you won the first leg 4-1, and then succumbed to one of madrid's infamous san bernabeu miracle comebacks

what was Madrid like in those days, and what was the bernabeu like back then (must have had ~100,000 in the stadium that day)

We won 4 1, Charlie George hat trick and David Nish scored for us. Had it been 5 1 we would have gone through to the next round. Losing Francis Lee after he was sent off against Leeds didn't help us in the second leg.

Just a big concrete stadium that was paced to the rafters
all baying for blood.
Such a pity Roy Mac was out injured, it might have been different

Ah UTC, you corrected your original post. In those days European games counted in the suspended matches if you were sent off in a domestic fixture. Hence Lee's absence.

I have always hated Real, Franco's team, they even stole di Stefano from Barcelona. Them and those other cheats Juventus.

comment by Spart-Derby really are the best says red dog. (U4603)
posted 18 seconds ago
Ah UTC, you corrected your original post. In those days European games counted in the suspended matches if you were sent off in a domestic fixture. Hence Lee's absence.

I have always hated Real, Franco's team, they even stole di Stefano from Barcelona. Them and those other cheats Juventus.
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chattin' utter bollox

I believe a brown envelope was exchanged before the Juventus game, and then some shocking decisions were made which cost us dearly.
Hope you change your mind about supporting the Rams spart. Managers come and go, owners come and go, but us fans stay loyal come whatever dark days we come across, and us Rams fans have seen a few of them in Division 3 north, and i remember sitting in Ismailia in the canal zone with HM forces, and hearing Boston 6 Derby 0, oh dear so keep the faith.

omment by peks - 1974 (U6618)
posted 1 hour, 10 minutes ago

comment by Spart-Derby really are the best says red dog. (U4603)
posted 18 seconds ago
Ah UTC, you corrected your original post. In those days European games counted in the suspended matches if you were sent off in a domestic fixture. Hence Lee's absence.

I have always hated Real, Franco's team, they even stole di Stefano from Barcelona. Them and those other cheats Juventus.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
chattin' utter bollox

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Shows how much you know Peks. di Stefano was signed by Barcelona but Franco insisted he played for Madrid. My uncle went to Spain in 1936 to shoot Franco. Unfortunately he failed so the toerag self named Caudillo went on to kill 400,000 of his fellow citizens and tortured many more. Know your history before you make a comment and Real are still cheats but now they do it via the tax system. .

comment by Spart-Derby really are the best says red dog. (U4603)
posted 20 hours, 49 minutes ago

Shows how much you know Peks. di Stefano was signed by Barcelona but Franco insisted he played for Madrid. My uncle went to Spain in 1936 to shoot Franco. Unfortunately he failed so the toerag self named Caudillo went on to kill 400,000 of his fellow citizens and tortured many more. Know your history before you make a comment and Real are still cheats but now they do it via the tax system. .
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Hi, Spart, and all honour to your uncle. I presume he passed away some time ago. Both of my parents were children growing up during the Siege of Madrid, which lasted for virtually the entire Spanish Civil War. My mum's 97 now, alive and very much kicking, but she will still break down and cry when re-telling stories from that time.

I don't believe we've had the pleasure. I'm a Spanish, left-wing Real Madrid supporter. We are a minority, but not as small as the prevailing narrative would have you believe.

This is a very long post, but if you have a broader interest in the story, I hope you find it revealing. I don't want to derail the thread, but I'd like to contextualise the Di Stefano affair, and the whole issue of the Madrid-Franco links and Madrid-Barça relations at the time, because the dominant narrative has been dumbed down to paint a plain, blank and white picture of it all.

As we all know, though, life and history are rarely so simple.

So, where to begin?

Let me start by recognising that Franco did indeed utilise Real Madrid as a propaganda tool for the regime - but I will argue that the meddling, which was most notable in the 1960s, was actually a result rather than the cause of Madrid's success.

