The Real Madrid Way. Steven G. Mandis

best player. “Paco” Gento, Santamaría (nicknamed “the Wall”), and del Sol, who did not miss one minute of action in any game that season, are the backbone support for Di Stéfano and Puskás. Domínguez, at six feet and three inches tall, is the imposing goalkeeper. The team is coached by Miguel Muñoz, a retired Real Madrid player who had scored Real Madrid’s first-ever goal in the European Cup tournament, helping the team to a 2–0 away win against Servette FC in September 1955.⁶⁶

      With that background, the 1960 European Cup final commences. In the eighteenth minute of the 1960 European Cup final, Eintracht Frankfurt scores the first goal. Then, superstar Di Stéfano scores Real Madrid’s first goal in the twenty-seventh minute to tie the game, and then scores again three minutes later to take the lead. The tireless Di Stéfano seems to be everywhere with speed and control. Puskás, too, is unstoppable. He scores from an impossible angle for his first goal, adding a second from a penalty kick, after Gento is brought down inside the penalty area, and then shoots a left-footed bullet from outside the penalty area for his third to give Madrid a five-goal cushion. The Hungarian scores on a header for his fourth goal and Real Madrid’s sixth. Three minutes after Eintracht scores their second, Di Stéfano responds in the seventy-fifth minute for his third goal and Real Madrid’s seventh, with an assist from Puskás. Eintracht scores the last goal of the game on a careless Real Madrid back pass in the seventy-sixth minute. Three total goals, a hat trick, by Di Stéfano, and four goals by Puskás help Real Madrid blow away Eintracht Frankfurt 7–3 in a night to remember for Real Madrid.⁶⁷

      The game is widely regarded as one of the best soccer games ever played and the one that opened people’s eyes to what soccer could be. The flow of goals and graceful and beautiful play was breathtaking and had the Glasgow crowd completely awestruck.⁶⁸ The next day a Daily Mail article stated, “It’s just a pity that the thousands of people at the game, and those who have to return to watching Scottish football, must have thought that they were dreaming.” Jimmy Johnstone, the great Scottish soccer player who saw the game in person when he was sixteen years old, said, “The match remained the biggest single influence on my career. It was like a fantasy staged in heaven. I had never seen football like it, nor would I ever again. I’ll recite the names of that Madrid forward line till the day I die.”⁶⁹

      Real Madrid had won its fifth consecutive European championship. As a result, Muñoz became the first person to win the competition as both a player and a coach, Di Stéfano and Puskás became the first to ever score hat tricks in a final, and Di Stéfano became the only player to score in five consecutive European Cup finals. Also, Paco Gento, who appeared in all five of the European Cup finals for Real Madrid, would play in three more and win yet another in 1966. Three of the twenty-five Real Madrid players were graduates of the Real Madrid youth academy.

Nostalgia for Galácticos 1.0

       The 1959–60 Real Madrid team that won its fifth European Cup in Hampden Park, Glasgow, beating Eintracht of Frankfurt (7–3) in what has been considered the best final in European Cup history. Back row (left to right): Dominguez, Marquitos, Santamaría, Pachín, Vidal, Zárraga. Front row: Canario, Del Sol, Di Stéfano, Puskas, Gento.

      It is important not to get lost in nostalgia about Real Madrid’s on-field performance from 1955–60, during their five-time European championship run. Galácticos 1.0 became a legend, for good reasons, and this legend has been conveyed from generation to generation of the Real Madrid community and global soccer fans. A collective memory of it exists. However, it is critical to go back and understand what happened then. The club had the best players in the world and was beautiful to watch, but they did not win every game; they didn’t win every Spanish league championship; and they had coaching turmoil.

       Coaching

      Bernabéu took over as president in 1943. Before he hired Muñoz in 1960, who would coach until 1974, Bernabéu changed coaches fourteen times in seventeen years. Only one coach, José Villalonga, lasted more than three years. During the 1955–60 European Cup run, the club changed coaches six times: José Villalonga, Luis Carniglia, Miguel Muñoz, Carniglia (again), Manuel Fleitas, and Muñoz (again). Two coaches were fired right after winning a European Cup: Villalonga and Carniglia.

       Table 3.1: Real Madrid Coaching Changes Between 1955 and 1960

       * Fired shortly after winning a European Cup.