Carra: My Autobiography (38 page)

We were at home. Nothing they could do or say could worry us. We knew after their previous experience here we could get to them.

The emotion of the 2005 success was repeated, but our performance was much more impressive. Chelsea's 1–0 lead was cancelled out by Danish centrehalf Daniel Agger, one of our successful signings, from Brondby, and even though the tie went to penalties our standard of football had improved in the two years since the Luis Garcia semi. Whereas that win was based on solid defence, this time we created more opportunities in general play and could have finished them off before the shootout. Pepe's saves and Dirk Kuyt's winning penalty secured our second European final in three seasons, and as we headed to Liverpool's Sir Thomas Hotel again for what was fast becoming a traditional semifinal night celebration, our list of famous triumphs was rapidly expanding.

After my earlier dip, my personal performances were retaining their consistent quality too and I was sleeping soundly again. I'd never felt so strong and confident in what I was doing. You come into football not only to prove yourself at the top level, but to establish yourself as a player who can be trusted to deliver when it matters, which in my case means marking any striker in the world out of the game. My performances against Barca, and especially against Chelsea in the second leg, confirmed that when I was at my best I was a centrehalf capable of taking on any forward in the world.

For the second time in Rafa's three years, and despite my difficult start to the season, I was named the club's player of the year, which was another proud accolade reflecting those European efforts. I was at the top of my game. I knew I was one of those who could be relied upon no matter who our opponents were. Whether it was a trip to the Nou Camp or a tricky League Cup tie against Reading, Rafa could rely on me. It was enough for him to invite me into his office and offer another new contract – and I was ready for him this time!

What was becoming clearer during every season of Rafa's management, however, was the split personality within Liverpool. We had our League side, which was inconsistent and continued to struggle to challenge Manchester United and Chelsea, and our European team, which could overcome anyone. The story of Jekyll and Hyde could have been written for us.

And it became increasingly apparent this wasn't the only division at the club. There was also the ongoing situation at The Academy, which came to a head in the summer of 2007 when Steve Heighway departed after three years of bickering with Benitez's Melwood staff. I was hearing and reading rumours of tensions between Rafa and Rick Parry too, which was worrying. After embarrassingly heavy home defeats to Arsenal in the FA Cup and Carling Cup in January 2007, Rafa broke his silence with critical comments about the state of The Academy and our spending powers. Briefly, it created an hysterical story until Rick and Rafa met and brought some calm.

Despite the resolution, it was a hint of what was to follow, especially as the 2006–07 season continued amid the backdrop of Liverpool's takeover. David Moores was stepping down as chairman and the American revolution was underway. New owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett made their first appearance at Anfield on 6 March when we lost to Barcelona on the night but won the tie, seemingly intoxicated by the atmosphere and making grand announcements of their intentions to help Rafa make those final steps to the top of the English game.

We headed to Athens in May for the Champions League Final in positive mood, hoping to unify the club with our sixth European Cup, confident the American dollars would soon be flowing in no matter what the result. What followed were the opening exchanges of the most turbulent twelve months in Liverpool's history. Golden skies? We were about to walk through the most torrential wind and rain, at the end of which few at Anfield would be able to keep their heads held high.

Before I became an established Liverpool footballer, my cousin Jamie Keggin was the only Kopite in the Carragher clan. He walked alone in our family for eighteen years, until my switch of loyalties meant those closest to me followed us across Stanley Park. After being a rival for so long, Jamie became a vital source of Anfield wisdom, providing a welcome insight into what he believed to be the essential requirement for a true Liverpudlian. Should anything go wrong off the field at the club, or someone speak out of turn in the press, Jamie will always remind us of a quote he has engraved in his mind which sums up the philosophy of Liverpool. It's attributed to former Liverpool chairman Sir John Smith, who led the club through its most triumphant period during the 1970s and 1980s. He said, 'We're a very, very modest club at Liverpool. We don't talk. We don't boast. But we're very professional.'

The ex-chairman must have spent the 2007–08 season banging his head on his coffin. My cousin Jamie has repeated his quote more in the last twelve months than the previous twentyfive years.

We'd experienced several seasons where simmering tensions had threatened to boil over behind the scenes at Anfield, but somehow we'd managed to avoid pressing the selfdestruct button by ensuring events on the field rather than off it grabbed the headlines. Istanbul was played amid worries over Steven Gerrard's future which were ultimately resolved. The FA Cup was won despite growing uncertainty over the ownership of Liverpool FC. Even if you go as far back as the treble season, the future of the club was being debated during feisty shareholders' meetings. For the most part, such disturbances were kept inhouse. There were rumours in the press every so often, but nothing to undermine the tradition of Liverpool as the club envied for the professional manner in which it conducted its affairs.

