Harnessing history's burden
ON the morning after Liverpool's first European Cup Final victory in 1977, Bill Shankly sat in Rome's International Airport as he returned from the final. Shankly was alone. He would die four years later, as John Giles said, "of a broken heart." He had watched as his former assistant and successor Bob Paisley achieved greater success than he had and he had watched it from the outside.
A fan approached Shankly and asked for his autograph. "I don't have a pen," Shankly said, "but I'll give you my scarf" and he handed the fan the tattered red and white adornment which commemorated Liverpool's first appearance in a European Cup final.
In Istanbul, a city as magical and haunting as Rome, last Wednesday night, the fan who had received the scarf 28 years ago carried it in a trouser pocket. He spoke quietly about his possession and removed it gently, if requested, for worshippers to touch like Padre Pio's glove.
The history of Liverpool Football Club is a ghost on the shoulder, a relic wrapped up in a trouser pocket which has burdened every Liverpool team since 1990. In the Ataturk Stadium on Wednesday night, that history came alive, not only in the extraordinary communion between supporters and players for which Liverpool, among elite clubs, is unique, but in Liverpool's determination to learn from that history.
All players who sign for Liverpool are expected to bow before the gods who walked before them. Rafael Benitez's wife has spent some of her first season on Merseyside reading about the history of the club, while her husband watched the videos at night. It seeps into the players and when Jamie Carragher ran frantically to Jerzy Dudek and reminded him of the actions of Bruce Grobbelaar in Rome 21 years ago, Liverpool's history ceased to be an overwhelming presence. The club's modern day millionaires from across the world fed on it. Carragher, a son of Bootle, reminded Dudek, a Polish miner's son, of their shared heritage. Dudek responded and Liverpool won the European Cup again.
Rafael Benitez is taking a strange route to immortality. The first trophy, conventional wisdom says, is the hardest. Liverpool's most recent managers have made it a little easier by first winning the League Cup and not much else. Gerard Houllier boosted his CV by adding Super Cups and Charity Shields to his list with a brazenness which would make an estate agent blush, but the great trophies, the Premiership and the European Cup, remained elusive.
Benitez has begun with the most coveted trophy of all, the tournament that, traditionally, is the capstone to an illustrious career, not the starting point. By winning in Istanbul with a team in which 11 of the 14 players used had played for Gerard Houllier, Benitez signalled his remarkable abilities, not least of which has been to liberate the players from the scarring of Houllier's era.
When Liverpool were losing by a goal at half-time to Manchester City last August, it had been five years since they had recovered from a half-time deficit to win a game. Under Houllier, Liverpool's players had been coached not to lose and then, in the dying days, not to lose too badly. The work Benitez had to do was as much psychological as tactical. Liverpool came from behind to win that afternoon and eight months later, they would produce the most staggering comeback in the history of the game against AC Milan.
But Benitez's desire to be daring brought Liverpool right down last Wednesday before he dared again and won. Those who had categorised him as a defensive coach had ignored too many signs, not just from his first season at Liverpool, but his time at Valencia. In a coaching world dominated by men like Houllier and Sven Goran Eriksson, time-servers and bureaucrats, Benitez is courageous and, at times, a gambler. On Wednesday night, he plunged.
As the team was being announced, the 40,000 Liverpool supporters who had made the journey were descending down the winding road that led to the stadium. It had the feel of an evacuation, not a pilgrimage, a march into the unknown. All across the dusty hills, Liverpool's supporters staggered towards the stadium. Their clarion call, Johnny Cash's Ring of Fire, bounced around the mountains. By half time, Liverpool's dreams of a fifth European Cup had been tossed into the flames.
When he was asked last week if Liverpool would attack Milan as they had Juventus, Benitez announced, "it's a possibility". This was ignored by many, Liverpool would defend, they insisted. Benitez, instead, picked a team to attack. Dietmar Hamann was the midfielder to miss out. Harry Kewell was picked - Hamann was dropped because Steven Gerrard and Xabi Alonso were automatic inclusions.
Gerrard had struggled recently in the advance role where Kewell was asked to operate on Wednesday and maybe that influenced Benitez's thinking. By inclination and by ego, Gerrard is a central midfielder who controls the game. He has failed in this role whenever he encounters world-class opposition and last week, he failed again.
Of course, the early goal destroyed Liverpool and in this, Benitez must again consider his zonal marking system which allowed Paolo Maldini, hardly an unfamiliar face, to wander unmarked into the box to score.
But Liverpool had responded well when Alessandro Nesta appeared to handle the ball and Milan broke away to score. Those who think the Italian inadvertently brushed the ball with his elbow or that Gattuso later had no intention of fouling Gerrard for the penalty, are naively forgetting the Italian art of fouling while appearing to be virginally innocent. Yet Milan had too much freedom, Benitez had asked too much of his captain and Kaka was dancing through the weak Liverpool resistance.
Gerrard's strengths are physical and, in this Liverpool side, spiritual and symbolic. At times he appears to be a little boy, lost as he struggles with the enormity of situations on the pitch or in his head. He is not a thinker as his post-match comments indicated when he revealed his torment as the game slipped away from Liverpool. In the first half, Gerrard lacked the intelligence to conceive a way out for his side. Instead he became more and more frantic, giving the ball away casually and allowing Kaka to brush him aside in the build-up to the third Milan goal.
