aet 1-0. Scottish Challenge Cup, Hampden Park, 18/8/15.

Any triumphalism is now put firmly on hold.

Again we faced a lower league team packing the defence – Queen’s had six across the back at times* – again we failed to break them down.

OK, we did get a penalty right at the end of normal time but Garry Fleming blasted it over the bar.

I never at any time felt that we would lose a goal but then in the first half of extra time we did. Andy Graham dwelled too long on the ball near our penalty area and ended up losing it, leaving us undermanned at the back. The free attacker stroked the cross in.** After that we were a bit more open as we pushed up and there were a couple of close things. Our best efforts were a Willie Gibson free kick their goalie saved and a Garry Fleming effort with his right foot when his left might have been a better bet. He’s not really convincing as a centre forward.

Were the players perhaps not too bothered about this game? The league is probably more important. If so I hope they’re more focused when the Scottish Cup comes round. I wouldn’t like to see us exit that this way.

This was my first view of the revamped Hampden; a vast bowl of a stadium. A weird sight indeed with its serried ranks of empty seats. The attendance was apparently 587. I had meant to take my camera but left home in a bit of a rush and forgot it. Next time we play Queen’s? (I can’t see us being back at Hampden any other way.)

*Queen’s had a player with number 10 on his back playing at centre back. This is a defilement of the spirit of football. A no 10 shirt rightly belongs to a fantasista.

**Edited to add:- The linesman put up his flag for an attacker offside (who looked to be on the bye-line from where we were) in the run-up to Andy Graham losing the ball. For some reason the ref overruled the flag.

The football legend who has died today had a name that needed no further explanation. He was part of that legendary Real Madrid side that captivated the football followers of Glasgow and Scotland at the European Cup Final of 1960 – played at Hampden Park. di Stéfano scored a hat-trick.

I was too young to be aware of it at the time but the folk memory was promulgated and persists. Such was the effect of that display of what football could be that the names of the forward line still trip off the tongue with no need for googling. Canario, Del Sol, di Stéfano, Puskas and Gento. Mind you, I see film of that game now and think, “Where was the marking?”

One curiosity is that I believe the Eintracht Frankfurt team that formed the opposition that day were all amateurs – as was German football as a whole.

di Stéfano may be unique in having played international football for three different countries, his native Argentina, Colombia, where he played league football for a while, and Spain for whom he was naturalised in 1956. That was the type of scenario that I thought had been resolved by FIFA with its rules on eligibility but in the recent World Cup one of the commentators remarked that Kevin-Prince Boateng who played for Ghana in the tournament had previously played for Germany (but not, it seems, for the senior side.)

The World Cup was one stage that di Stéfano did not grace, for various reasons, but his thirteen national titles (two in Argentina, three in Colombia and no less than eight in Spain) and five European Cups – not to mention his scoring record – speak for themselves.

Alfredo Stéfano di Stéfano Laulhé: 4/7/1926 – 7/7/2014. So it goes.