We'd always handled a crisis with dignity. Even managers who left the club would host a press conference to say goodbye, as Roy Evans did in 1998, and also Gérard Houllier following his dismissal in 2004. You wouldn't get that at any other football club, and I loved that uniqueness about Liverpool. Great servants reached the end of their time and were escorted through the Shankly Gates with dignity to receive the applause of the crowd, not shoved out of the back door shouting and screaming with their tail between their legs.

Athens was a turning point that signalled, temporarily I pray, the demise of those values which come under the definition 'The Liverpool Way'.

Rafa himself influenced a change of approach with his extraordinary press conference on the morning of 24 May following our 2–1 defeat in Greece. He took the opportunity publicly to demand instant action from Tom Hicks and George Gillett. 'The new owners say they will support us, but now is not the time to talk but to take decisions,' he said. 'It's not just about new faces, it's about the structure of the club.' These words sparked a chain reaction that brought problems into the open, almost cost him his job a couple of months later, riled Liverpool's owners into an ill-fated meeting with Jurgen Klinsmann, and ended Hicks's and Gillett's honeymoon relationship with The Kop, making them the targets of disapproval rather than appreciation.

I was heading for breakfast in our base at the Pentelikon Hotel when a journalist broke the news to me. 'Rafa has gone for the Americans over their failure to back him in the transfer market,' I was informed. I was taken aback. 'Give them a chance,' I thought. 'We only lost the Champions League final twelve hours ago.'

Obviously his concerns had been growing far more than any of the players were aware and he'd decided the time was right to express them, but I'd never guessed from his demeanour ahead of the game the problems had reached such a critical point, and I didn't feel airing them to the world's media would serve any purpose. I put it down to the disappointment of losing the final, although as the players' coach headed to Athens airport and the critical comments of the manager followed them across the Atlantic, I guessed the owners wouldn't be so sympathetic.

In most walks of life there's a basic rule we're all aware of: you don't go into work and slag off your boss. Such was Rafa's popularity, he must have thought the risk worth taking for what he believed would benefit the club. If Gillett and Hicks had fired him in the summer of 2007 after our second European Cup Final in three years, they'd have faced a serious fans' revolt. Rafa felt he was arguing from a position of strength.

Instead of reacting angrily, it must be presumed Gillett and Hicks decided to restrain themselves, bide their time and wait for what they perceived to be a more opportune moment to punish the manager for his public challenge to their ownership. In fact, instead of publicly responding to Rafa's remarks, the Americans seemed to react exactly how he wanted. Their actions spoke louder than words, and that impressed me. That was my definition of The Liverpool Way. Don't say it, do it.

Fernando Torres, Ryan Babel, Yossi Benayoun and Brazilian Lucas Leiva signed in the weeks that followed for fees in the region of £45 million and deals for Javier Mascherano and Martin Skrtel were completed in January 2008 costing around £25 million. It's hard for me to imagine this money wouldn't have been available had Rafa kept quiet. He may argue he provoked the decisive movement he wanted in the transfer market. Either way, the drama of his press conference appeared to have calmed down once the season was underway. Or so we thought. I could never have guessed the implications of Rafa's outburst would become so serious. The Athens press conference didn't register as big news on the plane home as much as in the newspapers and among the fans in the days that followed. We were too busy getting over our disappointment at losing the final to get wrapped up in club politics.

History is always written by winners. I could spend hours talking about Istanbul and reliving every second of that victory. I've forgotten much of what happened in Athens because I get no pleasure from recalling it. We played all right but didn't do enough to win the game. Unlike Istanbul, it wasn't an especially entertaining match and there were few chances for either side. AC Milan scored at crucial times, defended well and deserved their victory. Despite being stronger than in 2005 and heading into the game with more confidence, we never played to our full potential.

The mysteries of football will never cease to throw up contradictions. Tactically, we were more clever at the start of the game in 2007 than in 2005. Rafa learned from what happened in the first half in the Ataturk, played Steven Gerrard in a more advanced forward role and asked Javier Mascherano to perform Didi Hamann's role in the second half, denying Kaká the freedom he'd enjoyed two years earlier. An extra body in midfield also stopped Pirlo dictating play. If you analyse the game tactically, this strategy brought some success. We dominated possession and were never in danger of being ripped apart by Kaká in the way we were for forty-five minutes in Turkey.

But for all our improvement since our last meeting, the game exposed where work was still needed. There weren't enough goalscorers on the pitch for us in Athens. Our midfield consisted of Bolo Zenden, Javier Mascherano, Xabi Alonso and Jermaine Pennant, none of whom had short odds on the first goalscorer betting slips. Dirk Kuyt played as a lone striker instead of Peter Crouch, with Gerrard tucked behind, so the onus was entirely on those two to break the deadlock. Dirk scored late on, but there was never a point where we threatened to take control of the game.

AC Milan could argue they played much better in defeat in 2005 than in victory in 2007, but they'll always look at Athens as the completion of their revenge mission. I didn't feel they'd been avenged. It's easy for me to say, but the pain of defeat in 2007 was nothing compared to how it would have been two years earlier.

