Just imagine that you are playing football for a big club, when suddenly the manager of another club offers you massive sums of money to go and play in a magical foreign league completely devoid of bureaucracy and political interventions. You accept the offer, move to a mystical foreign land you know hardly anything about, and there you meet a galaxy of other superstars, you instantly become even more famous and your team enters the history books as one of the greatest of all time. Just a strange and beautiful dream? Not for the players of Colombian club Millonarios in the early 1950’s. Domestically and historically, Millonarios is Colombias most successful team, having won 14 first division titles. Their peak came during the late 1940’s to early 1950’s, when the team boasted legendary players such as Alfredo di Stefano and Adolfo Pedenera, whose arrivals, as two of the best players in the world at the time, caused a great stir in the country. It was during this era that Millonarios was nicknamed El Ballet Azul, The Blue Ballet. 

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In 1948, the Argentinean league suffered a players strike, which greatly benefited clubs from other South American leagues as it resulted in a great exodus of world class players, particularly to Colombia. The national competition became something of a “pirate league”, and taking advantage of the situation, Millonarios was graced with a notable Argentinean presence. In addition to di Stefano and Pedenera, Nestor Rossi, Julio Cozzi, Anthony Baez, Hugo Reyes, Reinaldo Mourin and other figures, particularly from River Plate, joined the club. With these superstars on board, the team put in such outstanding performances that by the early 1950’s, Millonarios was hailed by multiple media outlets throughout Latin America and Europe, as the best team in the world. This was in an era before being a professional footballer meant riches for life, so, lured by the almighty peso, players kept on coming to the league. By 1950, 109 new players had signed up.

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1949 began with the hiring of Argentine coach Carlos Aldabe, who kicked things off with a 3-0 defeat of Sporting Caldas. Soon after, Aldabe brought Pedenera, di Stefano and Rossi to the club, which resulted in a 5-0 whitewash of Deportivo Barranquilla. Aldabe further bolstered the team with the signing of Argentine national team goalkeeper Cozzi, and this was soon followed by an influx of players from all over South America, including Peruvian Ismael Soria, Paraguayan Julio Cesar Ramirez, Uruguyan Raul Pini and a number of other Argentines. The whole team was foreign, with only one Colombian regularly in the starting lineup. Between 1949 and 1954, Millonarios were simply unbeatable. They won the Colombian league in 1949, 1951, 1952 and 1953, along with the Colombian domestic cup also in 1953. They set the record of going 24 games unbeaten including 17 consecutive wins, a record which still stands today. The team reached a level of fame it had never seen before, and recieved invitations to play friendlies against clubs from all over South America and Europe. Stadiums were constantly packed, and people would line up at 9 o’clock at night to buy tickets for a game that wouldn’t even start until 3 o’clock the next afternoon.

 

 Millonarios played, and defeated, the likes of River Plate, San Lorenzo, Independiente and Racing Club from Argentina, Flamengo, Gremio, Corinthians and Botafogo from Brazil, Chile’s Colo Colo, Uruguay’s Penarol, the Universidad de Peru, Austria’s Rapid Vienna, England’s Everton, FC Spartak Moscow and even Real Madrid, where Millos participated in a tournament at the Santiago Bernebau to celebrate the Spanish clubs Golden Jubilee, sparking a close friendship between the two clubs. They also finished runners-up in the 1952 Small Club World Cup. 

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In this era known as “El Dorado” in Colombian football, during which the league broke away from FIFA, other Colombian clubs were also receiving brilliant players from all over the continent and the world, including Deportivo Cali and Independiente Medellin with their prominent Peruvian footballers and Junior de Baranquilla with its share of Hungarian stars. Sante Fe had brilliant Brits Neil Franklin, Charlie Mitten aka “The Bogota Bandit” and George Mountford. Atletico Junior collected Brazilians such as Tim and Heleno de Freitas. Cucuta Deportivo brought 8 of Uruguays 1950 World Cup winning team and were nicknamed “The Uruguayan national team”. Despite all this, Millonarios remained the dominant club in Colombia. 

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The party came to an end when FIFA suspended Colombia for hiring foreign players without a pass, and forced them to return all expatriate players who had participated in the league through irregular means.  In the so-called Pact of Lima, FIFA guaranteed the return of Colombia to the governing body on the proviso that all such players returned to their original leagues by 1954. The Colombian public got to witness 6 seasons of incredible football, but all the new players vanished as quickly as they had arrived. Alfredo di Stefano departed for an immensely successful career with Real Madrid, Adolfo Pedenera returned to Argentina and so the period in which Millos were briefly the world’s best team came to an unromantic end.

Achievements: Categoria Primera A – Champions x4
                               Copa Colombia – Winners x 1 Runners-up x1

Star player: Nestor Rossi, 10 May 1925, Buenos Aires, Agentina, nickname: La Voz

Argentine star Rossi started his career at River Plate, where he played from 1945 to 1949, before joining the exodus to Colombia. Following that country’s return to FIFA, Rossi went back to River for another two years. In these two stints, he won 5 Argentine titles, and played 155 matches. For Millionarios, he helped the club to 6 championships including four top division titles. Rossi also played for the Argentina national team, appearing in the 1958 World Cup as well as the Copa America, winning the tournament in 1947 and ten years later in 1957. Due to his outstanding performances, Nestor Rossi is widely considered to be the best defensive midfielder in the history of Argentine football. After retirement, Rossi went to on to manage Spanish side Granada Club de Futbol and even had a brief tenure as manager of the Argentina national team. Rossi passed away in 2007 in his home city of Buenos Aires.