What will not come across to our younger posters on these threads is the type of ball they had in those days. Not the super aerodynamic designs of today but a lump of leather with laces that would slice through your skin like a knife when you headed it, (more fool you for doing so). And when wet was like kicking a lump of concrete and I can attest that getting hit in a certain private part of the body with one of those wet balls (no pun intended) really did bring tears to your eyes. So Di Stefano was not only a superb football of his day what he did with that type of ball at the time, not to mention the boots they had, made him the maestro we see on the box today. RIP Maestro.
I'm sure he was a great player but this thing about the balls is a huge myth. The official weight of a football has only ever changed once, in about 1930, that was to make it heavier and it remains at that weight today. The old ones did soak up water but it didn't rain every day! Getting one in the bollocks would always hurt, that's no different with a plastic one. In the interest of balance, the organisation of defences now is so much better than in years gone by that the game is totally different. We'll probably never see another Maradona V England type goal because you just don't get defenders wildly swinging for the man and missing nowadays. These things make it impossible to compare greats of yesteryear like Di Stefano to the greats of today.
Di Stefano's career Born: Buenos Aires 4 July 1926 International career: Argentina - 6 caps; 6 goals Colombia - 4 caps; 0 goals Spain - 31 caps; 23 goals Club honours: Argentina Primera Division - winner with River Plate 1945, 1947 Colombian Championship - winner with Millonarios 1945, 1951, 1952 Spanish La Liga - winner with Real Madrid 1954, 1955, 1957, 1958, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964 European Cup - winner with Real madrid 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1960 Ballon d'Or - winner 1957, 1959
Do you mean the weight of the present ball is the same as the old leather ones inflated or deflated PLT? And I can assure you that at the times I played in the leather ball era we hardly ever played in sunshine or dry weather. We didn't postpone matches in those days because a flake of snow was on the pitch in fact I volunteered a couple of times to clear snow off the Boothferry Park pitch so that the match could go ahead as there was no cosy underground heating either. Coupled with wind and rain, along with the snow those leather ball were hardly ever dry.
The official weight must refer to inflated, since that's how it's used. I think people are nostalgic and prefer to think everything was 'better' in the olden days. Plenty of games are played on snow-covered pitches now just as then, if anything the pitches now are more resistant to weather conditions, at the top level games are only really postponed due to the health and safety brigade worrying about people falling over outside the ground.
