Normal one meets abnormal one

If Liverpool hadn’t come back from the dead to perform ‘The Miracle Of Istanbul’ in 2005, a lot of my friends or perhaps, more accurately, former friends, would have been mercifully spared my patented ‘Did you know I was there?’ juggernaut riff, a sort of journalistic equivalent of ‘Smoke On The Water’. If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times. And, trust me, you’ll hear it again. (Still, it could be worse for the hearers – imagine if I lived in Milan).

But if the Italian side hadn’t surrendered their three-nil half-time lead in scarcely believable circumstances that night, well, no matter, like any good pro I’d simply have altered my personal greatest hits set-list to give prominence instead to the semi-final of one month before, when Liverpool knocked Chelsea out of the competition through Luis Garcia’s ‘phantom goal’ in Anfield.

Yep, I was there that night too, and even more than the controversial drama on the pitch, what lives longest in the memory is how ferociously intense the atmosphere was, beginning with a pre-match rendition of ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ which was sung with such an almost desperate passion, that it felt more like a seismic event than a ritual anthem.