What a time it's been and what a startling series of revelations with which we must deal. Let's address things one at a time, so that I can pace my delivery appropriately.
Many apologies for the extended delay between this entry and the last, but in addition to a very complicated work schedule, have also had some occasion to experience ecstatic and existence-obliterating joy.
That being said, I must bemoan the lack of comments on the 20 most attractive women in the world article which follows this one. Aside from the noble contributions from the Jim, no-one else has textually muttered a whisper. I'll have to slog through the process solo... so feel shame, ye who read and do not contribute. On the plus side, there will heretofore be more pretty pictures and jolly rockets to make viewing this ghastly page more palatable. Erm... on the negative side, none will be of the explicit or "marketable" nature. I guess some could view that as negative. I dunno. I live in text. I don't understand this whole "seeing" thing that people do. I think that graphics ought to represent reality, and my reality is based in the souls whose images have been captured, not in any sort of physicality or photogenicity. If that's a word.
So my intention is to quickly describe the events which unfolded on 25th May, 2005 in as much detail as I can recall, just so that I have a record for my own edification, and perhaps I can even take some of you on a microcosmic version of the emotional roller-coaster ride I experienced. Then, after departing briefly, I shall endeavour to return and continue to update the myriad events of the past month which I have been so sorely negligent in reporting, and hopefully make them sound more exciting than a damp squib, which seems to be the general impact of my writings on people. I suppose that I've got the blogsite equivalent of a "Bazooka Joe" cartoon in terms of stimulating reader interest. One glance, a disgusted grunt, and then - boom - thrown away like a bag of month-old prawn salad.
But, we ought to be cutting to the chase here, and not maundering about verbally, as I am so wont to do. There's a whole month worth of what I may mistakenly believe to be interesting or noteworthy commentaries that I feel compelled to relate, and the sooner I get to it, the happier and more unburdened I expect I shall feel.
So onwards to Istanbul, where two of Europe's most famous and historically renowned teams faced off in a titanic struggle on the world's largest club stage. The last time Liverpool made it to the Final of the European Championship was 1985, and the events at Heysel made it a sad occasion to recall. Few remember Michel Platini slotting away a penalty to win the match for Juventus of Turin. Many can recall the shoddy stadium, the shrieks of terror, and the deaths of 39 fans. It marked the end of English superiority on the continent. Twenty years on, former European Champions Nottingham Forest have been relegated three times to collapse into the darkest recesses of mediocrity outside of the Fred Blogga South West Regional Sunday Pub Conference. AC Milan, on the other hand, were still prominent in Europe, but had to settle for second place in the scudetto race in Italy. And Liverpool, for the first time in two decades, had a chance to win their fifth trophy and take permanent possession of the most prestigious club cup in the world.
But let's have a quick look at what led up to this clash of sporting super-powers. Any why were all the pundits so stunned that Liverpool made it to the final? Hadn't they already won the competition four times before?
Casting our minds back to last summer, Liverpool were allowed into the Champions' League at a very early stage: the third round of qualifying. They had to defeat Grazer AK of Austria in order to secure a place in the competition proper. With the Rafatollah having just barely begun the Rafalution, and with Michael Owen being firmly banned to the bench so that he would not be cup-tied, things were a tad dicey.
Just in case someone out there doesn't know how European football transfers work, I'll give a quick explanation. Teams in Europe splash out huge whacking sums of cash in order to purchase a player's contract. Then, the club gets the privilege of splashing out more honking wodges of dough through actually paying the player to perform and train. Now the complicated bit is this: if a player plays in a cup competition - even if it's only for a few seconds - he is ineligible to play for any other team in that tournament. It removes the possibility that a player might play against former team mates in the same season.
The practical upshot of this is that if Michael Owen played so much a single second against the Austrians, he would be unable to play for another team in European competition for the rest of the season. So St. Michael stayed on the bench, Stevie G scored both goals that eventually took Liverpool through to the next stage of the competition, and Réal Madrid duly snapped up Liverpool's goalscoring ace for a comparative pittance.
After that, things got a bit difficult.
The next step in trying to become the Champions of Europe involved a dogfight round-robin group stage against Olympiakos of Piraeus (Greece), AS Monaco of France and Spain's Deportivo La Coruña. As devout readers of this site will no doubt recall, the six home and away matches against these teams eventually produced a breathtaking match-up between Liverpool and Olympiakos at Anfield, with Liverpool needing to win by two clear goals. Finding themselves a goal down at half-time, the redoubtable Stevie G led a spirited comeback to score three straight goals and launch the Mighty Reds into the knockout phases of the competition.
After comfortably disposing of Bayer Leverkusen from Germany both home and away, Liverpool found themselves facing the Italian Serie A leaders from Turin. Twenty years after the disaster at Heysel, Juventus and Liverpool finally played a competitive match against one another. Emotions ran high. The Kop End of Anfield observed their minute's silence impeccably, with an enormous mosaic that echoed the spirit of "Memoria e Amicizia" - Remembrance and Friendship. Ian Rush, the Liverpool legend who transferred to Juventus after Heysel before returning to Merseyside, was on hand to present the pre-game commemorative banners as once again, red scousers looked on with one communal contracting brow of woe for 39 Italian fans whose deaths would be echoed only four years on by 96 of Liverpool's own tragic losses. Dry eyes were a rarity, as memories of loved ones washed over the crowds. Little lads who could not possibly be older than Kevin Williams or Jon-Paul Gilhooley were at Hillsborough 16 years earlier were awestruck by the force of the emotion.
