Liverpool FC Forum

by **JBG** » Sun May 08, 2005 2:09 pm

"Benítez men one game from greatness"

Anfield erupts to celebrate the achievement of Gerrard and co

Michael Walker at Anfield
Wednesday May 4, 2005
The Guardian

For Liverpool the end justified the means. To be precise, the noise at the end justified the means. When the Slovakian referee Lubos Michel finally blew the whistle after his extraordinary decision to award six minutes of injury-time - what a sound.
Anfield has exploded down the years but surely this was volume to rival anything heard before. Part joy, part tension, part release, the stadium erupted. As Jose Mourinho said afterwards: "The power of Anfield Road, I felt it."

Liverpool's players were equally struck. Some of them virtually collapsed, the blistering Jamie Carragher being one. He looked as though he had just sweated blood for the club. John Arne Riise was overcome. He fell to the turf, then undressed to his underpants.
Riise was deranged, Steven Gerrard was breathless, but he emerged primarily to salute Carragher. "We are going to the final, to Istanbul, and what a performance Jamie Carragher put in," the captain said. "Immense. Brilliant. What more can you say about it?"

Anfield was as manic as everyone said it would be and their Liverpool team, the Liverpool of Rafael Benítez, have reached a first Champions League final.

Few of them would have been thinking about a match in February at the Millennium Stadium. Chelsea won the League Cup final 3-2 after Liverpool had taken the lead through Riise with 45 seconds gone. More than an hour followed, an hour of patient Chelsea passing, before Gerrard's still incredible headed own-goal brought the Londoners an equaliser. That produced the extra-time which saw the London club prevail and led to Mourinho's attempt to silence the Liverpool fans.

No chance of that last night, and an appearance at a sixth European Cup final awaits them in Istanbul three weeks today, but when the red half of Merseyside comes down some time in the next few days there will surely be a helping of disbelief amid the excitement.

Not only was there the controversy over the winning goal - though to the naked eye it looked over the line - there was an emphasis on defending that verged on addiction. On this night, Liverpool progressed going backwards.

But the point is that they did progress and now players like Carragher, Gerrard and Dietmar Hamann - even the formerly derided Igor Biscan - are one game from greatness.

That is an echo, of course, of Gérard Houllier's statement three years ago, that his Liverpool were "10 games from greatness". His bold proclamation came after a similarly inspiring evening, when Liverpool had to beat Roma by two goals to reach the quarter-final of the Champions League and won 2-0.

Similar to Luis García's early toe-poke here, Jari Litmanen scored a very early penalty that night and Liverpool charged until Emile Heskey headed in the second to take the Reds through. Soon after they would beat Charlton 2-0 to go top of the Premiership.

It all went wrong for Houllier after he made his statement. In the Champions League they lost a bizarre second leg at Bayer Leverkusen to crash out, while in the Premiership they lost at Tottenham and Arsenal overtook them.

The Frenchman battled on until last summer and wherever he was last night he must have viewed the teamsheet and thought to himself: "I signed him." Eight times.

Dudek, Finnan, Hyypia, Riise, Hamann, Traoré, Biscan and Baros - all Houllier purchases. Carragher and Gerrard were already at the club. Benítez's sole purchase in the starting line-up was García.

Houllier's players now bear the imprint of Benítez. And despite Liverpool being 33 points behind Chelsea in the Premiership, Benítez has taken them to 90 minutes from greatness.

But, as the table suggests, it will be a strange kind of greatness. If one had the temerity to mention to a Liverpool fan at around 9.45pm that traditionally greatness is measured in domestic titles, and that there has not been one here since 1990 - when the side of Grobbelaar, Hansen, McMahon and Barnes finished nine points clear of Aston Villa - the reply would not have been audible.

Fans would have countered that in the determination of Carragher - he shrugged Arjen Robben aside in injury time to get to a loose ball in the Liverpool area - and the persistence of Hamann after six weeks out through a knee injury, Liverpool have characters worthy of the club's first European Cup final since Heysel.

The way Hamann dispossessed Didier Drogba and Eidur Gudjohnsen in the space of three minutes in the first half was emblematic of Liverpool's resolve. Carragher, Hyypia and Biscan all helped the cause, and if Gerrard has had more influential games, he provided at least two defining touches.

The first was the pass that propelled Milan Baros into his collision with Petr Cech that led to the goal. The second was a 90th-minute block on the edge of the same area from Gudjohnsen.

There followed a brief handshake with Mourinho as the players of both sides came to terms with the drama of Gudjohnsen's late miss. Gerrard and Mourinho may meet again.

In the stand, Benítez's wife Montse beamed. On each occasion her husband won a trophy in Spain she received a watch. The Benítez family and Liverpool think their time has come again."

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"benítez men one game from greatness" - Michael walker (found by zara)

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