If Liverpool qualified, I knew I’d miss the first leg, but I had to get the team there. Can’t let the team down. Push on, tackle, fight. Don’t give up. Big players don’t hide. They don’t sulk. Michael Ballack in the semi-finals of the 2002 World Cup. Roy Keane in the semi-finals of the 1999 European Cup. Booked, but defiant. Don’t fade like Gazza at Italia 90. Fight for the team. Get them through.
Anfield was going crazy. After Mellor’s strike, we had nine minutes left to find the goal to keep us in Europe. Just one goal. One chance. One shot. As we raced towards the Kop, I kept glancing at the electronic clock. Time was running out. We tried everything – long, short, wide and set-piece – but Olympiakos stood firm. The remaining minutes soon became seconds. Come on! Now or never. Liverpool’s strongest characters came to the fore. Xabi slid into tackles, keeping the ball in play. Carra was immense, charging into midfield, doing Cruyff turns out wide, and, suddenly, chipping a cross in to Mellor. ‘Set it, set it!’ I screamed. Could he hear? Did he know I was perfectly placed? Please! Mellor heard, and he delivered, nodding down brilliantly towards me.
Twenty-two yards lay between me and glory. Everything stopped around me, melting into a background blur. All that mattered was me and that ball. All my vision, all my concentration was focused on it as it dropped towards me. In my mind, I heard the words of Steve Heighway and the boys at the Academy. Keep the head still. Weight over the ball. Make good contact. Make the keeper work. Here goes. Bang! The ball flew away from my right foot and accelerated towards the goal. The Kop held its breath. A split-second of silence reigned, save for the sound of the net pulling at the stanchions. Bullseye! Goal! Everyone screamed it. Goal! We’re through!
Pure joy swept through my body, sending me hurtling towards the Kop. ‘Fuck the ref,’ I thought, ‘I’m going in.’ I saw the fans, saw the expression of pure passion and love of Liverpool on their faces, and thought, ‘Yeah, I’m with you, I’m one of you, I’m coming in.’ I felt my team-mates breathing down my neck to catch me. I pushed Mellor away as I headed for the fans, launching myself into the arms of my people. My wild celebrations could easily have brought me a second yellow. We all know the rules about not leaving the pitch. To hell with that. Those laws are written in cold ink by an administrator; hot blood pumps through a goalscorer’s veins in moments of ecstasy like this. Fair play to the ref, a bloke called Manuel Enrique Mejuto Gonzalez. This Spaniard realized it was a big goal and ignored my celebrations. Anyway, I couldn’t have cared less if he sent me off. I was missing the first leg of the next round anyway.
People always remind me of that goal. Millions saw it on TV. It was a good strike, one I am incredibly proud of for its execution and significance, but it is Andy Gray’s commentary on Sky that really makes the goal. I’ve heard it since, and he goes crazy. ‘Yes! You beauty!’ Andy made the goal even more special. If you want a commentator on a really sharp goal, it has to be Andy Gray and Martin Tyler on Sky or Clive Tyldesley on ITV. Andy certainly got carried away over my volley. A Bluenose, Andy got some stick afterwards for raving about a Liverpool goal. I’ve listened to his commentary on loads of Liverpool games, and sometimes he doesn’t give us credit because he’s a Blue. Fair enough. But he summed up the emotion of the Olympiakos game brilliantly. And Liverpool deserved it. With Benitez’s subs changing the match, we were awesome in the second half. Anything felt possible after that turnaround.
I looked around the dressing-room afterwards and saw the fire of ambition in my team-mates’ eyes. It was a fantastic place to be. Smiles, handshakes, singing. With Benitez around, the dressing-room was never going to go completely mad, but we did celebrate. Carra and I looked at each other, at the ice bath, and then at Doc Waller. Trouble.
‘Do it,’ I said.
‘OK,’ replied Carra.
Quick as a flash, we grabbed Doc Waller and threw him in the ice bath.
Dried off, and buoyed up, Liverpool were now in the knockout stage, with no margin for error. UEFA’s draw-makers threw us in against Bayer Leverkusen, the Germans good enough to have finished ahead of Real Madrid in Group B. Everybody outside Anfield considered Leverkusen slight favourites. Suspended and frustrated, I watched the first leg, on 22 February 2005, sitting alongside Struan at Anfield. Liverpool survived a couple of scares early on. Buzzing everywhere up front was Dimitar Berbatov, a Bulgarian striker who had been linked with us and who is now at Spurs. Berbatov was class, but gradually Liverpool took control. We were cruising to a 3–0 win when Jerzy made a mistake. He fumbled, Franca pounced, and suddenly Leverkusen grasped an away goal. ‘I hope that doesn’t come back to haunt us,’ I remarked to Struan as we left our seats.
