What really happened at half-time in Istanbul
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Jamie Carragher: What really happened at half-time in Istanbul
AT half-time in the 2005 Champions League final in Istanbul, Jamie Carragher found himself staring into the abyss.
AC Milan had just produced a spell-binding 45 minutes of football to leave Liverpool trailing by three goals to nil.
All hopes of winning a fifth European Cup had seemingly been extinguished as Carragher and his team-mates walked into the dressing room for Rafa Benitez’s half-time team talk.
Here, in an exclusive extract from Carra: My Autobiography, Carragher talks for the first time about what exactly went on during that mythical 15 minutes and how Benitez’s inspirational intervention helped change the course of football history.
PEOPLE ask what was going through my mind in those moments before half-time.
As I walked towards the dressing room, I was suffering from a depressing combination of despondency and humiliation.
I couldn't bear to lift my head up and glimpse the faces in the crowd, or the banners and red jerseys scattered around the Ataturk.
I looked towards the floor and saw nothing but endless dejection. My dreams had turned to dust.
I wasn't thinking about the game any more. My thoughts were with my family and friends. I was so sorry.
Daft, seemingly trivial ideas scattered themselves across my mind, such as 'What will everyone at home be saying about this?'
The thought of going home a laughing stock disturbed me. It would have felt like the whole city, the whole country, even the whole world was taking the mickey out of us.
There was a sense of shame to go with my sorrow. The Liverpool fans had taken over the stadium and there was nothing we could do to make amends.
I almost began to regret reaching the final. All defeating Juve and Chelsea had achieved, it seemed, was to allow AC Milan to outclass us and possibly secure the greatest ever margin of victory in a European Cup final.
They'd beaten Barcelona and Steaua Bucharest 4-0 in the 1994 and 1989 finals, and now I feared we'd create history for the wrong reasons, at the receiving end of a record defeat, by five or six. Keeping it at 3-0 and at the very least restoring some respectability was all that mattered to me now.
Nothing was said by the players as we returned to the dressing room. A mythical 15 minutes in the Liverpool legend was upon us, but it didn't feel that way.
The trickiest test in such circumstances is ensuring you don't give up.
It would have been easy for us to accept our ambitions were in tatters, that nine months of toil were going to end in catastrophe.
Mentally we were all over the place, but I knew it wasn't in my nature to accept this fate. No matter how bad it was, we were going to have to face up to our responsibilities.
Fortunately, there was at least one sane head in the room prepared to restore our battered spirits.
In that Ataturk dressing room Rafa Benitez cemented his place in Anfield folklore.
My admiration for his handling of the situation is unlimited. Rafa's conduct rarely changed, regardless of the circumstances. His calm demeanour was never required more than now.
Privately, he must have felt the same as us. He too couldn't have failed to think about his family, or what the people of Spain would be making of his side's battering.
Here he was, still struggling with his English, trying to instruct us to achieve the impossible.
“Good luck,” I thought to myself.
He showed few signs of emotion as he explained his changes, but the speed with which he made a series of tactical switches showed how sharp he still was.
First, he told Traore to get into the shower. That was the polite code for telling a player he's being subbed.
Djibril Cisse was told he'd be coming on to play on the right side and was already getting kitted out.
As Djimi removed his shirt, an argument was brewing between Steve Finnan and our physio Dave Galley. Finnan had damaged a groin and Dave told Rafa he thought he should be subbed.
Finn was distraught and pleaded to stay on. Rafa wouldn't budge.
“We've only two subs left because we've already lost Kewell with an injury,” he explained. “I can't afford to make two now, and if you stay on I've lost my last sub.”
Traore was told to put his kit back on.
Then, as if struck by a moment of clarity, Benitez made an abrupt decision.
“Hamann will replace Finnan and we'll play 3-5-2,” he explained, displaying an assured conviction in his voice which, temporarily at least, gave me confidence.
“Pirlo is running the game from midfield, so I want Luis and Stevie to play around him and outnumber them in the middle so he can't pass the ball.”
The swiftness of this decision confirmed to me he may have considered this formation earlier. The same set-up had worked in Turin, although that had been a purely defensive strategy.
