'Win? We feared a 6-0 thrashing'
By Roy Collins
History, as we know, is written by the winners and in football, it would seem that the victorious also control the imagery. Thus the most abiding images of the 2005 Champions League final in Istanbul are of Liverpool goalkeeper Jerzy Dudek's wobbly legs as he became the hero of the penalty shootout against AC Milan, Steven Gerrard leaping to head the goal that launched the great comeback and of he and his team-mates spilling over the victory podium at the end.
All images of Kaka's coruscating, string-pulling performance and Hernan Crespo's two goals that delivered Milan's 3-0 first-half lead appear to have been airbrushed from history. And those TV shots of hundreds of Liverpool fans leaving at half-time have probably long been consigned to the cutting room floor.
No amount of spin, however, can airbrush a player's mind and as he prepares for the rematch in Wednesday's final in Athens, Jamie Carragher cannot purge more painful images and emotions of that game, the most poignant remaining his utter desolation when Milan's third goal went in. He says: "I've seen a picture from the centre circle of me and Stevie [Gerrard] behind each other and you can see in our faces there is nothing there, just total dejection."
The other great myth of that game is of the destiny-changing half-time team talk. Sure Liverpool manager Rafa Benitez reshaped his tactics by bringing on Dietmar Hamann to revoke Kaka's licence to roam, though his hand was forced by an injury to Steve Finnan. Sure Liverpool's team spirit allowed them to pervert the course of justice and make European history. But if Milan were guilty of over-celebrating at half-time, Liverpool's players shared their belief that the contest was over.
Carragher, 29, says: "People always ask what happened at half-time and they want to hear you say that we were all lunatics, all believing we could still win. But I was fearing that it was going to be five or six, that we were going to be embarrassed, the way Milan were playing, and at the start of the second half, if anyone was going to score, it was them. If you watch the whole game, Milan were great but it was just something crazy that happens in football, six crazy minutes of whatever you want to call it, great for us, a nightmare for them."
Thanks to those memories, Liverpool are as much on a mission of redemption as Milan, desperate not to return to such a dressing room of despair at half-time. Carragher believes that the Champions League final surpasses even the World Cup final for football quality but the mystery is still how Liverpool can reach the pinnacle twice in three years, beating Chelsea in two-legged semi-finals on both occasions, while struggling to land a glove on them in the Premiership. He provides an interesting answer: "I think the difference for us is that Europe is a thinking game. If you look through our team, you don't see all-powerful, pacey players. What you see are a lot of clever players. We don't have any [Didier] Drogba or [Michael] Essien and I think you need that for 38 games, you need people with that physical power. I think we need more strength or pace or whatever it is to keep winning over a Premiership season."
Carragher has been one of the outstanding defenders in the Premiership and the Champions League this season and if he had been christened Giuseppe Carraghi, he would now be hailed as a world legend. Remarkable, then, that it was only two seasons ago that Benitez gave him a permanent role at the heart of defence. Before that, he filled in at right-back, left-back and the midfield holding role, even starting his career as a painfully thin striker.
He says: "People say I'm a tough player, that I put my foot through the ball but when the other guy is too strong for you, you can't really get involved in a fight. I learned that when I was about 14. I was a skinny striker and I'd be running around trying to kick centre-backs at the FA school of excellence in Lilleshall until the coach told me, 'Don't fight with people bigger than you. That's just stupid.' You've got to use your brain."
Hard to believe now, but he adds: "I was a late developer and by the time I was 16 and 17, training with the reserves and the first team, I got knocked about because I wasn't strong enough." He's grown into a defensive colossus, a man fit to be mentioned in the same breath as the defensive heroes he worshipped in the Milan side that won the European Cup in 1989 and 1990, a team that also included current manager Carlo Ancelotti.
Carragher says: "I think they are as good a club side as I've ever seen. Normally, you get teams who are great attacking teams but not so good at the back or the other way round.
"With Ruud Gullit and Marco Van Basten, that team had the lot going forward, yet they also had [Franco] Baresi, [Alessandro] Costacurta and [Paolo] Maldini to sort it out at the back. If you were picking a World XI of all time, you'd probably have Baresi and Maldini in it, which shows how good they were." Were? Earlier this season, Costacurta became the oldest man to play in the Champions League at 40 years and 211 days and Maldini, 39 next month, will be seeking his fifth European Cup in Athens.
