Los Irlandeses, the Green Arrow, and the ones that got away

Conor Bradley is the latest “one that got away”. The GAA shirt wearing teenager has grown up to win the Premier League with Liverpool. Sadly, for us, he chose the white of Northern Ireland rather than the green of the south.

He joins an illustrious list of players who qualified for Ireland. Recent England squads have included Declan Rice, who did play for Ireland, and Jack Grealish. But teammates Harry Kane, Harry Maguire, Conor Gallagher, and James Maddison also qualified. Jude Bellingham even has an Irish passport.

And the list goes on – Rio Ferdinand, Paul Scholes, Jimmy Greaves. And not just English players either, there was Paddy Crerand, Tim Cahill, and Darren Fletcher.

Realistically, there was never any real chance that any of these guys would ever have lined out in green. Big Jack did try to call-up Martin Keown and Gazza. It was worth a shot but no surprise that they chose the country they are actually from. Wayne Rooney might have had Irish heritage, but he was probably about as likely to represent Ireland as the Harlem Globetrotters.

But none of the names above are quite as exotic as the original one that got away – Alfredo di Stefano. How different things might have been, for us and for him.

There is something about players of earlier eras - they often seemed to look a lot older than they were. Di Stefano was very much that kind of player. He didn’t quite match the stereotypical image of an Argentinian footballer in the way that, say, Gabriel Batistuta did. To Al, my co-host on the Ademola Bookmen Podcast, Di Stefano looked more like a butcher from a provincial town.

In his eponymous book about the Real Madrid great, author Ian Hawkey says that De Stefano’s looks came from his Irish heritage. Alfredo’s mother, Eulalia Laulhé Gilmont doesn’t sound very Irish, but her own mother was. Quite how Hawkey can say with any confidence that Alfredo’s looks came directly down this branch of his lineage is quite another thing. But yes, Di Stefano’s maternal grandmother hailed from Swinford, Co. Mayo.

And this isn’t just one of those wild, unfounded claims that we like to make (did you know that chocolate milk was invented in Ireland?). His family, and that of current Liverpool midfielder Alexis Mac Allister, are descendants of Los Irlandeses, the around 50,000 people who left Ireland in the 19th century for Argentina.

According to an article in the Irish Independent in 2009, Di Stefano himself acknowledged his Irish heritage, telling visitors to his office that year that he would have qualified to play for the Republic. In his case, maybe it doesn’t sound all that far-fetched. He did play for three countries after all – Argentina, Colombia (albeit in unofficial games), and Spain.

The Blonde Arrow, as he was known, was a titan of club football, leading Real Madrid to the first five European Cups, winning two Ballons D’or in the process.

But in the international arena, Di Stefano didn’t have any real career to talk about. He represented Argentina as a young man, but General Juan Peron pulled Argentina out of the 1950 and 1954 World Cups for fear that poor performance at those competitions would undermine Argentinian prestige. Later, and quite remarkably, Di Stefano encountered a similar problem when General Franco pulled Spain, his adopted home, out of the first European Championships to avoid the possibility of having to host the USSR in Madrid. To add insult to injury, four years later, Spain not only won the Euros, they beat USSR in the final, with Franco standing for the Bolshevik anthem and presenting the trophy to Spain. Unfortunately for Alfredo, he had retired at this point.

The mark of Di Stefano’s misfiring international career is that in his 21 years as a professional, he didn’t play in a single World Cup game.

In 1957, Ireland conceded a last-minute goal to draw against England, dashing very realistic chances of qualifying for the 1958 World Cup in Sweden. It might be pointless in the extreme to rue a missed opportunity nearly three-quarters of a century later. But I can’t help feel for poor old Di Stefano; he is the one who really missed out. Had the scorer of 418 goals in 510 appearance for Madrid been in the line-up, maybe things would have been different that day in Dalymount. Had Di Stefano been the Green Arrow, maybe he would have played in a World Cup.

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