Liverpool AC Milan Champions League final 2005: Is this the greatest comeback in world football? Down 3 goals Liverpool fights back to tie the game and win in penalty kicks. Take a look at the incredible comeback by Liverpool in highlights below. Liverpool fans didn’t give up even when they were losing by three goals.
“What happened next has become the stuff of legend in Liverpool. As the teams left the soccer field for the fifteen-minute interval, it was hard to tell which team was losing. The supporters at the Liverpool end of the Atatürk Stadium defiantly held their scarves aloft, serenading their heroes with hymns of praise and the spine-tingling ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone.’” You might have to click over to YouTube to watch the highlights.
Relive Liverpool’s incredible comeback victory over Milan in the 2005 UEFA Champions League final in Istanbul. Liverpool midfielder Steven Gerrard was named man of the match after the game. I’d like to see video of Rafa Benitez’s halftime speech to the Liverpool players. How did he get his team to keep fighting and not give up. The team and Rafa are legends now in Liverpool for what is now know as Miracle of Istanbul.
Goal scorers in the run of play:
AC Milan:
Maldini 1′
Crespo 39′, 44′
Liverpool:
Gerrard 54′
Šmicer 56′
Alonso 61′
Penalties
Serginho – miss
Pirlo – miss
Tomasson – made
Kaka – made
Shevchenko – miss
Hamann – made
Cisse – made
Riise – miss
Smicer – made
One controversy that remains from the Liverpool versus AC Milan Champions League final is during the penalty shootout. As AC Milan’s Pirlo steps up to take Milan’s second penalty kick, Dudek is clearly at least four yards off his line.
Here is some of what Rafa said at halftime to his players from Goal.com
“The message we gave to the players was about confidence — try to score early, get back in the game. That was the main thing.
“In other circumstances or with smaller teams, perhaps you might be looking at damage limitation because you don’t want to concede four or five goals but this was a final.
“You have to go for it. And then, depending on what happens in the first few minutes, you make decisions. Again, we did it.”