Carragher simply felt that old when he collapsed in front of his family at the end of the game in Istanbul. The family will be out in force again this week. How many? "All the crowd who normally get locked up at England games," he says.
A Week in Football: Family values keep the big match in proportion
By Roy Collina
If there is one Liverpool player who will keep a sense of perspective in Athens this week, whatever the outcome of the Champions League final, it is striker Dick Kuyt, whose father Gerrit is battling against cancer and is too ill to travel to the game.
Kuyt says: "The travelling would be too much for him, as well as all the walking he would have to do.
"So he will watch the game in my home in Liverpool and, hopefully, we can bring the cup back and I can celebrate with him.
"The hardest thing for me was when I came over to sign for Liverpool when my dad was just days away from a big operation because we are very close.
"It is not a big journey from Holland to England but when your father is sick, it's a big difference. When I was playing for Feyenoord, I saw him almost every day. Now that he is a bit better, he comes to all the home games and stays the whole weekend. That means a lot to me."
Gattuso plots final revenge
By Patrick Barclay
Maybe it was the 15 months he spent in Glasgow, in a Rangers dressing-room reverberating to the banter of Ally McCoist, but for an Italian footballer Rino Gattuso is unusually fond of a quip. Asked if he had started to lose sleep over the imminence of the Champions League final, he replied: "Actually, I've just woken up.'' The combative Milan midfielder even joked when questioned about Steven Gerrard's having called him "as scary as a kitten'', fingering his stubbly beard and declaring: "I'm too ugly to be a kitten.'' But then Gattuso became briefly serious. "I think Gerrard is a great player,'' he said. "That is my only answer.''
The only other time his eyes lost their gleam as he entertained the foreign media at the Milanello training centre last week was on the subject of the 2005 final, in which Gattuso and his colleagues let a three-goal lead slip in the second half of normal time before losing to Liverpool on penalties.
Had he ever summoned the courage to watch a recording of the match? "You used the right word in 'courage','' said Gattuso with a rueful smile. "No, I've never watched the whole match. Just parts of it.'' Losing was bound to hurt, especially losing in the way Milan did. "But what hurt more than losing was the lies that have been told about it.'' And later he explained why.
It was, of course, to do with Gerrard's acclaimed biography, in which the Liverpool captain asserted: "Gattuso just plays for the fans. Emotional. Theatrical - the one Milan player who had a smirk on his face leaving the pitch at half-time. I saw it. **** you. A couple of other Milan players waved at their fans and family. That disgusted me. So did Pirlo's nutmeg just before half-time. Disrespectful. OK, Milan were battering us, but you never behave like that to opponents. Never.''
Now we have no means of independently checking whether Gattuso celebrated prematurely or not, although when I read the reference to Andrea Pirlo's nutmeg it did strike me as suspiciously partial, given the identically impudent trick Gerrard himself played on his then clubmate Didi Hamann during England's 5-1 thrashing of Germany in Munich in 2001.
Perhaps we should be accustomed, after the rash of autobiographies by England players that followed the last World Cup, to this new form of indignantly selective argument. As a recently retired player of some distinction told me with a sigh: "It's how they get themselves up these days.''
But I still think life is too short for it and do not blame Gattuso for his lingering ire, which he tried so hard to conceal behind praise for Gerrard before defending himself: "Anyone who knows me knows I know football well enough to be aware anything can happen in 45 minutes. Milan are a serious, experienced team. We would not celebrate a win at half-time. But maybe these stories help to sell copies of autobiographies.''
Although Milan would not have begun this Serie A season with an eight-point handicap had the club been angelic to the core, the players are indeed brought up on a winning mentality: one which the captain of Liverpool, of all people, should not fail to recognise and acknowledge.
"I think it's in the club's DNA,'' said the 29-year-old Gattuso, who came from Salernitana in 1999. "When I entered Milanello for the first time, I saw pictures of people like Baresi, Gullit and Van Basten who had won a lot. We went through a bad spell, but over the last few years we've restored respect for the club.''
Just like Liverpool. And, just like Liverpool, in the Champions League above all; no wonder Gattuso took such offence at the accusation of dilettante behaviour in a final.
