FOOTY FAIR

Football's Greatest Sides - Part 5 of 5: Real Madrid (1955 to 1960)

2016-04-02T08:00:00.000-04:00

While the other famous club sides in this series, particularly the Milan side of Arrigo Sacchi and Pep Guardiola's Barcelona were defined in large part by the footballing philosophy of their respective managers, this certainly doesn't apply to the great Real Madrid squad of the late 1950s.

Rather than being influenced by a single manager during their record breaking run of five straight European Cups, Los Blancos went through the tenureship of José Villalonga, Luis Carniglia (twice), Manuel Fleitas, and Miguel Muñoz (twice).

But that's Real Madrid in a nutshell, a football institution that wins titles with colourful players and even more colourful presidents, but where the manager is as disposable as yesterday's daily newspaper.

The story of that wonderful Madrid side began to take shape when Santiago Bernabéu de Yeste was appointed president in 1945. He would become the first in a long line of powerful overseers of the club, but none have come anywhere near close to matching his influence or success.

But it wasn't an easy start for the man who Real's stadium is now named after. Bernabéu took over a club that was in ruins following the Spanish Civil War, with a decimated board room and a subpar playing staff.

He quickly got to work on a two pronged approach of building up the club's youth side and signing the best available talent in Spain and beyond.

Madrid's fortunes took a dramatic upward turn in 1953 when Bernabéu hijacked Barcelona's attempted capture of Argentinian attacker Alfredo Di Stéfano and instead brought "The Blonde Arrow" to the Spanish capital.

If you were to pop into a cafe in Madrid, even today, and engage in conversation with football fans of a certain age they will tell you to forget about Lionel Messi, Diego Maradona and Pele, because the greatest player of them all was Don Alfredo.

Although scant footage exists of the man his contemporaries refer to as football's most complete player ever, when considering the Argentine's influence on the game the old Madridistas may have a point.

Di Stéfano, with a talented supporting cast including Paco Gento and Hector Rial, helped Madrid storm to victory in the first ever European Cup Final in 1956 by virtue of a 4-3 win over Stade de Reims.

Madrid also helped themselves to the signing of Reims best player following the final, when they added Raymond Kopa to their glittering array of attacking talent.

The club would go on to win the European Cup again in 1957 with a 2-0 victory over Fiorentina, and would follow that up with a tense 3-2 extra time win over AC Milan in 1958.

Another win over Stade de Reims in 1959, this time by a score of 2-0, made it four straight cups for Madrid.

Their opus though would come with the last of their five straight European titles in 1960 when 127,621 stunned spectators at Hampden Park in Glasgow witnessed Madrid destroy West German champions Eintracht Frankfurt 7-3.

Scoring in his still record fifth straight final, Di Stéfano plundered a hat trick while Hungarian legend Ferenc Puskas helped himself to four.

The following season saw Madrid finally ousted from the tournament, beaten at the semi-final stage, as age started to catch up to some of their leading stars.

Club football has seen a number of brilliant and innovative teams in the past fifty years, but it's impossible to imagine that anyone will match the five straight European titles by the side that Bernabéu built.

Football's Greatest Sides - Part 4 of 5: Barcelona (2009 to 2011)

2016-03-30T08:00:00.000-04:00

Having watched his Manchester United side dismantled in the UEFA Champions League Final at Wembley Stadium by Barcelona in 2011, Sir Alex Ferguson later reflected that the Catalans were the best team he had ever faced. "No one," he said, "has ever given us a hiding like that."

Although the final score was only 3-1 for Pep Guardiola's side that day, it was never that close as United had spent most of the night chasing shadows. They had few answers for the incisive passing movement of Andres Iniesta and Xavi in the middle of the park, the clever runs of David Villa and never mind the mercurial little genius known as Lionel Messi upfront.

Having also beaten United 2-0 in the final in Rome two years earlier, Barcelona had made it two Champions Leagues out of three and cemented themselves as a side for the ages.

It's sometimes forgotten that a Ronaldinho-led Barcelona had won the Champions League in 2006 under Dutch manager Frank Rijkaard, a match that saw Messi out through injury, while Xavi and Iniesta looked on from the bench, but by 2008 in-fighting had destroyed that team and changes were desperately needed.

