Arsene’s Kop jibe
ARSENE WENGER has taunted Liverpool by admitting he enjoyed their failure to match his Invincibles season.
The Frenchman guided Arsenal to an unbeaten campaign in 2003-04, winning the Premier League in the process.
But Liverpool’s chances of emulating that feat went up in smoke as they lost 3-0 at Watford in February.
Wenger, 70, said: “It was a form of satisfaction. We always like to be the only ones to achieve something.
“It shows that it’s difficult to repeat this feat. I had a lot of messages from Arsenal supporters!”
Wenger is now FIFA chief of global football development and despite the Gunners being open to him returning in some capacity, he added: “I always said to myself that I’d be leaving completely.”
AC MILAN (4-3-1-2): LIVERPOOL (4-1-3-2): SCORERS: ATTENDANCE: REFEREE:
THE WORLD was supposed to be watching this Saturday when Europe’s finest battled out the Champions League Final at the Ataturk Olympic Stadium. Every day this week marks the anniversary of at least one English team lifting the European Cup and we start our week of celebration by looking back at a Liverpool double – that comeback in Istanbul in 2005 and the first time they lifted the trophy in
Rome in 1977, Kevin Keegan’s last
game for the club.
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ISTANBUL – the miracle of football wrapped up in one word.
It was the greatest European final ever – hell, quite possibly the greatest sporting spectacle ever. Jamie Carragher remembers with relish.
“It really is one of those words, isn’t it,” he said, not as a question, but as a statement of fact.
“It’s funny how those great European triumphs are known by the city where they took place. As a kid, for me it was Rotterdam, with Everton. Rome ’77. United have Barcelona... Not the Bayern game, but Barcelona. “Istanbul, though, is somehow even more powerful. It’s our city, and our club. Just the word makes you feel lucky to have been part of it. An honour and a privilege.” Even in these sociallydistanced days of phone interviews, you can sense the shaking of his head in disbelief still.
It was on this day, May 25, 15 years ago that the ‘Miracle of Istanbul’ occurred. Even now, it is hard to put into words just how unimaginable Liverpool’s comeback it was. Just how disbelieving AC Milan were. Perhaps it is fitting one word encapsulates the impossible.
Yet perhaps Carragher provided a perfect snapshot of what it meant, too, with his celebration when Jerzy Dudek saved Andriy Shevchenko’s shoot-out penalty to deliver the trophy.
Did he tell himself beforehand to celebrate properly if they won, or was it perhaps that, being a Scouser, he truly knew what it meant to the club to lift old big ears once more? Nothing so calculated.
He added: “I think that moment, when you win something big, you
■ only do it four, five times in your career if you’re lucky. It takes you to a place very few other moments in your life can take you. That feeling, that moment, it’s what you miss most.
“It’s the one moment in my career I’d love to go back to. That moment of realisation, and then release. I ran towards Jerzy and was the first one there.
“But there was no way I could stop and hug someone or jump on anyone. I needed to keep running, jumping, shouting, screaming.
“I couldn’t have bottled that up. It was just an energy rush that had to come out. I carried on around