How did he look back on 2005 and the Liverpool recovery stirringly begun by Gerrard? "There were six minutes of madness,'' said Gattuso, "six terrible minutes for us.'' But the forthcoming rematch was too big to be about revenge. Nor was it about any obligation on him to subdue Gerrard. "It's 11 v 11 and we also have Massimo Ambrosini in the midfield.'' But we all saw how Gattuso's departure with an injury during the semi-final at Old Trafford invited Manchester United to start expressing themselves - and his frenzied delight when Sir Alex Ferguson's team were subsequently outplayed at San Siro.
He was happy to accept his value as a nuisance, partly ascribing it to his Calabrian roots: "The whole of the South has that fighting spirit, because of our history [it was once colonised by the Greeks]. Our passion, the fire in our belly, comes from that. One of my early heroes in football was Salvatore Bagni at Napoli. He wasn't technically strong but had a big heart and in my dreams I wanted to be a player who others saw and thought, 'My God, Gattuso, he never stops running. Mamma Mia, look how that guy can run. It's scary.' By that I don't mean opponents should be afraid of me - but I do like them to know I'll play with a lot of intensity.
Tiger's revenge
Rino Gattuso is the snarling driving force in a Milan side that is desperate to put the record straight
Ian Hawkey, European football correspondent
Gennaro Gattuso had considered the questions and settled on answers. Should the name Jerzy Dudek come up, he’d simply ask: “Who’s he?” Liverpool? “The home of the Beatles.” Istanbul? “The major city in Turkey.” His policy would be to erect a road-block if anybody tried to invite him down the 2005 memory lane.
When it came to it, though, a few days ahead of an evocative Champions League final reunion of AC Milan and Liverpool, Gattuso could not quite help himself.
The smart-arse responses set out in his new autobiography were not the ones with which he chose to confront ghosts. Dudek? If he sees the penalty saviour of two years ago, he’ll greet him with “congratulations” grinned Gattuso. And when he shakes Steven Gerrard’s hand, he will acknowledge “a great player” if a man whose recall of Istanbul does not quite tally with his own. Gattuso has been made aware that a “disgusted” Gerrard wrote a book that referred to the Italian being “one Milan player who had a smirk on his face leaving the pitch at half-time” of the Champions League drama of 2005.
“**** you, you hairy little ****” thought Gerrard to himself. By the end of penalties Liverpool had turned the 3-0 interval deficit into victory. Gattuso, for the record, disputes Gerrard’s account: “The thing that upsets me most is the lies about what happened at half-time,” he says. “There had been no premature celebration. Anybody who knows me knows I know football well enough to know anything can happen in 45 minutes. Milan are a serious, experienced team. We would not celebrate a win at half-time. But maybe these stories help sell copies of autobiographies.” Touché.
Gattuso also laughed on being reminded that Gerrard thought him overrated as a footballer and had called him a “kitten”. Gattuso liked the sound of it: in Italian the words gattino - a baby cat - and Gattuso share the same sentence rather lyrically: “But I’d make an ugly kitten, with my beard.” Gattuso seems to enjoy the stereotype of his own inelegance, his earthiness, his removal from the idea of the pin-up. He admits to some awe when he trains with colleagues such as Ronaldo, Kaka and Andrea Pirlo because of their precise control. Gerrard’s observation - “I’ve never seen Gattuso play a killer ball” - may be widely shared, though the Liverpool captain’s notion that a “theatrical, emotional” Gattuso “just plays for the fans” would not find much of a hearing around Milanello, his club’s retreat.
Theatrical, yes; appreciated: hugely. “He talks a lot in the dressing-room,” the Milan captain, Paolo Maldini, said, adding affectionately, “sometimes too much. But we’re actually a good mixture of the quieter types and the noisy ones.” After Maldini retires, an event first scheduled for sometime in the mid1990s, Gattuso could inherit the armband. Maldini and Kaka apart, Gattuso’s not-so-feline face may even have become this Milan team’s most recognisable one.
As captain, he would not have to play so hard the role of cheerleader. Watching him wheel around his arms at the fans in the San Siro like some creature from WWE wrestling is to understand why opponents find him a showy irritant. Gattuso explains it as a sort of genetic hyperactivity. “I’ve tried to be calm, to live without adrenaline. The doctor tells me: ‘Tranquillo, tranquillo,’ but I can’t do that. I bite my nails, I’m always full of adrenaline. I’m human, and you have to lose your cool now and again. I like to make a racket, to live every moment intensely. Even at home playing with Gabriella, my daughter, my wife tells me, ‘Don’t forget she’s a little girl, not a boy!’ I like to muck around, and it’s good for kids to make a racket. That’s what I did in my childhood.”
