2001 Uefa Cup last 16, 1st leg Roma 0-2 Liverpool
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOvsW8abLJc
"That's when we first thought we could do something special" - Jamie Carragher
For Liverpool fans of my generation, Europe was a place where we went to get embarrassed.
No glory for us boys and girls born in the early 80s. No memories. No pride.
All we knew about Europe was that we ruled it during a certain time and we were banned from it for a few years. Now, it was just a place where we went to be reminded that those days of greatness were long.
In the 90s, after our isolation was ended by Uefa, we were eliminated from European competition by the likes of Genoa, Spartak Moscow, Brondby, PSG, Strasbourg and Celta Vigo. Some of them had good teams (Vigo especially), but there wasn’t a single footballing powerhouse there. They were all teams that the old Liverpool teams, the ones we were told tales about, would have put away in their sleep.
But the Liverpool teams of the 90s didn’t. On the contrary, they were routinely embarrassed. Genoa, Moscow, Brondby and Vigo beat us at Anfield while we lost 3-0 in France to PSG and Strasbourg in successive seasons.
So I spent my teenage years jealous. Jealous of those who witnessed the golden era of Liverpool Football club and jealous of our rivals, Manchester United, who’d regularly compete in the latter stages of the Champions League (and even win it in 1999) while we suffered our annual early exit from the Uefa or Cup Winners Cups.
But in 2001, in Rome all that changed.
For the first time in my life, Liverpool won a big game away from home in Europe, against a European powerhouse. Roma had their best team in 20 odd years, led by the majestic Gabriel Batistuta and managed by Fabio Capelo.
But the Reds prevailed, winning 2-0 with 2 Michael Owen goal. For the younger readers of this blog, yes, that’s the same Michael Owen that now plays, or rather, doesn’t play for Manchester United. Back in his purer, younger days, Owen was an assassin in front of goals and his ice cool finishing brought us a step closer to the quarter finals.
In the side that day were Sami Hyypia, Jamie Carragher and Didi Hamann. They, along with the injured Steven Gerrard, formed the cornerstone of the Liverpool team that , 4 years later, would win it’s first European Cup in 21 years.
The Reds would never look back.
We’d end up winning that season’s Uefa Cup, beating Porto and Barcelona in the process. The next year, we’d beat Roma again to reach the quarter finals of the Champions League. A trophy we would win in 2005, besting AC Milan in an epic final after having gone through Italian champions Juventus and English champions Chelsea.
During the next few years of the Champions League, we’d play and eliminate the likes of Barcelona, PSV, Chelsea again, Arsenal, Inter Milan, and Real Madrid. A who’s who of 21st century European football.
We’d get to a final, a semi final and a quarter final of the world’s top club competition. We won in the Nou Camp, the San Siro and the Bernabeu. We inflicted on the mythical Real Madrid their worst defeat in Europe for 20 years. We rose from the dead more times than Lazarus.
My generation finally had its moment in the sun. We now knew what older fans meant when they spoke about conquering Europe. We finally had our trips to exotic cities for European Cup finals. We had our memories. We had, once again, dreams and songs to sing.
But it wouldn’t have been possible without Rome. That’s the moment when the Reds came out of the doldrums. That’s when a young team laid their first mark on a new century. Its where, for the first time in a decade, the Reds believed they could dine at the table of European Superpowers once again. And without that belief, that conviction that the past could be relived- then the future would have never happened.
Comments