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Liam Brady, through

, half a dozen men offering their services abroad successfully

1) Charlie Mitten (Santa Fe)

In January 1948, a crowd of 12,000 paid cash at the door to see the Argentine club Velez Sarsfield a game against the visit of Santa Fe de Bogota crowd was unprecedented in Colombia and persuaded companies local to create a proper professional league, preferably stuffed to the gunwales with the best talent in the world. Since Colombia embarked on a period of political turmoil - President-elect Liberal Jorge Gaitan was assassinated in April, triggering violence, civil war a decade - has been in the spotlight of the world body's new professional league was DIMAYOR and runs until August.

not be problematic for attracting some of the world's best players in the league. That the club owners was soon realized: the likes money. Players of Argentina and Uruguay went on strike demanding better pay and conditions, and were easily attracted to the north by high wages. Clubs rarely bother to pay transfer fees or international authorization requested by FIFA. Soon, more than 50 Argentine players have taken the initiative of DIMAYOR. As players wrapped around the pile of pesos, laughing like children, patience FIFA cracked. League was suspended in an attempt to restore order.

some hope. Free FIFA bureaucracy clubs DIMAYOR rebels were savages, in reference to their best to boycott anyone imagined: the time of El Dorado was born. Some of the best players in the world came, including eight members of 1950 in Uruguay World Cup winning team. The side Pedernera Adolfo Millionaire, Alfredo Di Stefano and Nestor Rossi is known as

Ballet Blue

(The Blue Ballet) and became world famous.

Santa Fe, meanwhile, build a team around Héctor Rial. England was as good as any a place to find the best talent. While the stars were DIMAYOR earns £ 5,000 a year, more than ? 30 bonus for a win, after all the £ 10,000 signing on fee, players of the Football League were forbidden to carry over £ 1 December week and £ 10 on the season. Stoke City and England defender Neil Franklin was the first to suggest Bugger ESO, and with his team mate George Mountford, agreed to a measure of Santa Fe in the summer of 1950. Franklin left England in the world do. Neither Franklin nor resolve Mountford, to return home soon after, but was followed by Charlie Mitten Manchester United, which show that British football is the export success of the first.

"I was more or less immediate success," he told the BBC years later. "I have scored 24 or 25 goals this season. After six months we were in second place, and millionaires were better, and I began to consider the class played in Uruguay ... has won the World Cup and played us three weeks later with a selection of Colombia and played with them, and Di Stefano played center forward and Rial played inside left and beat them 3-1 ... I thought, well, we can not be so bad with the blood, is right? "

Mitten Unfortunately for the dream was not to last. FIFA has finally convinced the Colombian club to stop sodomy, and players return to their club of his father in 1953. El Dorado was over. Real Madrid tried to try mitten, Di Stefano and Rial at the Bernabeu in 1951, but the woman of the glove of nostalgia, then returned home. Upon his return, the block suspended from Manchester United for six months before selling it to Fulham. In 1956 he was appointed director of the city of Mansfield. The same year, Di Stefano and Rial won his first European Cup with Real Madrid. "It was the mistake I made in football," sighs the fingers. "I could have had medals of the European Cup as well, because they have won five times with Di Stefano and Rial as players." Mitten has always had the good grace to admit that there faced the problem of the expulsion of small first-team Gento Francisco. Although he never realized that Di Stefano as an insurmountable task. "Mitt? No. 1, "the legend, once said. "People have been quick, but the glove was more intelligent."

2) John Charles (Juventus, Roma)

Juventus went through a streak in the early mid to late 1950. They had not won a Scudetto since 1952, having become a mediocre mid-table this proposal and in April 1957 were about to finish ninth in Serie A for the second consecutive season. It was at this point that the club president (and head of tin-bending concern Fiat) Umberto Agnelli decided to do something, and pulled out his checkbook to buy two at the front:. Rio de la Plata, Omar Sivori and Charles Leeds United, John

Charles had become a sensation since he turned professional with Leeds United at the age of 17 in 1949, averaging a goal every two games - although sometimes be deployed as a central defender . Its goals helped the team to promotion in 1956 and Charles immediately fled the top, scoring 38 times in his first season. Towards the end of the campaign that has attracted the interest of European Champions Real Madrid, who were preparing to make an offer of £ 70,000 for the player in the summer of 1957, but was Agnelli and put it in the first place.

Agnelli went to Belfast to see Charles, take the line of Wales in a Home Championship wooden spoon decisive. The big man has no more games, but do not receive more services. In any case, Juventus had already made his decision. They were willing to spend £ 100 000 to Charles, were very pleased when, after a meeting at a hotel in Belfast, two directors of Leeds pathetically desperate and panicked the lady presented with a £ 65,000 deal. "Agnelli put a check on the table and when he was gone and the two directors had disappeared with the check!" Charles recalled years later. "Do not even say goodbye. At the time I thought it was funny but not really." But Charles was not too critical, recognizing the pound signs flashed in their eyes too. "I went to Italy for the money." His weekly wage of Leeds - ? 18 - was the same, but had given a £ 10,000 signing-on price, and you could earn up to $ 1000 bonus in time

Charles scored two goals in his last game for Leeds before being chaired off the field. In his first season with Juventus, he and Sivori scored 50 league goals between them, the landing of the scudetto "Old Lady" for the first time in seven years. He was player of the year. Two league titles and two Cups of Italy followed over the next three seasons. A true sportsman of the old school - "If I Hit 'Em play well, so do not want to play the game at all" - has become a legend in good faith to Juve:

(Gentle Giant) was named best player ever from abroad by the Juve fans in the 1990s.

his time with the old novel was the height of his career. In 1962, he returned to Leeds, did not work. He immediately returned to Rome, now 30, can not be in a place where the first team. He returned home to Wales in 1963. He was happy that I was at home, because it generates nothing to write during his season at Cardiff, but a light tap not funny 75 yards from goal on his debut

3) Gerry Hitchens (Inter, Torino, Atalanta, Cagliari)

Hitchens - it would be the only quartet to see things, the other three boomerang back in Britain this year - was probably the least fanfare of the four movements. No doubt he was the true spirit: he scored 78 times in 132 games for Villa, five in a 11-1 defeat to Charlton in the Villans season promotion "from 1959 to 1960, and quickly made a mark for England, scoring two minutes into his debut in a 8-0 victory over Mexico hardly imaginable after bagging two in Rome, in a 3-2 win against Italy. The goals sealed his move to San Siro, where he soon fell with manager Helenio Herrera. "It was like out of the army of shit," he said of the training methods of legendary Argentine despot. Hitchens delayed one day a training run, the coach Herrera ordered not to go forward, leaving a house six miles reverse