Little “Rino” Gattuso spent his childhood in Calabria. On a map of Italy, Calabria makes the sole of the boot. Gattuso reckons he’s very Calabrese. He occasionally uses the insulting term “terrone” (somewhere between “bogtrotter” and “peasant”) on himself. In his career he will have heard that word spat at him viciously, as a southerner, from grandstands in the north of the country. His strong sense of region, he thinks, made it easier for him to fit in in Scotland, where he spent a season as a young man with Rangers. Paul Gascoigne became a friend, and while a regular diner at one Italian restaurant in the city, Gattuso fell in love with the daughter of the proprietor. They married and Gabriella’s mother, Monica, is a Scot.
Gattuso’s father, says his son, had been a footballer of reasonable renown locally. He was also an obsessive. “He never stops, mentally much worse than me like that. His mind is always working, always trying to do something new. I get my personality from him because when he played he just couldn’t stand losing. He couldn’t even lose at cards. But the whole of the south has this sort of fighting spirit, because of our history.”
Fiery Ringhio - Snarler - Gattuso from Calabria gives Milan something unique. Maldini specifies it: “He’s vitally important to our pressing in midfield.” For most of his Milan career he has been accompanied in midfield by three players with outstanding creative capabilities: Pirlo, Clarence Seedorf and Kaka. The first two regain possession as well as capitalise on it, but in the overall equilibrium of Milan’s football, Gattuso’s energy plays a vital part. He will happily quantify it. In his book, you keep seeing references to how much he runs: 13km per game, he reports. He lists his assets as “the lung power to go from Milan to Corigliano and back, the feet of a marathon runner, fisherman’s hands and the look of a mastiff”.
On his right fisherman’s forearm he wears the word “Champion”, tattooed there after Milan’s victory in the 2003 Champions League. The 2007 version marks Gattuso’s third such final in five years. Milan have a Champions League final habit unmatched by anybody this century. “It’s in the DNA of this club,” says Gattuso. “When I arrived, I entered Milanello on the first day and saw pictures of people such as Franco Baresi, Ruud Gullit and Marco van Basten. They had won a lot. We have been through one bad spell but over the past few years we’ve restored respect for the club.”
Would a win in Athens restore respect for Italian football, disgraced by scandal very recently? “Do we really still have to prove anything on behalf of calcio? We’re the world champions. What do we have to do now: go to the moon? Scandals happen all over the world.”
Would a triumph in Athens exorcise Istanbul? “I’ve always refused to watch that final again in full. Of course, I’ll always have that memory, no matter how many finals we win. In a way it can help us now by giving us even more determination to win.” But please, he smiles, no penalties. Gattuso will not be first in the queue for those. He looks down at his feet, slightly splayed. “These feet weren’t made for taking penalty kicks.”
Plans of attack: how Gattuso and Gerrard will be key figures in Athens this week
The Kaka threat
Kaka is the Milan dangerman but Liverpool manager Rafa Benitez says he will not be man-marking the Brazilian. Instead, it will be up to one of the Liverpool midfielders to pick up his runs. Rino Gattuso, Milan’s midfield terrier, will try to win possesssion and feed Andrea Pirlo. It is the Milan playmaker who will then play the killer ball behind the Liverpool defence for Kaka to run on to
Leave it to Steve
Milan’s defence is solid, experienced and very difficult to break down. Therefore, Steven Gerrard’s runs from the right side of midfield will be crucial. Dirk Kuyt and Peter Crouch will have little room for manouevre but if they can hold up the ball and play Gerrard into space at the edge of the penalty area, his powerful shooting could pay dividends
The venue
The Athens Olympic stadium may be staging its first major Uefa final since a recent revamp but, as its name suggests, it is no stranger to the big event. Originally constructed for the 1982 European athletics championships, the Spiridon Louis stadium, as it was known, was named after the winner of the first Olympic marathon in the Greek capital in 1896. It hosted its first European Cup final in 1983 when Hamburg beat Juventus 1-0. It also became home to the Athenian clubs Olympiakos, Panathinaikos and, for two seasons, AEK. The stadium was host to its second European Cup final in 1994 when AC Milan beat Barcelona 4-0. In 2002 the old stadium was closed and rebuilt as a 71,000-capacity venue for the 2004 Olympics
By Roy Collins
History, as we know, is written by the winners and in football, it would seem that the victorious also control the imagery. Thus the most abiding images of the 2005 Champions League final in Istanbul are of Liverpool goalkeeper Jerzy Dudek's wobbly legs as he became the hero of the penalty shootout against AC Milan, Steven Gerrard leaping to head the goal that launched the great comeback and of he and his team-mates spilling over the victory podium at the end.
