The 1960 European Cup final is remembered as the crowning glory of arguably the greatest club side in the history of football. No fewer than 127,000 people crammed into Hampden Park and were treated to 10 goals as Real Madrid put Eintracht Frankfurt to the sword.
Lining up with Ferenc Puskas and Alfredo Di Stefano, Los Blancos lived up to their legendary billing in front of one of the largest crowds ever assembled for a sporting event.
Needless to say, football was a different game back then. Both sides lined up in 3-2-4-1 formations, more or less approximating Herbert Chapman’s WM formation. Real Madrid registered a pass completion rate of just 69% while Frankfurt completed just 61% of theirs.
It was frantic and astonishingly direct when viewed through a modern lens. When either side picked up the ball, the idea was to drive at the opposition’s goal as quickly as possible. When data firm StatsBomb went back and analysed it, they counted 42 attempts in total and a mammoth 4.55xG for Madrid.
No wonder Madrid scored seven goals on the night, with Puskas scoring four and Di Stefano notching three, as Madrid made it five-in-a-row with a famous 7-3 victory in Scotland.
Ask your dad or granddad and they’ll most likely regale you with tales of how in the good old days referees allowed a lot more to go as teams were given license to kick lumps out of one another. Red and yellow cards weren’t even introduced to the sport until the 1970 World Cup.
At this time, Pele was turning out for Santos and getting kicked from pillar to post as he established himself as one of the greatest players in the world.
The game might have been more physical back then, but the threshold for giving a free-kick or penalty was actually a lot lower than you might have thought.
“To the modern eye, some of the fouls called in this match looked very soft indeed,” noted StatsBomb in their 2020 retrospective of the 1960 final. “The standard for what was considered an obstruction was obviously much lower at the time.”
You won’t see better evidence of that than the spot-kick Madrid were awarded just before the hour mark.
Yes, that’s really it.
Frankfurt captain Hans Weilbacher barely brushes Francisco Gento as he cuts across to shepherd the ball to safety. Indeed, if there was any contact it was outside the box. Gento doesn’t even tumble to the ground and barely seems to appeal before Francisco Gento decides to consult his linesman and point to the spot.
Were it…
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