Nearly half a century has rolled by, and Ferenc Puskas has now sadly passed on, but there is a timeless, immortal quality to the footwork he performed at Hampden Park on the evening of 18 May, 1960. "Truly bewildering, " Kenneth Wolstenholme says at one point, as Puskas mesmerises the Frankfurt defence and leaves the 127,621 spectators gasping in awe.

Puskas was 33 at the time and confessed later: "I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach beforehand. I was thinking, 'You are not 20 any more. Are you up to this?'" He was up to it, alright.

From his first touch, when he puts a colleague in on goal in the opening seconds with a deft swoosh of his left foot, the great Hungarian measures up to every inch of his legend.

So, for that matter, do the rest of the Real Madrid masters. When Frankfurt manage to break out for their first attack Jose Marquitos, Real's right full-back, clears the ball from the goalmouth with a nonchalant back-heel flick.

"For those of you who are switching at 7.35 on to see 'The Moneymakers', " Wolstenholme says, "you are watching the real moneymakers because the Real Madrid players are on £650 a man to win the European Cup. That's ten times more than the Eintracht players."

That is a fortune in 1960 terms, yet it is difficult to put a price on Puskas' talents.

Sure, his tucked-in shirt is struggling to hold in the unmistakable pot belly but his speed of movement never lags behind his obvious mental sharpness. That much is clear when he pounces to rifle in a left-foot shot that gives Real a 3-1 lead at half-time.

What follows thereafter is football of the truly sublime - possibly beyond the Brazilian World Cup blend of 1970 and the Dutch total voetbal of the same decade.

In their second-half masterclass, Puskas, Alfredo di Stefano and Co hit heights of creative attacking genius that border on the Harlem Globetrotter at times, were it not for the fact that their party-tricks are performed at high-speed, and with a precision that adds a vital incisiveness to Real's play. Puskas' fourth goal . . .

Real's sixth in a 7-3 victory that earned their fifth successive European Cup . . . is a two-touch combination of the balletic and the ballistic. He kills the ball with his back to goal and swivels to smash it home, a flash of genius.

"Puskas: still as great as ever, " Wolstenholme remarks.

Puskas: sadly gone now, though his greatness can still be seen.