Better than the 1966 World Cup final when England beat West Germany 4-2 with a Geoff Hurst hat-trick.

Better than the 1970 World Cup final when the best Brazilian team to take the field (it was Pele’s last appearance at a World Cup) thrashed Italy 4-1.

Better even, than 10-man Skal Meanderers’ (Auckland Sunday league) 5-0 win over City Socialists in 1996 (your not-so-humble correspondent scored a sizzler from 40 metres).

Nope, on May 18, 1960, Real Madrid brushed aside Eintracht Frankfurt 7-3 in the European Cup final — the greatest performance by the greatest club side the world has seen.

Real were in their fifth straight European final since the competition’s inception five years before.

They were the prototype “Galacticos” and had dominated Europe, winning the previous four finals and, led by the brilliance of Alfredo Di Stefano and the Hungarian legend Ferenc Puskas, the Spanish team stunned the biggest crowd to see a European final with a display of football that, as one writer described it, might as well as come from another planet.

I’ve only ever seen grainy black and white footage of what happened that day, and even now, 56 years on, it’s mightily impressive stuff.

The passing, the movement off the ball, the vision, the skill, the strength, the pace.

And then there’s the finishing of Di Stefano (three goals) and Puskas (four). And this from men near the end of their careers.

But if you only watched the first 20 minutes or so, you would have walked away convinced the Germans would win it.

Eintracht went 1-0 up after 18 minutes. They dominated Real for close to half an hour — and then it all went horribly wrong.

Di Stefano pulled one back, then got another. Puskas chipped in and by halftime Real were 3-1 up.

It only got worse for the Germans. After the break the white-shirted hordes swarmed toward the Frankfurt goal.

After 56 minutes Puskas knocked in a penalty. Four minutes later he completed his hat-trick.

He got his fourth in the 71st. Frankfurt pulled one back then came a goal of glorious execution.

Di Stefano picked up the ball straight from the kick-off, played a couple of one-twos on the edge of the penalty area and hammered an unstoppable shot past the German ‘keeper Loy for his hat-trick.

The ball had been played along the ground in the entire movement and not one Frankfurt player had got near it.

Di Stefano, up to that time probably the greatest player to ever take the field in Europe, was an Argentinian who ended up playing for Spain and he was instrumental in all of Real’s European Cup wins to 1960, scoring in each final.

What made this match all the more unbelievable for the 130,000-odd Scots who packed Hampden that day was that Frankfurt had annihilated local team Glasgow Rangers 12-4 over two legs in the semi-final.

And here they were being put to the sword by a team of supermen. As Manchester United legend Bobby Charlton once said before a Man U-Real Madrid match in 1957: “To be honest, I saw Di Stefano and those others and I thought these people aren’t human. It’s not the sort of game I’ve been taught.’’

Billy Bremner, the former Leeds and Scotland captain who was at the 1960 final game, when asked about he game before his death, said: “I’d never seen football played like this. They were so quick, so precise.

“People say that the game’s changed and that these players couldn’t have stood the pace of the modern game.

“That’s rubbish. These were quality players and there’s no-one around to touch them now.’’

Rodney Marsh, the flamboyant former QPR and England star, called it: “The purest game of football ever played.’’ How right he was.

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For decades, Real struggled to live up to the exploits of that side of the late ‘50s and early ‘60s.

They won the European Cup again in 1966 then had to wait another 32 years before snatching it again in 1998. They repeated that success in 2000. Then, in 2002, Real found itself back at Hampden Park for a final. Like 1960, their opponents were from Germany, this time Bayer Leverkusen.

There may not have been 130,000 there to witness it, with the crowd now limited to about 51,000, but there was a goal of breathtaking bravery which decided it, from one of the Spanish giant’s new breed of foreign-born superstars. Anyone who saw Zinedine Zidane’s 20-metre volley will never forget it.

Two years ago Madrid, with an new generation of “Galacticos” - Cristiano Ronaldo, James, Bale and Benzema - won the trophy for a ninth time, thrashing crosstown rivals Athletico. Now, they’re 90 minutes away from doing it again. Like 2014, their opponents will be their crosstown rivals.

The legends of 1960 would be proud.

See all the goals from the 1960 match here: