Paul Tomkins 24 August 2005
something to cheer us all up
Istanbul is back on my mind. Okay, it's never really been off my mind, but this Friday sees the Reds face CSKA Moscow in the European Super Cup final: further reward for somehow clawing back a contest that, in other sports, would have been called to a halt on the grounds of its shocking one-sidedness. Even now I find myself checking the fixture list, to make sure AC Milan aren't going to be in Monaco instead.
I don't know what the Statute of Limitations is with regards to celebrating a momentous sporting victory, but there seems no point in achieving the unachievable, and then casually shrugging the shoulders and moving on.
While the players need to clear their minds and move onto the next challenge, we can take time to savour a remarkable success. We don't want any accusations of living in the past; but it's another nine months until anyone else can be crowned Champions of Europe. Until then, that title is ours, whatever happens in this season's tournament.
When it comes to winning trophies, there may never be another fifteen minutes as important in the history of Liverpool Football Club. By the 14th minute of the second half of the final, a 3-0 deficit had become an all-square scoreline. Utterly remarkable.
But those aren't the fifteen minutes I'm referring to. Itwas the fifteen minutes directly preceding that unbelievable turnaround. Half-time was the end of a horror tale, and the start of the Greatest Story Ever Told.
The interval remains the key to it all: what occurred in each dressing room, the decisions the managers made, and what took place in the stands.
I talk fairly extensively about those fifteen minutes in my book, "Golden Past, Red Future", but it's the one area of the final chapter which, looking back, I feel I could still expand. Half time was the bridge between two worlds: one called Pain, the other Glory.
Charles Dickens summed up the feeling "It was the best of times; it was the worst of times," begins his epic Tale of Two Cities. (A book which, I'm reliably informed, chronicles supporters watching the Champions League final in the bars of Milan and Liverpool. But don't quote me on that.)
When Manuel Enrique Mejuto Gonzalez blew the whistle after 45 minutes, the only definite change on the cards was the ends the teams would attack.
What needed to change was everything.
The world's rotation needed to reverse on its axis. Liverpool would need to become AC Milan, and AC Milan would need to become Everton. (Sorry, cheap gag.) Jerzy Dudek would need to transform into Gordon Banks, Andrei Shevchenko metamorphose into Ade Akinbiyi.
There would need to be a reversal of fortune: a first-half penalty claim for Nesta's handball led instantly to Milan's goal; the next penalty shout for the Reds would need to leave the referee in no doubt. It needed luck, not just pluck.
In the dressing room, the Italians needed to change into 'winners' t-shirts, in order to become losers. Liverpool had nothing left to lose, and thought it possible to only win back a little pride.
It all seems so unreal - even now, three months later, and after repeated viewings of the match on video and the recent TV documentary. Maybe it was a "Sliding Doors" moment, and in an alternative, parallel universe there are several million Liverpool fans still unable to talk about 'that night', when the Reds lost 7-0 to AC Milan. They shudder as they recall Hernan Crespo completing his double-hat-trick by flicking the ball over Dudek's head and volleying it in with a swish of his meaty mullet.
Evertonians celebrated wildly and held street parties. Manchester United fans began stitching their bitchy banners. Chelsea celebrated that at least one of their players had won the 2005 Champions League.
Or maybe this is the only universe; and we won the European Cup on penalties. Maybe. If I've dreamed all this, I apologise. But if Liverpool are playing CSKA Moscow in Monaco this Friday, then that will confirm it must all have been true.
Reacting to adversity
As a child I never understood my grandparents' insistence, after being blitzkrieged to within an inch of their existence, that the war years were the best of their lives. While I'd never compare the severity of being bombed to a football team being three goals down, the same rules apply. Adversity brings unity. We hold each other close in the dark (metaphorically, of course).
Like those in the shelters singing songs of hope as the air-raid sirens screeched their banshee wail (similar to The Crazy Frog on the PA at Anfield at half-time), we roused ourselves in song. (Maybe it was appropriate, after all, that the Ataturk Stadium appeared to have been built on a sprawling bomb site.)
The cowards, the fools, ran from the stadium like deserters fleeing for the hills. When their team needed them, they were nowhere to be seen. The rest of us stayed, and prayed. More importantly, we played: played our part.
I'm a glass-is-half-full kinda guy most of the time, but at half-time in Istanbul my glass was pretty empty. I tell a lie: it was bone dry. But leave after the first 45 minutes? You must be kidding.
When talking about the reaction of the travelling Kop during the half-time break, I'm not sure I am capable of improving upon the passage I wrote in "Golden Past, Red Future", and it is that small section of the book that I will use to sum up:
The first five minutes of the interval saw little activity from the Liverpool fans: a collective too stunned to do anything other than stare at the night sky. And then it all changed. Everything. The atmosphere, the belief. The reason? One song.
You'll Never Walk Alone means more - so much more - than any other football song. It can be sung in victory, as the final whistle approaches - as it so often is. It has also been sung at funerals for the lost souls who supported the club, including those who died in so doing at Hillsborough. Its meaning would transcend any comparable terrace anthem if there existed any other anthems to compare. But none do. Its words have not been altered to fit around the club or its exploits on the pitch: they remain true to those penned by Oscar Hammerstein.
At 10.40 Istanbul time the Reds in the crowd rose, one by one, to add their voice to the choral harmony that, despite the soulless arena designed to let sound escape into the night air, reminded the team - and reminded all the fellow fans - that everyone should keep their head held high. There was no longer anything to be afraid of:the storm had passed, and of course, afterthe storm comes the golden sky.
Above all else: hope.
In your heart.
The effect was so strong, it inspired the players as they sat shell-shocked in the dressing room (or possibly lay prostrate, hoping a hole would swallow them), preparing for the second half, or possibly hoping it never arrived. The muffled sound of the crowd drifting down the players' tunnel lifted them off the ground. Maybe it didn't have them pounding the walls screaming 'We can win this! This Milan side are there for the taking!, but it registered all the same.
If the crowd weren't giving up, how could they? If 40,000 people made such a sacrifice, surely there was no option on giving up?
It was hard to avoid imagining how it looked and sounded to the AC Milan fans: how many of them may have paid their money at least partly to hear the legendary rendition? (Especially after their Fossa dei Leoni so amazingly sang it in 1989, following the Hillsborough tragedy.)
Liverpool fans singing You'll Never Walk Alone is one of those things opposing fans - especially in Europe - feel a great need to experience. It is like those who paid to hear Sinatra, in his prime, singing My Way. There will be much talk about the downside of vacating the current Anfield, but You'll Never Walk Alone travels with the Kop, wherever that Kop may be. You'll Never Walk Alone, it is fair to say, is Liverpool Football Club. It is its philosophy, its belief system. That one song is all you need to know.
It was a very powerful experience, as a fan, to hear the familiar song sung - and to be part of the choir - in such footballing adversity. It summed up everything that is good about supporting your team; and in my case, it summed up why Liverpool Football Club is so special. A circle of discovery and inspiration between the players and the fans was completed by the team in the second-half. Believe, and it might just happen...
And so it began: the comeback. All credit to the players, for their miraculous contribution. But it started in the North, East and West stands at the Ataturk Stadium, and enveloped the whole of Istanbul. Without that song, the Liverpool players - described as dead and buried - would, like zombies in ancient myths, have needed to force their way up through the very turf as they fought to exhume themselves.
Dead and buried?
Far from it.....
never forget our SPIRIT.
wish it were me m8 
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