The 2016 Europa League gave Jurgen Klopp a second chance of silverware in his first season. Before the defeat to Man City in the League Cup final at Wembley, Liverpool had beaten Augsburg at home to go through to the last 16 against Manchester United in what was dubbed “The mother of all games” by the Echo newspaper. There were signs that Daniel Sturridge and Philippe Coutinho were putting the band from 2014 back together with Roberto Firmino and Divock Origi replacing Luis Suarez and Raheem Sterling. The first leg signalled the return of the great European nights at Anfield. Sturridge and Firmino scored in a 2 nil win. Martial scored early at Old Trafford but Coutinho equalised on the stroke of half time to send Liverpool through to face Klopp’s former side Borussia Dortmund. Origi got the crucial away goal in the 1-1 draw at Westfalonstadion, scene of our UEFA Cup final victory in 2001. It was beautifully set up for the second leg and I was going to be there.
I took my mate over with me. We flew from Belfast to Manchester and got the train over to Liverpool. We were dreaming of one of those European nights we could tell our kids about. “St. Etienne” was repeating over and over in my head. I wasn’t even a year old on that famous night and there have been many great nights under the lights since then but "Chelsea" doesn’t sound as romantic as St. Etienne. We were staying down at the docks and got the bus up to the ground from Liverpool One. It was funny looking at the disdain on the faces of the German fans as they watched British people trying to get on a bus without forming an orderly queue. It ended up looking like the 3 stooges syndrome in The Simpsons, everyone trying to get through the door at once resulting in no one getting through. I’d witnessed this on a daily basis at university many years before and thought it was a local problem but clearly it was more widespread. We eventually got onboard and made our way up through the streets. We got out about half a mile from the ground and walked the last bit as the crowd made it impossible for the bus to get any closer. We wanted to be there to welcome the team bus. This had become a tradition when the club were close to winning something. The streets outside the King Harry pub up towards the Anfield Road were packed with home supporters urging our team to bring back the glory days. Red flares, fireworks and red smoke bombs went off as the Liverpool bus went past. People climbed up on lamp posts, trees and rooftops just to let the players and manager see how much we wanted them to win this game. It was an incredible sight and sound. We walked back out onto the Walton Breck Road to get into the stadium at the Kop. Behind us the noise exploded again as the yellow and black opposition bus funnelled through. I heard a little local lad ask his mum “Who’s in that bus?” she told him it was the other team to which the little lad asked “Everton?”. I like getting in early to watch the warm ups, my mate was looking a pub. I told him he’d get a drink in the ground and we went on in only to discover alcohol isn’t served at evening games. We took our seats bang in the the middle of the Kop. The Dortmund fans were already in and making lots of noise. As the rest of the ground filled up, the tide turned. The away end was drowned out. There was a mosaic to mark the 27th anniversary of Hillsborough and at least ten defiant extra choruses of You’ll Never Walk Alone then the game was underway. Football stadiums are now all seater because of the Hillsborough disaster but no one was sitting on their seats on the Kop for this one. The top of the back of the seat in front of you is between knee and ankle height and it never feels that safe to me. We were also sitting in the wrong seats and the real owner wasn’t pleased. Bloody day-trippers! We only had to move back one row and I was now stood beside the steps. Liverpool were two down inside 10 minutes as Dortmund ran riot. Mkhitaryan, Aubameyang and Reus reminded Klopp what he’d left behind when he quit the club a year earlier. Two nil at half time didn’t feel like an insurmountable lead but still, if we were going to go through, it was going to take something special. YNWA was belted out again. Origi scored early in the second half after Can cut through the middle of Dortmund. Here we go. Reus made it 3-1 on the night to briefly take the wind out of our sails. Coutinho played a one-two with Milner at the edge of the box and fired a low curler into the far corner. You could feel it building, that certain je ne sais quoi of a great European night at Anfield. Sakho nodded in to make it 3-3 with just over ten minutes to go. The noise was now deafening and there was a feeling of being swept along by a wave of unstoppable energy. “LIV-ERPOOL, LIV-ERPOOL, LIV-ERPOOL”. It didn’t matter how long was left, there was only going to be one winner here. They made us wait though. The deciding goal came deep into injury time. Milner and Sturridge combined on the right, Milner hung a cross up to the back post, the crowd, as one, held our breath and Dejan Lovren rose to head the ball into the top corner. Anfield exhaled noise and celebration the likes of which you only get to experience on great European nights like these. Lovren ran to the corner in front of the Kop where six of the seven goals had been scored and did a flying karate kick before being mobbed by team mates and fans. I stopped for a second and looked around the stadium, 7/8’s of it were going absolutely ballistic. I embraced a man I didn’t know across the aisle from me. A lad came tumbling down the steps beside us, tripped by the back of the seat in front of him no doubt. He stopped tumbling about 10 steps below where I was stood and didn’t move. I ran down to see if he was ok. I helped him up. He looked a bit stunned then he started jumping up and down again, hugged me, screamed “COME ON” and disappeared back up the steps. The game ended. Dortmund didn’t know what had happened as they trudged off the pitch. The travelling Yellow Wall had been bulldozed. Klopp took his heroes to the Kop as he had done to celebrate a late equaliser in a 2-2 draw with West Brom at Christmas and had been widely ridiculed for it. He was preparing us all for nights like this. DJ George put on The Beatles because you can’t have nights like this without the Fab Four. When we all finally made our way out of the stadium, half an hour after the game ended, I watched old men, who probably thought they’d seen it all, meet beneath the Kop. They laughed and hugged as they recounted how they saw it, from the different parts of the stand they were in.
The bus back into town was quiet as everyone sat in peaceful reflection of what they’d just experienced. In town, the Dortmund fans were magnanimous in defeat. “What did you think of the power of Anfield?” I asked one, “It was the power of Jurgen Klopp” he replied. Liverpool of course went on to lose the final against Sevilla. It wasn’t so much St. Etienne more Inter Milan in 1965 or Chelsea in 2007. Like those other classic games in Liverpool history, we can just say “Dortmund” now. Another one of those famous nights when the football fuelled the fans and the fans fuelled the football.
Comments
Post a Comment