All images of Kaka's coruscating, string-pulling performance and Hernan Crespo's two goals that delivered Milan's 3-0 first-half lead appear to have been airbrushed from history. And those TV shots of hundreds of Liverpool fans leaving at half-time have probably long been consigned to the cutting room floor.
No amount of spin, however, can airbrush a player's mind and as he prepares for the rematch in Wednesday's final in Athens, Jamie Carragher cannot purge more painful images and emotions of that game, the most poignant remaining his utter desolation when Milan's third goal went in. He says: "I've seen a picture from the centre circle of me and Stevie [Gerrard] behind each other and you can see in our faces there is nothing there, just total dejection."
The other great myth of that game is of the destiny-changing half-time team talk. Sure Liverpool manager Rafa Benitez reshaped his tactics by bringing on Dietmar Hamann to revoke Kaka's licence to roam, though his hand was forced by an injury to Steve Finnan. Sure Liverpool's team spirit allowed them to pervert the course of justice and make European history. But if Milan were guilty of over-celebrating at half-time, Liverpool's players shared their belief that the contest was over.
Carragher, 29, says: "People always ask what happened at half-time and they want to hear you say that we were all lunatics, all believing we could still win. But I was fearing that it was going to be five or six, that we were going to be embarrassed, the way Milan were playing, and at the start of the second half, if anyone was going to score, it was them. If you watch the whole game, Milan were great but it was just something crazy that happens in football, six crazy minutes of whatever you want to call it, great for us, a nightmare for them."
Thanks to those memories, Liverpool are as much on a mission of redemption as Milan, desperate not to return to such a dressing room of despair at half-time. Carragher believes that the Champions League final surpasses even the World Cup final for football quality but the mystery is still how Liverpool can reach the pinnacle twice in three years, beating Chelsea in two-legged semi-finals on both occasions, while struggling to land a glove on them in the Premiership. He provides an interesting answer: "I think the difference for us is that Europe is a thinking game. If you look through our team, you don't see all-powerful, pacey players. What you see are a lot of clever players. We don't have any [Didier] Drogba or [Michael] Essien and I think you need that for 38 games, you need people with that physical power. I think we need more strength or pace or whatever it is to keep winning over a Premiership season."
Carragher has been one of the outstanding defenders in the Premiership and the Champions League this season and if he had been christened Giuseppe Carraghi, he would now be hailed as a world legend. Remarkable, then, that it was only two seasons ago that Benitez gave him a permanent role at the heart of defence. Before that, he filled in at right-back, left-back and the midfield holding role, even starting his career as a painfully thin striker.
He says: "People say I'm a tough player, that I put my foot through the ball but when the other guy is too strong for you, you can't really get involved in a fight. I learned that when I was about 14. I was a skinny striker and I'd be running around trying to kick centre-backs at the FA school of excellence in Lilleshall until the coach told me, 'Don't fight with people bigger than you. That's just stupid.' You've got to use your brain."
Hard to believe now, but he adds: "I was a late developer and by the time I was 16 and 17, training with the reserves and the first team, I got knocked about because I wasn't strong enough." He's grown into a defensive colossus, a man fit to be mentioned in the same breath as the defensive heroes he worshipped in the Milan side that won the European Cup in 1989 and 1990, a team that also included current manager Carlo Ancelotti.
Carragher says: "I think they are as good a club side as I've ever seen. Normally, you get teams who are great attacking teams but not so good at the back or the other way round.
"With Ruud Gullit and Marco Van Basten, that team had the lot going forward, yet they also had [Franco] Baresi, [Alessandro] Costacurta and [Paolo] Maldini to sort it out at the back. If you were picking a World XI of all time, you'd probably have Baresi and Maldini in it, which shows how good they were." Were? Earlier this season, Costacurta became the oldest man to play in the Champions League at 40 years and 211 days and Maldini, 39 next month, will be seeking his fifth European Cup in Athens.