I was devastated to lose, of course. To win the Champions League once was enough to create history, especially in the manner we did it. To have done it twice within three years would have taken this to another level. There's always a hollow, sickening feeling after losing a final, but it's certainly eased when you can console yourself with the knowledge you've already won it before and you believe further opportunities to win it will come again. I'm greedy for more winners medals and as hungry for European success now as I was before my first Champions League win, but experience allows you to cope better with such setbacks.

One thing I've learned throughout my career is this: no defeat passes without attempts to over-analyse where it went wrong and find contributing factors. The explanation was simple in Athens: we didn't play well enough to win. Such an obvious statement isn't always enough in the modern game. On my return to Liverpool I read several articles about the preparation for the game not being up to scratch because our team hotel wasn't what it should have been and our families had to stay in some appalling conditions. This was true, but it had nothing to do with our performance. We didn't lose the European Cup because our rooms were a bit small. It's a ridiculous argument.

Fans told me they knew as soon as they arrived in Athens it wasn't going to be the same as Istanbul, and they had more valid reasons for feeling disillusioned with the trip. I can't ignore the fact a small but not insubstantial group of Liverpool supporters let the club down on the night of the final by forcing their way into the ground without tickets, or with fakes. Friends I'd arranged genuine tickets for couldn't get in and were left stranded, and stories filtered back to me about shambolic scenes outside the Olympic Stadium prior to kickoff. I saw frightening images of fans pushing in.

Those responsible have no excuse, but a catalogue of errors contributed to this, starting with UEFA. They were warned for weeks about potential problems. They picked a venue unsuitable for such a major match, the attendance was too small, and not enough seats were available to the clubs. It was an athletics stadium rather than a football arena, and by all accounts it was far too easy to bunk in. Liverpool's own ticketing policy came under criticism by some of our supporters as they tried to distribute a meagre number to the many thousands travelling to Greece.

Like the players, fans' views either get rose-tinted or tainted depending on the result. You won't hear a single horror story about Istanbul, but no one has a positive tale to tell about Athens. My mates told me they felt uneasy as soon as they got there because the atmosphere wasn't the same as Taksim Square. During the course of a season, Liverpool's European trips tend to attract the same group of die-hard Reds, but once you reach the final the bandwagon gets top heavy with those who are more interested in the 'event' rather than the football. There are some unruly elements – and this applies to every club, city and probably every country – who latch on to the biggest occasions and want to invade what the most loyal fans perceive as their 'territory'. I know that for many, travelling to Greece was less about seeing Liverpool win the European Cup and more about just 'being in Athens'. Thousands who missed out on Istanbul weren't going to make the same mistake twice. This is an unavoidable consequence of reaching a major final, and if the supervision isn't up to scratch, it gets magnified.

There's nothing like parading the Champions League trophy to hide any blemishes on and off the park, and had we beaten AC Milan in Athens I doubt there'd have been much postmatch talk about poor organization; in the same way Rafa's morning-afterthe- night-before briefing would have carried a much different tone. Instead, without the manager, the fans or the players knowing it, we returned for preseason training a few weeks later with the Anfield time-bomb having already been set.

Far from planning for the 2007–08 campaign sensing added pressure, it seemed there was much to be positive about. New billionaire owners, a record signing, a fresh stadium announcement and the promise of our most realistic title bid for fifteen years. What could possibly go wrong?

Such was the relief when the Anfield takeover saga ended in March 2007, Liverpool supporters were willing to accept whatever Hicks and Gillett said at face value. They made the right noises, promising to build the arena on Stanley Park which had been planned for seven years, and vowing to invest in the team without plunging the club into debt. On the surface it was a good deal. I was one of those who'd welcomed the new owners to Anfield, believing they would provide the finances to build a new ground that, over the long term, would allow us to compete with Manchester United and Chelsea. I wasn't expecting a Roman Abramovich-style revolution, but I presumed the manager would still have his annual kitty of about £30 million a year, which would give him enough options in the transfer market. The arrival of a player of Torres's calibre from Atlético Madrid for £21 million seemed to confirm our confidence in what former chairman David Moores hoped were the 'ideal custodians' for the club. The only reservation was that Liverpool had to pass into foreign ownership. That was a sad consequence of modern football realities. I'd have preferred Mr Moores to stay as owner, but once he said he couldn't afford to keep us competitive without getting massive but risky bank loans there was no choice but to sell to the right bidder.

For a while, it seemed that would be Dubai International Capital. The chairman and Rick Parry introduced me and Steven Gerrard to the DIC chief executive Sameer Al-Ansari when they were on the verge of concluding their deal. I liked his enthusiasm for the club and handed him a couple of signed shirts, believing this was my future boss. Within a few weeks I was having another meeting at the Lowry Hotel in Manchester, ahead of England's international with Spain. This time Hicks and Gillett were shaking mine and Stevie's hands, telling us how good they'd be for Liverpool.