Ronaldinho made his exit, as did Rijkaard, and in came Pep Guardiola who had been a key part of Johan Cruyff's mythical "Dream Team" who had won the European Cup at Wembley in 1992.

Following in Cruyff's footsteps in that he was looking to emulate the Dutchman's ethos of Barcelona playing with a fluid passing style, Guardiola made Messi the focus of his attack, while Xavi and Iniesta were there to supply the ammunition.

Besides Barcelona's "carousel of passing", as described by Ferguson, the side worked incredibly hard to press back opponents all over the pitch, so in the rare instances they lost possession they worked doggedly to retrieve it.

Ringing in Guardiola's changes, the club won a treble of La Liga, Copa del Rey and the aforementioned Champions League title in 2008-2009 and they were just getting started.

They followed that up by winning the league again in 2009-2010, along with the Spanish and European Super Cups, and the FIFA World Club Cup. They would fall to Jose Mourinho's Inter in the Champions League semi-final after a two day bus trip to Milan necessitated by the grounding of all flights following an Icelandic volcanic eruption.

They would return in 2010-2011 with another league and Champions League double to return to the summit of domestic and European football.

Guardiola would depart the next season, but what he put in place at the club is still largely in place. Despite the exit of Xavi, the heart of Pep's side, Barcelona now have one of the scariest front three's ever seen in club football with Messi, Luis Suarez and Neymar laying waste to defences throughout Europe.

Although it's easy to get annoyed by the irritating nouveau football fanboys and fashionistas that have attached themselves to Barcelona since Guardiola's time in charge, ignoring their brief steamy love affair with Borussia Dortmund in 2012 of course, this Barcelona side can rightly consider itself to be one of the greatest squads ever and even the most hardcore haters or Madridistas have to admit that.

The Spanish national side have much to thank Barca for as well, as it was their core of players and their approach that helped Spain to victories in Euro 2008 and 2012, along with victory at the 2010 World Cup.

Football's Greatest Sides - Part 2 of 5: Ajax (1971 to 1973)

2016-03-27T09:25:00.000-04:00

As tributes were paid this week to Johan Cruyff, following his passing at age 68, reference was made to him being a 'total footballer' and the heart of a fantastic Ajax side, but perhaps few fans of the modern game know what he and that team have meant to the way football is now played.

Ajax of the early 1970's might not be the greatest team ever, but it's hard to argue that they aren't the most influential.

Prior to 1954, the Netherlands had been a minnow of European football with a national side that rarely won and a disorganized amateur league structure. But in 1954, professionalism came to Dutch football and with that came the impetus to improve the way the game was played by both clubs and country.

At the forefront of the Dutch football revolution was Ajax, who had a tradition for attractive passing football going all the way back to the First World War when they were under the helm of forward thinking English manager Jack Reynolds.

Reynolds set the club up so that all levels, from the first team all the way down to the youth sides. It's a tradition that Ajax has continued over a hundred years later. The revolutionary coach from Manchester would be associated with the Amsterdam club for 27 years and lead them to 8 League Championships.

Rinus Michels, a former pupil of Reynolds, had carved out a twelve year playing career for Ajax between 1946 and 1958 scoring 122 goals, but it was his appointment as manager in 1965 that would change the course of the club's history.

Bringing along youngsters such as Johan Neeskens and Johan Cruyff, Michels transformed a relegation threatened club into league champions within a year.

Building upon Ajax's existing ethos for playing a passing game and adapting the ideas of Gusztáv Sebes, who had managed a flexible and exhilarating Hungarian national side in the 1950's, Michels implemented a system that would come to be coined "Total Football".

Although his side played in a basic 4-3-3 formation, the Ajax players were well drilled in picking up positions left vacated by a teammate making a run. The team shape and the spacing between players was never lost, as players rotated across the pitch.

This required players that were tactical adept and very flexible. Of course the physical demands on the players was also high as they moved around the pitch plugging gaps and making intelligent runs.