Carragher simply felt that old when he collapsed in front of his family at the end of the game in Istanbul. The family will be out in force again this week. How many? "All the crowd who normally get locked up at England games," he says.
A Week in Football: Family values keep the big match in proportion
By Roy Collina
If there is one Liverpool player who will keep a sense of perspective in Athens this week, whatever the outcome of the Champions League final, it is striker Dick Kuyt, whose father Gerrit is battling against cancer and is too ill to travel to the game.
Kuyt says: "The travelling would be too much for him, as well as all the walking he would have to do.
"So he will watch the game in my home in Liverpool and, hopefully, we can bring the cup back and I can celebrate with him.
"The hardest thing for me was when I came over to sign for Liverpool when my dad was just days away from a big operation because we are very close.
"It is not a big journey from Holland to England but when your father is sick, it's a big difference. When I was playing for Feyenoord, I saw him almost every day. Now that he is a bit better, he comes to all the home games and stays the whole weekend. That means a lot to me."
Gattuso plots final revenge
By Patrick Barclay
Maybe it was the 15 months he spent in Glasgow, in a Rangers dressing-room reverberating to the banter of Ally McCoist, but for an Italian footballer Rino Gattuso is unusually fond of a quip. Asked if he had started to lose sleep over the imminence of the Champions League final, he replied: "Actually, I've just woken up.'' The combative Milan midfielder even joked when questioned about Steven Gerrard's having called him "as scary as a kitten'', fingering his stubbly beard and declaring: "I'm too ugly to be a kitten.'' But then Gattuso became briefly serious. "I think Gerrard is a great player,'' he said. "That is my only answer.''
The only other time his eyes lost their gleam as he entertained the foreign media at the Milanello training centre last week was on the subject of the 2005 final, in which Gattuso and his colleagues let a three-goal lead slip in the second half of normal time before losing to Liverpool on penalties.
Had he ever summoned the courage to watch a recording of the match? "You used the right word in 'courage','' said Gattuso with a rueful smile. "No, I've never watched the whole match. Just parts of it.'' Losing was bound to hurt, especially losing in the way Milan did. "But what hurt more than losing was the lies that have been told about it.'' And later he explained why.
It was, of course, to do with Gerrard's acclaimed biography, in which the Liverpool captain asserted: "Gattuso just plays for the fans. Emotional. Theatrical - the one Milan player who had a smirk on his face leaving the pitch at half-time. I saw it. **** you. A couple of other Milan players waved at their fans and family. That disgusted me. So did Pirlo's nutmeg just before half-time. Disrespectful. OK, Milan were battering us, but you never behave like that to opponents. Never.''
Now we have no means of independently checking whether Gattuso celebrated prematurely or not, although when I read the reference to Andrea Pirlo's nutmeg it did strike me as suspiciously partial, given the identically impudent trick Gerrard himself played on his then clubmate Didi Hamann during England's 5-1 thrashing of Germany in Munich in 2001.
Perhaps we should be accustomed, after the rash of autobiographies by England players that followed the last World Cup, to this new form of indignantly selective argument. As a recently retired player of some distinction told me with a sigh: "It's how they get themselves up these days.''
But I still think life is too short for it and do not blame Gattuso for his lingering ire, which he tried so hard to conceal behind praise for Gerrard before defending himself: "Anyone who knows me knows I know football well enough to be aware anything can happen in 45 minutes. Milan are a serious, experienced team. We would not celebrate a win at half-time. But maybe these stories help to sell copies of autobiographies.''
Although Milan would not have begun this Serie A season with an eight-point handicap had the club been angelic to the core, the players are indeed brought up on a winning mentality: one which the captain of Liverpool, of all people, should not fail to recognise and acknowledge.
"I think it's in the club's DNA,'' said the 29-year-old Gattuso, who came from Salernitana in 1999. "When I entered Milanello for the first time, I saw pictures of people like Baresi, Gullit and Van Basten who had won a lot. We went through a bad spell, but over the last few years we've restored respect for the club.''
Just like Liverpool. And, just like Liverpool, in the Champions League above all; no wonder Gattuso took such offence at the accusation of dilettante behaviour in a final.