Even since before the Civil War, Madrid were always a Conservative-leaning club, that much is true; it is also true that during the Franco days, the chairmen of football clubs, and indeed of virtually any social organisation, had to be rubber-stamped by the regime. But that was not just true of Madrid, but of Barcelona, Atlético, and everyone else.

Prior to Madrid's early European exploits, however, the regime actually had as much or as little to do with Madrid as with any other club, whose directors always had to be politically vetted. (In fact, it was actually Atlético Madrid who received the regime's favours in the early years, but that's a separate story).


Interestingly, if you rewind, the two dominant forces of Spanish football prior to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War were Madrid and Athletic Bilbao, who shared almost all of the honours during pre-war Second Republic period.

After the war, Madrid did not win a single league title in the entire 15 years leading up to the Di Stéfano signing. A fifteen-year drought for one of the two most dominant sides in the country up to that point would suggest a level of incompetence that simply isn't believable for an all-controlling state throwing its support, that of the authorities and referees behind a particular club, wouldn't you say?

It was indeed Di Stefano's arrival that kicked off Madrid's 1950s glory years. But the story was not exactly as it is generally told. The actual matter was that there was a dispute between two different clubs, River Plate in Argentina and Millionarios in Colombia, over who actually owned the player's transfer rights.

Di Stefano and several other top Argentinian players had gone on strike over issues pertaining to players's rights in Argentina, and had gone abroad, to Colombia in di Stefano's case.

Barcelona reached an agreement with River to sign the player, while Madrid struck a deal with Millionarios. The player was happy to line up for either club, and FIFA named what it considered a neutral arbitrator to settle the dispute - a former Spanish FA president.

That mediator salomonically decided that both clubs were entitled to 50% of the player's rights and should share the player. Di Stéfano was to play alternate seasons for both clubs over the course of a four-year contract. When his early performances at Madrid were well below the level expected of him, Barcelona decided to sell their share of his rights to Madrid.

Did Madrid meddle when they learned of, or because of Barcelona's interest? It's a distinct possibility, and for good reason:

Up until that point it was Madrid who felt aggrieved by the deferential treatment the Spanish FA had awarded Barcelona, dating back to the Laszlo Kubala affair in 1950.

Madrid moved to sign Kubala after he impressed in a friendly with a touring side of Hungarian exiles against Madrid in June 1950. The club immediately moved to sign him and even agreed contract terms with the player.

The touring side then travelled to Barcelona and played another friendly, not against Barça but against cross-city rivals Espanyol. Kubala once again starred, and the attending Barcelona officials were equally impressed. Immediately, they decided to move in to hijack his signing for Madrid.

Informed of Barça's interest, the Secretary General of the Spanish FA at the time, a former Barcelona player and director and vice-president called Ricardo Cabot duly blocked the move to Madrid. He argued that the player's rights were owned by Hungarian club Vasas Budapest and that the Hungarian FA refused any move for the player.

Cabot and the FA then granted Barcelona an authorisation to sign Kubala. In order to circumvent the transfer rights issue, Kubala was registered as an amateur football. Ironically, however, the daily maintenance stipend and compensation for loss of livelihood they signed into his 'amateur' contract actually made him the club's best paid player. The FA then ordered Barcelona to pay a largely symbolic 50 peseta fine in order to appease FIFA, and the player proceeded to play "illegally" for Barcelona for three seasons until a compensation agreement was finally agreed with Vasas and the Hungarian FA. Though a number of reasons have been suggested (refugee status, political intervention, bribery...), as to why FIFA actually allowed this to happen, the truth has never been clear.

I know this doesn't really fit the traditional Barça good-Madrid bad narrative, but as I said, real life is never really a case of black and white.

It is if you are a Derby County supporter

Haha, touché!

Fwiw, I was very young at the time of the Derby-Madrid tie, just 7, and living in London at the time, but I do have faint memories of Derby from back in those days. For some reason, Archie Gemmill is the first name I associate with Derby from back in those days, more so than Franny Lee ... perhaps he was a bit younger, or perhaps it's because I also recall watching him for Scotland at one World Cup or other....but I do see him in my mind's eye in a Derby strip.