And now for the final instalment of our five-part Champions League series. Liverpool, coached by one of the best defensive coaches of the modern era, Rafa Benitez, against Carlo Ancelotti's AC Milan whose defence consisted of Paolo Maldini, Jaap Stam, Alessandro Nesta, and Cafu. In the final no less. Be honest, you weren't expecting a thriller…
Liverpool 3-3 AC Milan Liverpool won on pens (final, 2005)
No game of this magnitude has ever been quite like this. It was a night of the most extraordinary drama, of the most extraordinary storylines, played out in extraordinary conditions. The Ataturk Stadium was a terrible place to host the final, a drab concrete bowl dumped in a moonscape miles from anywhere, yet somehow that oddness, that remoteness, fitted the feel of the night.
Liverpool had finished fifth in the league. Their progress had come via a series of nervy defensive performances. Milan, by contrast, had just finished second in Serie A behind a Juventus who would be stripped of the title. They’d beaten Manchester United and Inter impressively in the last 16 and quarter-final, and if their semi-final victory over PSV had been edgy, their star quality was clear: Hernan Crespo, Andriy Shevchenko, Kaka…
Rafa Benitez, to widespread surprise, eschewed the 4-5-1 he usually deployed in Europe, preferring a 4-4-2 with Harry Kewell playing just off Milan Baros, supposedly to close down Andrea Pirlo. It proved a dreadful misjudgement. Liverpool had gone 297 minutes without conceding in the Champions League; they didn’t last a minute in the final, Paolo Maldini hooking in a volley after 50 seconds.
Dominating midfield, Milan seemed in near-total control. When Kewell succumbed to injury after 23 minutes, Benitez could have changed tack. He didn’t. He sent on Vladimir Smicer and kept the shape the same. Milan remained in charge. Shevchenko had a goal wrongly ruled out for offside, but a second was coming and it arrived after 39 minutes, Crespo turning in Shevchenko’s low cross. On the bench, Benitez made a note with his lucky Mont Blanc pen to switch to a back three to get an extra body into midfield. But before he could issue those instructions, Milan scored a third, Crespo flicking in a Pirlo through-ball first time.
Half-time in the Liverpool dressing-room was famously chaotic. Benitez first decided to take off Djimi Traore but it them emerged that Steve Finnan was injured, something the full-back disputed with the physio. As Benitez jigged and rejigged his formation, he at various points had 10 and 12 players on the pitch. In the end, he got to 11, the most significant of whom was Dietmar Hamann, added to the back of midfield.
But the turnaround wasn’t immediate. Milan kept creating chances. Sami Hyppia probably should have been sent off for a last-man foul on Kaka – was the Spanish referee Manuel Mejuto Gonzalez showing sympathy for a beaten side? – and Jerzy Dudek then made a fine save from Shevchenko’s free-kick.
And then it happened. After 54 minutes John Arne Riise crossed and Steven Gerrard headed in. Liverpool were level within six minutes – a Smicer shot and Xabi Alonso’s follow-up to a penalty. It was implausible and yet in the moment it felt inevitable. Sometimes the fates cannot be stopped.
Milan, to their credit, eventually responded. Gerrard was forced to move to right wing-back to check Serginho. Dudek made a quite preposterous double save to thwart Shevchenko in extra-time, first from a header and then from the follow up, a reflex jerk of his left arm getting the ball up and over the bar from no distance. And so to penalties.
Dudek was an unlikely hero, a diffident figure who rarely projected much sense of authority. Here, though, he was inspired, aping Bruce Grobelaar’s spaghetti legs from Rome in 1984 to similar effect. Serginho shot over. Dudek saved low to his right from Pirlo. Riise’s effort was saved, but so too was Shevchenko’s. Liverpool, from certain defeat, had won.
None of it made much sense. Perhaps that campaign, and the one that followed two years later when Liverpool lost in the final to Milan, proved Benitez’s aptitude in knockout ties, even with limited resources, but it wasn’t part of a trend. The streams of tactical evolution were not diverted. The game didn’t even really fit the pattern of Benitez’s management. Like the FA Cup final a year later, a manager who demanded control triumphed with a 3-3 draw amid chaos.
But that was part of the joy of Istanbul. It was unpredictable and ridiculous, a night when emotions took over, when the game was shaped by Gerrard but also, it felt, by incomprehensible forces. It was a reminder than even in the world of huge fees and enormous wages, of data analysis and precise tactical plans, sometimes football is fundamentally about people and heart and soul and a sense of destiny. It was the most extraordinary game – and it came in a final.
No 5 – Guardiola's Barcelona humble Man Utd in Rome
No 4 – Ramos and Ronaldo crush Bayern in Bavaria
No 3 – Klopp's Liverpool pull off a miracle against Barca
No 2 – Mourinho loses but proves his point at the Nou Camp
