Santiago Bernabéu’s legacy - The man behind the stadium

Santiago Bernabéu (R) oversees Luis del Sol signing 

his exit from Real Madrid to join Juventus in 1962

Madrid appointed Bernabéu as provisional president. He told his wife: “Don’t worry, it’s only for a year.” By the time of his death in 1978, that year had stretched to 35

These days, the name Santiago Bernabéu brings to mind Real Madrid’s stadium rather than the man it is named after

1 Oct 2025 - World Soccer

Keir Radnedge

Estadio Santiago Bernabéu is world famous as the home of Real Madrid. Yet, as it exerts its magnetising effect on another Champions League campaign, no one, it seems, stops to ask: who was this man and what was his significance?Club president… 

The tale starts 130 years ago in the old town of Almansa, inland from Valencia to the northeast and Alicante to the southeast. That was the home of young Santiago, born on June 8, 1895, the youngest of seven children of a local lawyer and estates manager.

Both parents died young, and the teenage Bernabéu was taken to the capital and enrolled in the then Madrid FC by elder brothers Marcelo and Antonio in 1912. What he lacked in skill he made up for with enthusiasm, energy and the leadership qualities that soon secured the captaincy.

His one regret was that he never played for Spain despite several call-ups. Once, to his enduring bitterness, he was warming up on the pitch when the managers called him to the sidelines and replaced him. He blamed a Catalan/Basque cabal who ran the team. The antagonism would last a lifetime.

Bernabéu’s ambition lay in medicine but his father insisted that only law guaranteed a secure future. Bernabéu obeyed, reluctantly, while not only playing for Madrid but rising to secretary and occasional coach. In 1927, he led the club’s first overseas tour, to the Americas.

Nine more years saw Spain ripped apart by civil war. Bernabéu, with little sympathy for the Republic, fled to the safety of the French embassy and left for France. He returned later to join Francisco Franco’s nationalists, a decision he would later admit regretting. His service in a battalion that took Barcelona was one reason for subsequent jibes at Madrid as “Franco’s team.”

Back in the capital, Bernabéu found his old club in ruins – no offices, their Chamartin stadium a wreck. Rebuilding was slow and painful. Bernabéu helped out. Then came a historic turning point.

War-fuelled animosity between Madrid and Barcelona exploded on the pitch in dramatic fashion in June 1943 in a semi-final of the re-designated Copa del Generalisimo. Barcelona won 3-0 in a seething Les Corts but met unremitting hostility back in the capital, including direct threats to players who had fled the war. Madrid won 11-1. The federation fined both clubs, so both presidents quit in joint protest.

Madrid, in an era before membership elections, appointed Bernabéu as provisional president. He told his new wife, Maria: “Don’t worry, it’s only for a year.” By the time of his death in 1978, that year had stretched to 35.

Bernabéu’s wife was the widow of a fellow Madrid officer killed during the civil war. They had no children. For Bernabéu, the players were his sons – but sons of a demanding “parent”. Loyalty to the cause was the price, along with personal discipline, particularly in the restrictive early years under Franco. No long hair, no moustaches or beards, no private cars.

His Club – he always insisted on a capital C – discovered it had turned, by accident, to a man of extraordinary vision. Bernabéu reckoned fans in drab, war-battered Madrid would buy fund-raising bonds for a vast new stadium in which to cheer their heroes. He was right. On December 14, 1947, Madrid opened their Nuevo Estadio de Chamartin with its 70,000 capacity.

Successive expansions took the capacity up to 125,000. The latest, most spectacular remodelling caters for a seated 84,000 with all today’s essential and fashionable facilities.

Taunts initially derided Bernabéu’s dream stadium as a disastrous, loss-making white elephant. The league was dominated by air force-backed neighbours Atlético Aviacion – “they were the team of the regime, not us,” insisted Bernabéu – and then Barcelona with their great Slovak-Hungarian centre-forward Laszlo Kubala.

Bernabéu’s legacy…Real Madrid’s famous stadium 

in all its glory after its latest renovation

The first nine years of Bernabéu’s presidency brought just two domestic cup successes, in 1946 and 1947. Then, in 1952, to celebrate the club’s 50th anniversary, he organised a mini-tournament featuring Swedish champions Norrkoping and Millonarios of Bogota.

FIFA’s so-called “Pact of Lima” had shut down the infamous Colombian pirate league, so Millonarios were cashing in on their notoriety with a sunset series of lucrative friendlies. Bernabéu was captivated by Millonarios’ all-action Argentinian centre-forward, Alfredo Di Stéfano. Bernabéu recognised in Di Stéfano the footballer he would have wanted to be – one moment clearing the ball out of his own penalty area, the next setting up attacks and finally scoring winning goals.

Here, for Bernabeu, was the man to fill his stadium, fulfil his ambitions and make his Real Madrid dreams come true. More than a year was needed to outsmart Barcelona financially and politically and bring Di Stéfano to Chamartin. Bernabeu finally saw Di Stéfano make a hastily arranged debut in a friendly against Nancy. Madrid won 4-2 – then went on to conquer Spain, Europe and the world.

Bernabéu and Di Stéfano were men from a similar mould – self-aware, commanding, stubborn and possessed of an iron will. In ten years, their drive, off the pitch and on it, changed the face of football. Their Madrid won five European Cups, eight league titles, one Spanish Cup and one Intercontinental Cup.

Madrid’s brilliance in those initial five European Cups proved inspirational in the club sphere. Bernabéu and aide Raimundo Saporta had encouraged French sports newspaper L’Equipe in the competition’s creation. Later Bernabéu would be awarded the Legion d’Honneur, one of the few of his many personal awards that he valued.

Di Stéfano, above all, was the son Bernabéu never had. This rendered their eventual schism personally shattering. The catalyst was Madrid’s defeat by Internazionale in the 1964 European Cup final. Di Stéfano was now 38. Bernabéu decided his contract should not be renewed but he should be handed a newly created role of all-powerful football manager.

Di Stéfano, furious, refused. He wanted to play on. So he walked out on Bernabéu to join Kubala, his old friend and rival, at Espanyol. Bernabeu never forgave him. He would barely demean himself ever to mention Di Stéfano’s name again.

Bernabéu, in the post-Di Stéfano era, saw Madrid win a further 12 major trophies but only one further European Cup. He remained a hands-on president, influential in star signings such as Amancio and Uli Stielike. His presidency was always all about “The Cause”, never about himself. Bernabéu and his wife lived frugally on his government pension. He paid his own travel costs on away trips, wearing the same ageing suits and worn-down shoes. Most of the club staff earned more than Bernabéu’s modest state stipend.

As he entered his 80s, conceding occasional unpredictable and oftentimes intemperate interviews, the club began to drift. He made no provision for his succession, so Madrid stuttered through a sequence of glory-glazed successors who led the club, despite further success, deep into debt.

More than 20 years after his death it was Bernabéu’s legacy that came to the rescue. In the 1950s, Bernabéu had built a modest “sports city” in the stadium’s shadow. Florentino Pérez negotiated a reclassification of the land for urban development. The sale wiped out the club’s debt, financed a new training centre and the launch of the Galacticos era with a further nine Champions Leagues.

Bernabéu’s fellow directors, in 1955, had insisted on baptising Chamartin the Estadio Santiago Bernabéu. The man is long gone, but his legend lives on with every match report.