At times Gerrard appears to be a little boy, lost as he struggles with the enormity of situations on the pitch or in his head
At half-time, only the quixotic and the deluded in the crowd believed there was a chance for Liverpool's redemption, but among the 40,000 there were a few of those. As the teams came out for the second half, the Liverpool fans rose and sang You'll Never Walk Alone. The Liverpool crowd is sentimental and thin-skinned with a performer's ego, but they know how to put on a show.
Benitez's words at half-time included a plea not to let those supporters down. As they walked out for the second-half, the players could hear, in the staggering rendition of the old song, just what he meant. Milan had been celebrating at half-time, Djimi Traore revealed (although Jamie Carragher remarked he would have been too if he'd been in their position) and they must have felt like high-fiving again as they came out and saw that Traore was still on the pitch. An immediate mistake by the full-back led to a Shevchenko free-kick which Dudek saved brilliantly. The game was about to change.
With Steve Finnan injured, Hamann took his place and quickly showed his value to the team. It is perplexing that Benitez can allow the German to leave Liverpool this summer when he offers - as the Brazilians say - an "invisible wall" in front of the defence.
But Hamann was not the whole story. Gerrard, who could neither play nor think when the game was in the balance, was liberated by the doomed situation Liverpool were in. Where he led by physical force, his team-mates and the Liverpool supporters followed.
Since Liverpool's victory, the intellectual wing of English sports journalism (many of whom had insisted that Liverpool were wrong to discard Houllier - a cultivated man - last summer) have come up with a neat line in self-loathing for the remarkable scenes they witnessed. They wonder if an English side will ever dazzle in a European Cup final rather than relying on grit and steel. "Never the irresistible force, always the immovable object," one wrote yesterday. This ignores the stunning nature of Manchester United's victory in 1999 - and it completely forgets the manner in which they beat Juventus in the semi-final. It also begs the question, how an immovable object can recover from a three-goal deficit without being irresistible?
A stunned Milan coach Carlo Ancelotti described what happened between the 55th minute and the 60th as "six minutes of madness". There was madness everywhere as the game changed: madness in the performance of Gerrard who was free to take a physical battle to Milan now that Hamann was thinking for the two of them; a strange madness in the composure of Alonso, whose every touch seemed to be of a contemplative artist at work rather than a competitive sportsman in the biggest game of his life. Madness, too, in the way Milan collapsed.
The only explanation for the team Rafael Benitez picked was that he knew how brittle Milan were. Liverpool had to lose three goals before they found out what Deportivo and PSV had already established: Milan could be broken.
But as the game turned with Gerrard's header and his exhortations to the crowd, Liverpool were depending upon more than just Milan's flakiness, they were being guided by a collective will that revelled in the impossibility of the plan. Every moment seemed to contain an epic parable.
Jamie Carragher collapsed and was treated for cramp, returned to the field and immediately stretched for another crucial interception and cramped again. In the bars around Taksim Square later that night, they sang their song of praise: We all dream of a team of Carraghers. Number one is Carragher and Number Two is Carragher. Normally, they stop when they reach 11, but on Wednesday night they sang to 100.
It had just passed 12.0 when Jerzy Dudek proved that Liverpool's comeback was part of some pre-ordained plan. Andriy Shevchenko moved between the Liverpool defenders to meet Serginho's cross. He connected but Dudek saved, then, miraculously, saved again. It was midnight in the garden of good and evil. Dudek rose to his feet and nodded three times as if looking for affirmation that the ball had not crossed the line, that Liverpool's remarkable journey was not yet complete.
Liverpool had to lose three goals before they found out what Deportivo and PSV had already established: Milan could be broken
By the time Dudek had brought Liverpool's history alive by saving from Shevchenko, after putting Serginho off and stopping Pirlo's penalty, the evening had turned into a night of magic realism. There was mystery and wonderment and cruelty. Cruelty for Shevchenko who was outstanding, even when his team-mates were imploding in the second half and cruelty for Dida, the Milan goalkeeper who saved as many penalties as Dudek over the course of the evening, but had lost.
The scenes at the end were remarkable. Liverpool's players ran to Dudek, but some burst away before they got to him and sprinted to the Liverpool supporters at the other end. On this night, they were part of the brotherhood.
After the players had left the pitch, the supporters fled the scene of triumph, with smoke and dust mixing in the air to create an atmosphere of warriors returning from a mighty, medieval battle.
Liverpool had won, but comprehending it was difficult as the layers of one of the great mysteries of sport were uncovered.
When Liverpool won in Rome in 1977, it confirmed they were the dominant team in Europe, capable of ruling for a generation. In Istanbul - a city dedicated in the fourth century as the New Rome - Rafael Benitez achieved a different kind of glory. Like Bob Paisley, a manager he resembles in many ways, Benitez has achieved what his predecessors failed to do. Like Paisley, he will not rest and he will be ruthless in achieving his objectives. But Liverpool have a new story, perhaps the most remarkable of all. The club's history was sent into battle on Wednesday night, now it will no longer be a burden.
Dion Fanning
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