Kop's fervour inspires Liverpool
By Tim Rich
Last Updated: 1:09am BST 13/04/2007
If there is one near-certainty when Chelsea and Liverpool meet in the Champions League for the third successive season, it is that it will not be a fixture stuffed with goals.
In six hours of European football, the two teams have produced just the one - Luis Garcia's "ghost goal" at Anfield that has never been formally accepted by Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho. This is a match that is likely to be won by small degrees.
Mourinho has another name for Garcia's goal that deprived him of the honour of managing two different clubs in successive European Cup finals - "the crowd's goal" he called it, and with justice.
If there is one advantage Liverpool hold it is that the second leg - as in 2005 - will be played at Anfield. "You can use the memories of two years ago as motivation," Liverpool midfielder Xabi Alonso said. "But our squad and theirs have changed a lot since then. There will be a lot of new players who weren't involved in those games.
"But what will be the same is the passion and the commitment of both teams, and of our supporters. It will be a big factor. We felt the power of the Anfield crowd two years ago, and again against Barcelona this season. There is no doubt this is a big advantage for us. I am not sure what effect the crowd will have on them, but I do know it makes a big difference to us."
The importance of a crowd can often be overstated. Before Manchester United kicked off against Roma on Tuesday night, the public address announcer attempted to whip Old Trafford into the same frenzy that had gripped the Olympic Stadium in the first leg. It sounded rather fake and plastic. What actually inspired the Stretford End and reduced Roma to an incoherent mess was the jaw-dropping quality of United's football, of a kind that no other English club could have produced.
Whether it is the people who fill the stands or the design of the stadium, there is something unique about the sound of Anfield at full voice - and it is something that, however hard the designers try, will be lost when Liverpool quit the ground. The Roker Roar never transferred to Sunderland's Stadium of Light.
From the moment Bill Shankly paraded the FA Cup to the Kop minutes before they kicked off their European Cup semi-final with Inter Milan in May 1965, the crowd is something Liverpool managers have known how to exploit.
Those who were there, including an 11-year-old Phil Thompson, thought the ground vibrated, just as it seemed to against Chelsea 40 years later. Both Inter and Chelsea conceded after four minutes - and nobody disputed Roger Hunt's volley. Liverpool won 3-1, but did not make the 1965 final; for reasons Shankly was loath to admit, they could not handle the atmosphere of the San Siro in the second leg.
The quarter-final with St Etienne in 1977, when Liverpool scrambled two late goals to win in the last match John Toshack and Kevin Keegan played together, still sets a benchmark for noise. The emotion that accompanied Gerard Houllier's return to the touchline against Roma after recovering from heart surgery appeared at the time to be a decisive factor.
But there are reasons on the pitch why Liverpool might feel confident of a third cup semi-final victory over Chelsea in successive years. So many of that 2005 squad were considered not good enough by their manager, Rafael Benitez. Now he simply has better players. Craig Bellamy, who was carried off with a knee ligament injury against PSV Eindhoven on Wednesday, is likely to be back for the first leg at Stamford Bridge.
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