Leverkusen had thrashed Real 3–0 at their BayArena home. I knew the same thing could happen to us. We just had to be professional over in Germany. Keep calm, and take our chances. From the first whistle, we destroyed them. I played off Baros, Luis Garcia was unstoppable, and we ran out comfortable 3–1 winners.
For the quarter-final draw, I nipped over to Mum’s apartment with Gratty, a very good mate of mine. Gratty’s real name is Paul McGrattan, who’s a budding actor with dreams of being Al Pacino! As we settled down on the sofa, my text rattled into life. Carra. ‘Who do you want?’ he asked. I showed Gratty the text. ‘I can’t text him,’ I said. ‘Whoever I say, we won’t get.’ I couldn’t risk it, so I ignored Carra’s text. I couldn’t ignore the draw, though. First out of UEFA’s glass bowl was us and Juventus. ‘Shit,’ I said, glancing at Gratty. We both knew the Italians were a class outfit, certainly not one of the teams we wanted to face in the last eight. Juventus’s reputation was for being really defensive. Gianluigi Buffon in goal, with Fabio Cannavaro and Lilian Thuram the eagle-eyed sentries in front of him. Christ, they would be a tough nut to crack. Juventus were packed with world-class attacking players too, like Pavel Nedved, Alessandro del Piero and Zlatan Ibrahimovic. They were flying in Serie A, while Liverpool struggled in the Premiership.
UEFA could not have sent Liverpool down a more emotional route to the final, either. The Heysel disaster loomed large over the two legs. Inevitably. Liverpool had not met Juventus since thirty-nine supporters died at the 1985 European Cup final in Brussels. All the Heysel stuff started straight away on Sky Sports News. Everybody, it seemed, was talking about it. Liverpool never mentioned to the players how sensitive the match was. They didn’t need to. Me and Carra knew all about Heysel. We also knew Liverpool fans would give the right reaction when Juventus visited on 5 April. On the night, the Kop held up a mosaic saying ‘Memoria e Amicia’ – ‘In Memory and Friendship’. That was a nice touch. Michel Platini and Ian Rush paid a tribute towards the Juventus fans in the Anfield Road end. The behaviour of Liverpool’s supporters really warmed my heart that night.
So much of the build-up was about Heysel, but the players concentrated on the here and now. Benitez made us watch tapes of Juventus for hours. ‘Juventus like to control the tempo, slowing it down like a chess match,’ the boss told us in our final team meeting. ‘All Juventus’s players like to have time on the ball. So we are not going to give them any. They want to slow the game down. We are going to speed it up. So go for them. Chase them. Press them. Don’t let them settle. Play at a high tempo. Juventus will hate that.’
We had to set the tone early, so I launched into Emerson, their hard-man midfielder. Take that. Juventus did not know what hit them. We were all over them, seizing a 2–0 lead through Sami and Luis Garcia within twenty-five minutes. Garcia’s strike was made by Anthony Le Tallec, a surprise starter. Le Tallec’s a good player, an attacker we believed in, but Benitez hadn’t used him much before. It proved an inspired decision, as Le Tallec gave Juventus all manner of problems. Scotty Carson pulled off a world-class save to keep out Del Piero. As we went in at the break, I looked at the Juventus faces. They were in shock. They’d expected a gentle breeze blowing through Anfield, but instead found themselves in the thick of a hurricane. Our mood in the dressing-room was of quiet confidence mixed with respect fo
r the Italians. Benitez warned us to be on our toes. ‘Juventus will come back at you,’ he said. Cannavaro pulled one back in the second half, and we knew it would be tough the following week over in Turin.
Except I wasn’t going. Ruled out by a thigh strain, I got my mates round to the house in Crosby to have a few beers and watch the game on TV. But I couldn’t stay in the room. Every time Juventus got in our half, I walked out and waited in the kitchen until the danger cleared. ‘OK, Stevie, it’s safe now,’ would come the message from the TV room, and I’d return for a while. My nerves were being put through a shredder. I was so desperate for Liverpool to get through. When the shout of ‘That’s it, game over’ came through, I dashed back in to see all the lads in Turin celebrating the goalless draw on the pitch. ‘Fuck this,’ I thought. ‘I’m not staying in.’ Jeans on. Shirt ironed. Out to Southport. A few beers would be no problem; my damaged thigh was going to keep me out of next weekend’s match anyway. As we sped into Southport, my thumbs were working like pistons over my phone, sending congratulation texts to Carra and the boys in Turin. They were awesome.