As was becoming increasingly obvious over the course of the season, Liverpool drew strength from the fans. All of the usual talk about "the 12th man, "singing their team home", "rapturous applause" and all of those other clichés and chestnuts were traipsed out. And when it mattered, the clichés faded into the distance, and all that remained were Liverpool fans, earning the title of loudest fans in Europe as they bared every nerve and shouted every throat hoarse in their unabashed love and care for their team. The Kop sweated, agonized, cheered, cried and sang, and the heroes on the pitch responded.
First, Sami Hÿypia reinforced his image as the huge, unswerving monolith in the heart of the Liverpool defence. That has both positive and negative aspects. On a brilliant evening redolent with memories and heartfelt emotions, he transformed his greatest defensive liability - a ponderous lack of mobility - into his greatest strength as he thundered past a shocked and confused Juve defensive cloud of markers to meet a cross with a cataclysmic kick that nearly burst the back of the Juve net. Then Luis Garcia scored a wonder goal to rival any from the record books and highlight reels as he smacked a volley from 30 yards away from goal that bent, swerved, and finally dipped below the crossbar of the goal.
Liverpool went on to win 2-1, which meant two important things: the second leg in Turin could be decided by a single goal, and that Juve had the "precious" away goal, meaning that if they could score at home and keep the Reds to a clean sheet, they would triumph in the tie and romp merrily through to the semi-final. The "Vecchia Signora" of Serie A were widely tipped to edge out the Reds. If the voice of the Kop could not be heard, the theory went, there would be very little chance for the gladiators of LFC to challenge their illustrious opponents for the contested place in the European Cup Semi-Finals.
Friedrich Nietzsche said that even unicellular organisms exhibited a will to power. In terms of some of his philosophical writings, every impetus and every inequality of relations between beings exists as a result of an imbalance of internal force of one over another. An amoeba's pseudopods may encompass the cellular membranes of a paramecium, and eventually involve the total envelopment of one individual entity by another. Somewhere, theorised the German philosopher, there is an instinct which creates aggression to conquer and consume, even at a microscopic level.
That being said, Liverpool went to visit the Stadio Delle Alpi knowing one thing: if Juventus did not score in the next 90 or so minutes, it would be the Liverpudlians in the semi-finals. Gritty and resolute lines were drawn.
This was not the battle of a predator leaping onto a falling stag to complete the kill. It was not a warrior twisting his blade to ensure his opponent would stay down. It was a desperate series of rear-guard actions as the likes of Zlatan Ibrahimovich and Alessandro del Piero inched closer to the possibility of scoring a single goal which, when compounded with their precious away goal at Anfield, would spell overall victory in the tie.
Step forward, Jamie Carragher.
When the clouds loomed darkly, when the dawn seemed distant, when heartbeats faded... it was Carra who burst his lungs and ran his boots ragged to keep hope alive. Every last ditch effort, every stop-gap, every critical rescue seemed to come at the end of one of his super-human interventions. Exit Juventus.
Chelski were next on the list. Having already lost three consecutive games against the billionaire blues during the season, including the League Cup Final, not many people gave Liverpool a chance. But after a cautious draw in the cavernous silence of Stamford Bridge, where the only noise that could be heard above the miniscule Liverpool contingent's songs was the crunching of prawn sandwiches and the hiss of champagne being guzzled by the über-riche supporters of the South Londoners., the return leg at Anfield could only have one outcome. The Kop roared, the city was exuberant, the team were on form, and Chelsea looked like a pack of talented apprentices who had never experienced something of that magnitude before. Chelsea swept away.
All that remained was the final on 25th May against the perennial European favourites, AC Milan. Liverpool: the team that was the dominant force in Europe twenty years prior, but rocked by disasters and tragedies ever since. Milan: the team which has been a top contender for the biggest silverware every single year since Liverpool's decline. Regardless of the result, the impact of this game had already begun to resonate. Only one English team had become champions of Europe after 1984, and that victory in 1999 still makes Bayern Münich fans twitch a bit. This was to be a test of tactics, styles, philosophy, tradition, and, perhaps most tellingly as it would turn out, spirit.
At this point I should mention that the weekend before the final, a young lad by the name of Maxtin was scheduled for open heart surgery. Occasionally, I'm luck enough to babysit the wee munchkin. Before the operation, I made sure that he had an appropriate piece of clothing to wear.
So the stage was set. Liverpool had to upset the odds and defeat one of the continental juggernauts of the last twenty years to try and repel the ghosts of Heysel and Hillsborough. I was counting on the lads. Little Max was counting on them. They only had to get past a team featuring the best striker in Europe (Andriy Shevchenko), the most exciting young high midfielder around (Kaká), and the greatest left-back to have ever played the game (Paolo Maldini). The boys from Merseyside had to win to prevent heartbreak on a number of different levels.(to be continued)