The role of Ajax's star forward Cruyff was also key to this system, as he would roam across the front line or back into midfield causing damage all over the pitch. Spaces he left open in his side's structure though were quickly filled by a teammate.

Spatial awareness, in terms of where players should move and where they should not in relation to their teammates and their opponents was critical to this system.

The impact of Michel's new system saw an Ajax reach the European Cup Final in 1969 where they would get turned over 4-1 by AC Milan, but the experience of playing in such a match would stand them in good stead.

In 1971, Ajax defeated Panathinaikos 2-0 at Wembley to capture their first European title and cap a run that even survived the departure of Michels to Barcelona following this victory.

Under the less demanding, but more even more attack minded, Stefan Kovacs, Ajax accumulated a staggering 46-0-0 record at home in domestic football during 1971-1972 and 1972-1973, while also scooping up two more European Cups in those seasons with a 2-0 victory over Inter in 1972 and a 1-0 win over Juventus the following year.

This era of Ajax dominance would come to an end in 1973 with the departure of Cruyff to Barcelona.

Cruyff and Michels, reunited at club and country level, were able to bring their Total Football style over to the Dutch national side, as they strode to the World Cup Final in 1974.

Although there have been modifications down through the years, this style of play was at the heart of Pep Guardiola's Barcelona, who some consider the best club side ever. What former Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson called their "carousel of passing" was only possible by controlling space and always giving each other passing options.

Whenever this side lost the ball, which was rare to begin with, they were setup to quickly win it back. Modern day Barcelona, still owe much to Michels and Cruyff and the ideas they put into practice over four decades ago.

Football's Greatest Sides - Part 1 of 5: AC Milan (1988 to 1990)

2016-03-25T10:21:00.000-04:00

Nearly thirty years ago this week, AC Milan made the first of three signings from the Netherlands that would come to reestablish the club as one of the giants of not only Italian, but European football.

Stuck in the shadow of Juventus for much of the 1970's and 1980's, and even suffering through the humiliation of twice being relegated to Serie B as a result of their part in the Totonero scandal and then their struggles to recover from its effects, Milan were suddenly transformed by the arrival of entrepreneur Silvio Berlusconi in 1986.

Within a year the flamboyant Berlusconi had signed Dutch star Ruud Gullit from PSV for a world record £6 million and he followed that up by landing Ajax's goalscorer supreme Marco van Basten.

As part of a side that also included Italian internationals Paolo Maldini, Franco Baresi, Alessandro Costacurta and Roberto Donadoni, Milan stormed to the 1987-1988 Serie A title.

That summer Milan signed a third Dutch international, Frank Rijkaard from Ajax, and the core of one of Italy's greatest ever sides had fully taken shape.

Under manager Arrigo Sacchi, Milan romped to the final of the 1989 European Cup with their grandest statement handed down via a 5-0 thrashing of Real Madrid's much vaunted "Vulture Cohort" in semi-final second leg at the San Siro.

To claim their first European champions crown since 1969, Milan would dispatch Steaua Bucharest 4-0 at the Camp Nou in one of the most lopsided finals in the competition's history.

Two goals apiece from Gullit and Van Basten saw off the Romanian champions, who were no slouches, having been European Cup semi-finalists the season before and European Cup winners as recently as 1986.

But Milan were simply too good for them and in truth the final score could have been even more damning.

The memorable part of this Milan side was that they swam against the tide of an Italian football culture that had been in place for decades. While most sides played in the safety first catenaccio style, Sacchi, an obsessed student of the Netherlands Total Football of the early 1970's, had his side press the opposition and not simply wait for counter attacking opportunities.

The following year, a single goal from Rijkaard was enough to see off Benfica in the European Cup Final in Vienna.

This great Milan side would run it's course as they were knocked out of the 1991 European Cup by Marseille in the quarter-finals and weakened further still when the hard driving Sacchi was let go that year following a dispute with Van Basten.

The great Dutch striker himself would then see his career cruelly cut short following an injury in 1993.

To this day though, Milan are still the last side to repeat as European champions. Even the great Barcelona sides of Pep Guardiola didn't manage that.