“OK,” part of me was thinking, “forty-five minutes too late, but we got there in the end.” Given the circumstances, it was still a brave move.
With both Cisse and Hamann now preparing to come on, there was only one problem.
“Rafa, I think we've 12 players out there now.”
Djibril would have to wait a while longer for his introduction.
When we emerged from our desolate dressing room, I wasn't encouraged by the look of steely determination on the face of Maldini as he led his side back out.
There were claims after the match of premature celebrations in the Milan camp at half-time.
I was upset on their behalf by that pack of lies. Traore gave an interview after the game suggesting the Italians were cocky at 3-0, but I think he was naive in his answers and it was twirled into a fairy story by the newspapers.
It simply didn't happen. Milan were far too professional for that. There was no way their captain, with all his experience, was going to allow anyone in his dressing room to take victory for granted.
Nothing I saw suggested Milan were already popping champagne. I have too much respect for them even to suggest it.
Even if they did, privately, believe they had both hands on the cup, who could blame them?
As I headed back into the arena, I was sure Milan were going to win, so were the forty thousand Scousers in Istanbul, so why shouldn't they have believed it?
I could hear “You'll Never Walk Alone” in the distance, and as I exited the tunnel it grew louder. It wasn't the usual version of our anthem, though.
There are different moments when The Kop summons Gerry Marsden's classic. Before every home game it's a deafening rallying cry, as if to inspire us to perform and frighten our opponents into submission.
If we're winning in the closing stages of a huge match, it will be sung again, this time in celebration.
But there are other occasions the words of the song have greater meaning, and at half-time in Istanbul the fans were singing it in sympathy more than belief.
There was a slow, sad sound to it, almost as if it was being sung as a hymn. The fans were certainly praying on our behalf.
To me, it was the supporters' way of saying, “We're still proud of what you've done, we're still with you, so don't let your heads drop.”
There was probably a hint of a warning in there too, as the walk back to my position felt like a guilt trip: “Don't let us down any more than you already have.”
Our coach Alex Miller's final instructions at half time were for us to “score a goal for those fans”.
That was the mindset we had. Get one and pride might be restored.
* This was from 'Carra: My Autobiography'.
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*This was what Mr. Rafael thought and did during half-time.
"I walked into the dressing room rehearsing what I was going to say to them but also how I was going to say it," he said. "It's really difficult to come up with all the things you want to say in a foreign language. I was trying to find the right English words.
"We talked about what we were going to change. It's tough enough motivating a team which is losing 3-0 in Spanish. In English, it is much, much tougher.
"But the words came more easily than I could ever have hoped. The important aspect was to lift their spirits.
"I started with a motivational speech to get them fired up. I demanded they start working again and emphasised there were 45 minutes left and we had to come off the pitch proud of ourselves because we'd done everything in our power.
"So I reminded them it had been a hard battle to reach such a massive game and that we owed something important to all the Liverpool people. I said if we scored we would totally change the course of the game. I emphasised it was the most important challenge.
"I said: 'Don't let your heads drop. We're Liverpool. You're playing for Liverpool. Don't forget that. You have to hold your heads high for the supporters. You have to do it for them.
'You can't call yourselves Liverpool players if you have your heads down. If we create a few chances we have the possibility of getting back into this. Believe you can do it and you will. Give yourself the chance to be heroes'."
It was a chance that was gloriously, unforgettably taken and Benitez broke open the secrets of his finest moment in A Season On The Brink, a new authorised account of his first term at Anfield, by distinguished Spanish journalist Guillem Balague.
But the Liverpool chief told how even after he had given the exhortation that changed everything, his plans were enmeshed in a few minutes of sheer chaos.
Benitez wanted to introduce Didi Hamann and told Djimi Traore he was coming off - but then learned Steve Finnan's injury was too bad for him to continue.
Benitez added: "I started to write the new formation on the board. I told Traore to get changed and that Hamann was coming on for him. The idea was for Hamann to make Kaka's life much tougher.
"I took Didi up to the whiteboard so he understood what I wanted and explained the tactical changes to the rest of the side. Then I was told Finnan was injured.
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i read carra's one and was wowed. i want to read more man.. i think i'ma getting the book.. but maybe stevie's one instead.