How did he look back on 2005 and the Liverpool recovery stirringly begun by Gerrard? "There were six minutes of madness,'' said Gattuso, "six terrible minutes for us.'' But the forthcoming rematch was too big to be about revenge. Nor was it about any obligation on him to subdue Gerrard. "It's 11 v 11 and we also have Massimo Ambrosini in the midfield.'' But we all saw how Gattuso's departure with an injury during the semi-final at Old Trafford invited Manchester United to start expressing themselves - and his frenzied delight when Sir Alex Ferguson's team were subsequently outplayed at San Siro.
He was happy to accept his value as a nuisance, partly ascribing it to his Calabrian roots: "The whole of the South has that fighting spirit, because of our history [it was once colonised by the Greeks]. Our passion, the fire in our belly, comes from that. One of my early heroes in football was Salvatore Bagni at Napoli. He wasn't technically strong but had a big heart and in my dreams I wanted to be a player who others saw and thought, 'My God, Gattuso, he never stops running. Mamma Mia, look how that guy can run. It's scary.' By that I don't mean opponents should be afraid of me - but I do like them to know I'll play with a lot of intensity.
Tiger's revenge
Rino Gattuso is the snarling driving force in a Milan side that is desperate to put the record straight
Ian Hawkey, European football correspondent
Gennaro Gattuso had considered the questions and settled on answers. Should the name Jerzy Dudek come up, he’d simply ask: “Who’s he?” Liverpool? “The home of the Beatles.” Istanbul? “The major city in Turkey.” His policy would be to erect a road-block if anybody tried to invite him down the 2005 memory lane.
When it came to it, though, a few days ahead of an evocative Champions League final reunion of AC Milan and Liverpool, Gattuso could not quite help himself.
The smart-arse responses set out in his new autobiography were not the ones with which he chose to confront ghosts. Dudek? If he sees the penalty saviour of two years ago, he’ll greet him with “congratulations” grinned Gattuso. And when he shakes Steven Gerrard’s hand, he will acknowledge “a great player” if a man whose recall of Istanbul does not quite tally with his own. Gattuso has been made aware that a “disgusted” Gerrard wrote a book that referred to the Italian being “one Milan player who had a smirk on his face leaving the pitch at half-time” of the Champions League drama of 2005.
“**** you, you hairy little ****” thought Gerrard to himself. By the end of penalties Liverpool had turned the 3-0 interval deficit into victory. Gattuso, for the record, disputes Gerrard’s account: “The thing that upsets me most is the lies about what happened at half-time,” he says. “There had been no premature celebration. Anybody who knows me knows I know football well enough to know anything can happen in 45 minutes. Milan are a serious, experienced team. We would not celebrate a win at half-time. But maybe these stories help sell copies of autobiographies.” Touché.
Gattuso also laughed on being reminded that Gerrard thought him overrated as a footballer and had called him a “kitten”. Gattuso liked the sound of it: in Italian the words gattino - a baby cat - and Gattuso share the same sentence rather lyrically: “But I’d make an ugly kitten, with my beard.” Gattuso seems to enjoy the stereotype of his own inelegance, his earthiness, his removal from the idea of the pin-up. He admits to some awe when he trains with colleagues such as Ronaldo, Kaka and Andrea Pirlo because of their precise control. Gerrard’s observation - “I’ve never seen Gattuso play a killer ball” - may be widely shared, though the Liverpool captain’s notion that a “theatrical, emotional” Gattuso “just plays for the fans” would not find much of a hearing around Milanello, his club’s retreat.
Theatrical, yes; appreciated: hugely. “He talks a lot in the dressing-room,” the Milan captain, Paolo Maldini, said, adding affectionately, “sometimes too much. But we’re actually a good mixture of the quieter types and the noisy ones.” After Maldini retires, an event first scheduled for sometime in the mid1990s, Gattuso could inherit the armband. Maldini and Kaka apart, Gattuso’s not-so-feline face may even have become this Milan team’s most recognisable one.
As captain, he would not have to play so hard the role of cheerleader. Watching him wheel around his arms at the fans in the San Siro like some creature from WWE wrestling is to understand why opponents find him a showy irritant. Gattuso explains it as a sort of genetic hyperactivity. “I’ve tried to be calm, to live without adrenaline. The doctor tells me: ‘Tranquillo, tranquillo,’ but I can’t do that. I bite my nails, I’m always full of adrenaline. I’m human, and you have to lose your cool now and again. I like to make a racket, to live every moment intensely. Even at home playing with Gabriella, my daughter, my wife tells me, ‘Don’t forget she’s a little girl, not a boy!’ I like to muck around, and it’s good for kids to make a racket. That’s what I did in my childhood.”
