfano never appeared at a World Cup, a quirk of nationality, timing and circumstance that denied him the global stage his talent deserved. It is the one gap in an otherwise complete record, and it makes his standing all the more striking: he is ranked among the very greatest to have played the game almost entirely on the strength of what he did for one club. He died in 2014, forever the heartbeat of Madrid's beginning.