Yours truly with Ferenc Puskas(L) and Alfred Di Stefano(R)-1994 World Cup in USA Before Pele appeared on the horizon it was Ferenc Puskas who ruled the football kingdom. In 1994, at the FIFA quadrennial Congress at Chicago held one day before the inaugural match, I was fortunate to interact with a number of football greats who had come to attend the FIFA Congress held at Hotel Sheraton, Chicago.( Inaugural match ticket-courtesy Vilas Sardessai, Navhind Times publisher and then AIFF vice president) I was hanging around the hotel lobby hoping to catch a glimpse. To my surprise all my childhood heroes were present and my joy knew no bounds when I discovered that they extended co-operation to people of no importance to them. It particularly raised their interest when someone from India started talking about their career. Considered by many as the greatest player of all time, surpassing even Pele was Alfred Di Stefano. He was the inspiration behind Real Madrid’s run of 5 successive European Cups and, just for a good measure, he scored a goal in each of the first 4 finals and a hat-trick in the fifth.Di Stefano was phenomenally fit-a result he told me was of road racing in Buenos Aires as a child and working on his parents’ farm. In the World Cup final(1954) against West Germany, two minutes from close the ‘Galloping Major’ as Puskas was called, scored an equaliser but, in a controversial call, the goal was disallowed for offside. Hungary lost 3-2. Puskas was all ears when I pointed out this controversy during our meeting. As Luis Figo gained popularity, he was compared to Puskas. Similarly Zinedine Zidane was compared to Alfred Di Stefano. My interviews with Platini and Bobby Charlton( 1998-France) appeared in the Goan Observer in 2004 when I was writing a column for the Goan Weekly. I may upload a few more pix of the football greats- Pele, Eusebio et al as the WC fever hots up. I also had managed to capture Diego Maradona’s pix, FIFA officials escorting him for a dope test after the match against Nigeria in Boston( 1994). Here I have to remember my friend late Francisco Cabral who heeded to my request to travel to Boston as we didn’t have tickets for this match. We luckily got them and I realised my dream of watching Maradona’s magic.
Posted on: Tue, 24 Jun 2014 12:50:47 +0000
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