Little “Rino” Gattuso spent his childhood in Calabria. On a map of Italy, Calabria makes the sole of the boot. Gattuso reckons he’s very Calabrese. He occasionally uses the insulting term “terrone” (somewhere between “bogtrotter” and “peasant”) on himself. In his career he will have heard that word spat at him viciously, as a southerner, from grandstands in the north of the country. His strong sense of region, he thinks, made it easier for him to fit in in Scotland, where he spent a season as a young man with Rangers. Paul Gascoigne became a friend, and while a regular diner at one Italian restaurant in the city, Gattuso fell in love with the daughter of the proprietor. They married and Gabriella’s mother, Monica, is a Scot.
Gattuso’s father, says his son, had been a footballer of reasonable renown locally. He was also an obsessive. “He never stops, mentally much worse than me like that. His mind is always working, always trying to do something new. I get my personality from him because when he played he just couldn’t stand losing. He couldn’t even lose at cards. But the whole of the south has this sort of fighting spirit, because of our history.”
Fiery Ringhio - Snarler - Gattuso from Calabria gives Milan something unique. Maldini specifies it: “He’s vitally important to our pressing in midfield.” For most of his Milan career he has been accompanied in midfield by three players with outstanding creative capabilities: Pirlo, Clarence Seedorf and Kaka. The first two regain possession as well as capitalise on it, but in the overall equilibrium of Milan’s football, Gattuso’s energy plays a vital part. He will happily quantify it. In his book, you keep seeing references to how much he runs: 13km per game, he reports. He lists his assets as “the lung power to go from Milan to Corigliano and back, the feet of a marathon runner, fisherman’s hands and the look of a mastiff”.
On his right fisherman’s forearm he wears the word “Champion”, tattooed there after Milan’s victory in the 2003 Champions League. The 2007 version marks Gattuso’s third such final in five years. Milan have a Champions League final habit unmatched by anybody this century. “It’s in the DNA of this club,” says Gattuso. “When I arrived, I entered Milanello on the first day and saw pictures of people such as Franco Baresi, Ruud Gullit and Marco van Basten. They had won a lot. We have been through one bad spell but over the past few years we’ve restored respect for the club.”
Would a win in Athens restore respect for Italian football, disgraced by scandal very recently? “Do we really still have to prove anything on behalf of calcio? We’re the world champions. What do we have to do now: go to the moon? Scandals happen all over the world.”
Would a triumph in Athens exorcise Istanbul? “I’ve always refused to watch that final again in full. Of course, I’ll always have that memory, no matter how many finals we win. In a way it can help us now by giving us even more determination to win.” But please, he smiles, no penalties. Gattuso will not be first in the queue for those. He looks down at his feet, slightly splayed. “These feet weren’t made for taking penalty kicks.”
Plans of attack: how Gattuso and Gerrard will be key figures in Athens this week
The Kaka threat
Kaka is the Milan dangerman but Liverpool manager Rafa Benitez says he will not be man-marking the Brazilian. Instead, it will be up to one of the Liverpool midfielders to pick up his runs. Rino Gattuso, Milan’s midfield terrier, will try to win possesssion and feed Andrea Pirlo. It is the Milan playmaker who will then play the killer ball behind the Liverpool defence for Kaka to run on to
Leave it to Steve
Milan’s defence is solid, experienced and very difficult to break down. Therefore, Steven Gerrard’s runs from the right side of midfield will be crucial. Dirk Kuyt and Peter Crouch will have little room for manouevre but if they can hold up the ball and play Gerrard into space at the edge of the penalty area, his powerful shooting could pay dividends
The venue
The Athens Olympic stadium may be staging its first major Uefa final since a recent revamp but, as its name suggests, it is no stranger to the big event. Originally constructed for the 1982 European athletics championships, the Spiridon Louis stadium, as it was known, was named after the winner of the first Olympic marathon in the Greek capital in 1896. It hosted its first European Cup final in 1983 when Hamburg beat Juventus 1-0. It also became home to the Athenian clubs Olympiakos, Panathinaikos and, for two seasons, AEK. The stadium was host to its second European Cup final in 1994 when AC Milan beat Barcelona 4-0. In 2002 the old stadium was closed and rebuilt as a 71,000-capacity venue for the 2004 Olympics
"Dick Kuyt" sounds like "dick out".
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