Marcelo Ordás was 19 years old when he visited the British Museum. Coming from a tour of Italy where he had accompanied the Argentina team during the 1990 World Cup, he was obsessed with football fever. After contemplating the friezes of the Parthenon, the palace of Ashurbanipal, the head of Amenhotep and the Venus de Lely, this Argentine-born grandson of Spaniards was disappointed. “After visiting all the great museums in London, I wondered why there aren’t any dedicated to mankind’s greatest passion,” he recalls.
Upon his return to Buenos Aires, he met Julio Grondona, legendary president of the Argentine Football Federation, to ask him what needs to be done to set up a football museum. The leader shrugged, pointing to an address in the Flores neighborhood of Buenos Aires: “You will visit a wise man on my behalf.”
So Ordás appeared at the door of Nora di Stéfano’s old house. The woman led him down a long wooden floored corridor into a living room. There, in the shadows, his brother Alfredo, the oracle, was waiting for him, smoking. When asked how to make a football museum, there were two answers. First: “I have no fucking idea, boy.” Later the revelation: “The players pass, the leaders pass, and what remains is the armor and their colors.”
Three decades later, Di Stéfano’s vision has become a reality in Madrid with the support of La Liga, FA, UEFA and FIFA. From May 25, the mansion with entrance at 1 Espoz y Mina street, Puerta del Sol, will house the largest existing collection of uniforms used by mythical soccer players in crucial matches of all the international tournaments of clubs and teams of the planet since 1923 under the name Legends. Each of the finalists is represented by at least one piece of clothing. All used, all sweaty, some shrunk, frayed or with holes, the “relics”, as Ordás calls them, are approved by FIFA and number in the thousands.
Collection of football shirts of all time in the museum “Legends” at Espoz y Mina street number 1 in Madrid on February 23, 2023.Jaime Villanueva
“We brought together Van Gogh’s Sunflowers with Mona Lisa, Guernica and Las Meninas,” boasts Ordás. The parade of certified holy cloaks is as labyrinthine, esoteric and endless as the fantasies that the most popular game spawns. There’s the rod that Juan Señor ignited in the 12-1 win over Malta; the one worn by Iniesta in the Johannesburg final; the one Maradona wore against Belgium in 1986; the one worn by Cruyff in his 1974 mishap; or the intense blue of Diadora that dried Roberto Baggio’s tears in Pasadena.
What affects most is what happens closer. Subscribe so you don’t miss anything.
subscribe to
In a corner dedicated to archeology, the pure cotton shirt worn by Giuseppe Meazza for all matches of the 1934 World Cup is exhibited; without overshadowing the one that stuffed Pele with Brazil in 1970. The revolutionary glossy polyamide fabric stands out in the long-sleeved shirt that propelled Kempes to the winning goal in 1978. An Umbro model with no more visible branding than a subtle watermark, it matches the uniform worn by Bobby Charlton in the 1966 World Cup semi-final, arguably the most expensive piece of cloth in the history of English football.
The Adidas and Nike pieces that Messi wore for club and national team up until the World Cup in Qatar alternate with the jersey worn by Van Basten in the 1990 Champions League final, the garment Bochini wore after the final of the Intercontinental Cup to Ian Rush from 1984, or the one Helmuth Duckadam dragged under Sánchez Pizjuán’s goal on the day Steaua won the European Cup final against Barça on penalties. All clubs are represented, Madrid the most, with some treasures not even found in the Bernabéu Museum, such as a 1905 shirt by José Berraondo, the oldest surviving Real Madrid shirt.
All of these material memories are displayed in the seven-story building that houses the Legends Museum. The space includes immersive audiovisual experiences, a cinema with 4D effects projecting the history of the World Cup, games and a restaurant on the terrace. But the axis of the exhibition is the armor and its colors. “The Emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad, offered me $84 million,” says Ordás. “But I think they’re worth more.”
Subscribe to our daily newsletter about Madrid here.