I couldn’t wait to get in to work to see the lads. I shot into Melwood the next day, and they were all there, covered in smiles. Benitez, as usual, played the achievement down, but the boys were all proud of outsmarting the Italians. Bloody right.
Talk immediately turned to Chelsea. Everyone in England had a view on this all-English semi-final. UEFA had set the pairings for the semis during the quarter-final draw, so the Chelsea semi was built up for weeks in advance. Papers, phone-ins and television shows focused on little else. We lost interest in the Premiership. Our days and night-time dreams became filled with the thought of beating Frank Lampard, John Terry and Jose Mourinho and reaching the Champions League final. Liverpool had so much unfinished business with Chelsea. So many scores to settle. Chelsea had beaten us twice in the league and in the Carling Cup final back in February, when I scored an own-goal. A desire for revenge flowed through me, Carra and the boys. This was the big one.
The team were buzzing as we travelled down to London for the first leg at the end of April. ‘It’s good we’re away first,’ I told Carra. ‘Let’s go there, be compact, keep it tight, nick a draw, and do them at Anfield.’ That season, Liverpool had a knack of getting the right away result. Worryingly, though, I arrived in London with a problem: an abscess in my mouth. Murder. The swelling intensified the night before the match. I could feel the pussy liquid inside waiting to erupt. Food was impossible. Just the thought of anything near the abscess made me almost faint.
‘Doc, it’s fucking agony,’ I told Doc Waller.
‘Get through the game and then we’ll take you to a dentist,’ he replied, tossing me some pills.
I returned to my room and spent the rest of the evening pouring Paracetamol, painkillers and antibiotics down my throat. Sleep was impossible. I kept expecting the abscess to rupture. A fear of drowning, of choking on pus, kept me awake. The pain grew and grew. A monster lived beneath my skin and I had to kill it. I sought out the doc.
‘I don’t think I can get through this, doc,’ I said.
He gave me stronger painkillers. ‘Go and have your couple of hours’ rest and see how you feel,’ he said.
As usual, I followed the doc’s advice, but it was no good. I was now in complete agony, my mouth ready to explode. The doc and I went to see Benitez, and he said, ‘Find a dentist quick. Get it taken out.’ Within the hour, I was lying back in a dentist’s chair, my mouth full of tools and tubes. I looked up at the dentist and wanted to ask him, ‘Are you a Chelsea fan?’ He could have done anything to the captain of Liverpool! Made me groggy for twenty-four hours. Gone to work with a pneumatic drill. I couldn’t speak, my mouth was so packed with utensils. ‘Please don’t be a Chelsea fan!’ That’s all I thought. Fortunately, he was a first-class dentist who did brilliantly for me. He drained the abscess, tidied up the mess, and sent me off to Stamford Bridge. I knocked back so many painkillers before kick-off I almost rattled every time I kicked the ball.
That first leg was cagey, but we felt the happier with a 0–0 draw. The only disappointment came when the referee, Alain Sars, booked Xabi for a challenge on Eidur Gudjohnsen, which ruled Xabi out of the Anfield return. What really angered us was that Gudjohnsen clearly conned Sars. He dived. No question about it.
‘I never touched him,’ Xabi said in the dressing-room afterwards.
‘Don’t worry, Xabi,’ I replied. ‘We’ll get through. We’ll beat Chelsea. We’ll sort Gudjohnsen out for you. Join us in the final.’
But Xabi was inconsolable, close to tears. He loves playing and felt bitter resentment towards Gudjohnsen. We all did. Xabi is a huge player for Liverpool, and a really popular guy, and a big match like Chelsea at home was made for a midfielder of Xabi’s class. We read all the allegations in the papers that Gudjohnsen told Xabi he knew he was on a booking. True or not, that fired us up more. Chelsea were going to fucking well get it at Anfield.
