Becks deal reminds of Di Stefano

2003-06-19 08:57

Madrid - History is said to repeat itself and the present-day episode of Real Madrid snatching David Beckham from under the noses of bitter rivals Barcelona has drawn comparisons with the way they poached Alfredo Di Stefano almost 50 years ago to the day.

To this day, Barca fans have been left to regret they let Di Stefano slip from their grasp, especially as he went on to lead Real Madrid to five successive European Cup victories between 1956 and 1960.

The episode still raises hackles in Barcelona and brings smug smiles to the faces of Real fans who, even those too young to remember in person, eagerly recall how Santiago Bernabeu outsmarted the Catalan club.

In 1953, Di Stefano was 27 years-old - just a year younger than Beckham is today - and at the height of his powers.

The Argentine-born striker was among the most famous players in the world plying his trade for the Colombian club Millonarios, which between 1948 and 1954 could lay claim to being one of the top teams in the world.

He had impressed during Millonarios' tour of Spain the previous year and Barca wanted to team him up with another legend of that era, Ladislao Kubala, in similar fashion the way present-day Barca fans were licking their lips at the prospect of Beckham alongside Patrick Kluivert and Javier Saviola.

Di Stefano looked on his way to sign for Barca until the men from the Spanish capital enticed him away, some would say with the active connivance of the government of the dictator Francisco Franco and his acolytes in the Spanish football federation.

However the history books put most of the blame for Barca's failure to sign Di Stefano down to the incompetence of the then president Enric Marti.

"In a subsequent report on the whole affair, Trias Fargas (the Catalan lawyer negotiating with Millonarios) blamed the difficulties he faced in reaching a deal on Barca's own management," wrote Jimmy Burns in Barca, his acclaimed 1998 history of the Catalan club.

Just a week after Di Stefano signed to play for Real Madrid in September 1953, Marti resigned, mainly in embarrassment at the debacle.

Could Barca's newly-elected president Joan Laporta be similarly damned by history if Beckham does well at Real?

Last week, prior to his election, Laporta publically announced he had reached an agreement with Manchester United to buy Beckham but had not agreed personal terms with the player himself.

By Monday, just a day before Beckham announced he was signing for Real, Laporta was desperately back-peddling and saying, "I did not promise I was going to sign Beckham."

Real Madrid president Florentino Perez publicly congratulated Laporta on his victory on Monday night and said he looked forward to working with the 40 year-old lawyer on, "matters of mutual interest to both clubs."

The pair chatted for several minutes over a telephone link on live television on Monday but one wonders whether Laporta is feeling quite so friendly towards Perez on Wednesday.

Unlike his predecessor Marti, Laporta has no intention of resigning over the Beckham affair - he only formally takes office on Friday - but he has not got off to the best start of his presidency.

- AFX