I think the goal scoring numbers of Gento lead to that slightly inaccurate conclusion. He played in an attacking era and in a uber attacking team.
His style of play was pretty much that of a touch line hugging winger.
It's not only the goals, I've seen him cut in quite often and try shots or short passes or pullbacks. Naturally he was wider than conventional wide forward, but due to as you said Real imposing a 5 man attack unit. To me he would be be a wide forward ala Stoichkov or even a second striker in some modern formations, considering his strengths.
Yea, that is fair. I prefer my Di Stefano teams to have 1 traditional winger and 1 wing forward.
I think everything else is just spot on except Van Hanegem and Rensenbrink
Yeah the 1 winger, 1 forward combo is nice and balanced. With Brehme I was trying to offset that and be able to incorporate 2 wide forwards who are not ball hogs and can move defenders out of position to make space for him.
I recently watched a documentary on Real Madrid's loss against Guttmann's Benfica in the 1962 European Cup final and it gives a great insight into why Di Stefano and Puskas was such a threatening pair.
And of course why Bela Guttmann was a great tactical master.
The lethal Puskas scored a 1st half hat trick and yet it wasn't he who was the hero. It was all Di Stefano who was dropping deep and taking the ball everywhere he found space.
All he had to do was find Puskas at every chance he got and the Hungarian converted them for fun.
Guttmann's first half strategy was to let Di Stefano drop deep and defend tightly against the forwards, but it just wouldn't work as Di Stefano was too good.
So going into the second half, he changed the strategy of containing the forwards and put a couple of man markers on Di Stefano. And it worked like an absolute charm.
They were down 2-3 at half time and went on to win 5-3 without conceding any second half goals. Puskas notably had a frustrating second half without any supply.
This is one of the reasons I felt Di Stefano would impact Xaviesta a lot more than the other way around.
With people like Di Stefano or Cruyff, you need markers. Defending using a system against them is very tough.
Puskas is one of the best goalscorers in the game and is one of his main traits and qualities, which made them such a deadly combo. You are right about that game, I watched it a while ago and the change of approach was what won Benfica the game. To me tough Real also failed to adjust to the new approach and taking Di Stefano out of the game proved pivotal.
Depends really on the set up, we have seen managers putting man markers on the opposition start player and worked like a charm in big games - Fergie and Jose used to do that a lot in the past, even lesser players that did the job.
This is also the main reason I'd have another player in midfield that would be able to change the pace and also find spaces with his passing and movement besides Di Stefano. Of course there are better options than van Hanegem, but it would help the team in case of the opposition shutting the lanes for AdS.