The temperature was stoked further by the papers – surprise, surprise. Any tiny comment was used to spark an inferno. In the papers, Benitez singled me out as the ‘key’ for Liverpool. Liverpool’s manager heaped pressure on his captain. Fucking hell, boss, thanks very much. I don’t need more pressure. The boss thought he was helping me, giving me a boost by saying I was the ‘key’. But I wished he had never mentioned me. Leave me alone. I don’t need motivating, especially not for a Champions League semi-final against Chelsea, of all teams. Anyone whose pulse isn’t racing before such a meeting should retire. Benitez knew how ready I was. He told the world, ‘I looked into Steven’s eyes and saw the determination.’ What else would he see? I craved the chance to lift the European Cup, to put Liverpool back where we belong – at the top. The thought of getting knocked out within touching distance of Istanbul and Chelsea going on to win made me almost physically sick. Christ, there was more than determination in my eyes. Staring back at Benitez was a burning will to win. Nobody was going to stand between me and the final. Not Lamps. Not JT. Not Makelele. And certainly not that cheat Gudjohnsen. I couldn’t wait to launch my hungering body into Chelsea.
A touch of arrogance accompanied Chelsea into Anfield on 3 May, and Benitez brilliantly played on it. ‘Chelsea’s players think they are in the final,’ he told us. ‘Chelsea think they have beaten you. Now go out and show them how wrong they are. And remember Xabi.’ We also heard Chelsea booked a room, at a place called the Mosquito, for an after-match party. Chelsea’s confidence was mentioned more than a few times before kick-off.
Chelsea did not just run into eleven stirred-up Liverpool players that night. The Londoners were hit by a whole wave of emotion rolling out from 40,000 fanatical Scousers, who could not have had a voice between them the following morning. They screamed themselves hoarse that night. Kopites knew the team had a really good chance of going to the final. It was nail-biting – they wanted victory so badly it hurt. Kopites had waited twenty-one years, and endured the humiliation of the Heysel ban and of watching Manchester United lift the trophy. Liverpool fans are obsessed with Europe. Anyone can win a title, but only Liverpool had dominated Europe. Whenever I look at the Kop, I see all the banners reminding everyone of past successes in Europe. The European Cup glides through the dreams of every Red. I saw it in the faces of the Liverpool fans that night. ‘Make Us Dream’ ordered one banner. I heard it in their songs. Get us to the final, Stevie. Lead us back where we belong.
Kopites also wanted us to remind Roman Abramovich that money isn’t everything. They saw the match as a collision of new money and history, Billionaire’s Club v. Community Club. As usual, Mourinho made a few inflammatory comments beforehand. Mateja Kezman angered Liverpool supporters even more by saying of the Anfield Roar, ‘I played at Anfield on New Year’s Day and I don’t know what this big fuss is all about.’ Just wait, mate. When Kezman came on later in the game, he had a shocker. Don’t be disrespectful. Kopites gave it to Kezman and Chelsea big-style.
I
have never, ever experienced an atmosphere like it. Celtic Park was massive when we visited, but this was bigger. Running out to warm up forty-five minutes before kick-off, I couldn’t believe my eyes or ears. Anfield was three-quarters full. Usually when we warm up, Anfield’s empty. Not that night. The fans were so impatient to slaughter Chelsea and praise us that they poured out of the pubs early and streamed into Anfield. The stadium was bouncing. As I stretched my muscles, I was mesmerized by the Kop. The fans sang all the Liverpool players’ names individually and then vilified Chelsea’s players. ‘Fuck off Lampard, fuck off Lampard’ could be heard. Straight away, Liverpool fans were right on Chelsea’s back; straight away, they built us up. ‘We can’t let them down,’ I remarked to Carra, ‘and we fucking well won’t.’
We headed back down the tunnel for Benitez’s final instructions, and to get our match shirts on. Back in the dressing-room, everybody talked about our amazing fans. ‘I can’t wait to get back out,’ I said. It makes a hell of a difference, at home, knowing all the fans are completely, passionately with you.
Looking along the Chelsea line in the tunnel, I realized they had some strong characters, men like Lampard and Terry, who would not be intimidated by the hostility directed at them. Big international players, tough guys who can handle the heat. Then I wondered how their weaker team-mates might react. Would they wilt? Would they hide? Abuse chased every Chelsea player around Anfield that night. Whenever Gudjohnsen received the ball, he got the bird big-time. Every time a Chelsea player lost possession, he was assaulted with insults. When me or Carra steamed into a Chelsea player, a roar went up. The Kop cheered every pass, every tackle. The fans’ noise worked on my body like an endless injection of adrenalin. I was so pumped up. So was everyone wearing Liverpool red that night. We flew out of the traps, tearing into Chelsea, hammering at everything they stood for, turning them inside out.
Gerrard: My Autobiography Page 29