Raw passion and emotion, and an atmosphere at boiling point, Chelsea were beaten before the first whistle sounded on one of Anfield’s greatest nights 20 years ago.
A bear pit out for blood, a deafening cauldron with a taste for its latest victim, Anfield sensed the overwhelming opportunity on May 3, 2005, as it pulsed with every second that ticked.
The Anfield atmosphere, a myth? Think again.
A cash-injected, Premier League-winning Chelsea arrived for the Champions League semi-final second leg with not a goal separating the two teams, but there was, however, a gulf, in the stands.
“You can spend millions on the best players and invest in one of the world’s top coaches, but the one thing you can never buy is fans,” Jamie Carragher would later say.
Anfield was at its feral, suffocating best, leaving nowhere for Chelsea to hide as the Kop sucked Luis Garcia’s shot over the line in the fourth minute as the Reds put one foot in the final.
“It’s a ’60s, ’70s, ’80’s revival night at Anfield,” commentator Clive Tyldesley assessed. A night for the ages, an atmosphere regarded as the best ever.
A night like no other
A fierce and combative home crowd dripping in red was apparent long before the game was due to start, with this the first European Cup semi-final at Anfield since 1985.
“There was that sense that something special could happen here,” Spanish journalist Guillem Balague recounted to This Is Anfield.
“I was at Anfield an hour before the game and it was rocking, and it never stopped rocking.”
A living breathing organism that feasts on the biggest of nights, and here was no different.
Chelsea captain John Terry would later pen in his autobiography: “I walked out into that cauldron and heard that singing and saw that passion.
“The hairs on my arms were standing up. To see a spectacle like that is inspiring to anyone.”
Liverpool were 33 points behind Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea in the league before kickoff, a disparity so vast it amounted to 56.8 percent of Rafa Benitez’s points tally after 36 games (58).
There was no mistaking who were favourites on the night, but that only upped the ante on Merseyside.
Speaking to This Is Anfield, Chris McLoughlin, LFC Magazine editor, reflected: “The feeling that they’d bought their way to the top table rankled amongst Kopites and there was a desire to show that one thing Roman Abramovich couldn’t buy was our atmosphere.
“It was the best atmosphere I’ve experienced at Anfield and still IS the best atmosphere I’ve experienced at Anfield… against a vastly better team WE had to help make a difference. And we did.”
It was not quite the billion-pound bottle job Chelsea‘s 2024 League Cup final defeat was coined as, but Mourinho’s men could do little to fight off 11 men on the pitch and more than 40,000 off it.
“Jose Mourinho, when he came on while the team was warming up, realised that the electricity there was magic, that something special was happening, that the players were being affected by it,” Balague revealed.
“So he walked back into the changing room and on the blackboard he put ’33’. He said, ‘This is the point difference with Liverpool in the league. So you should not be scared’.”
Good try, Jose, but the battle was all but won before a ball had been kicked.
The ‘ghost goal’ decider
It was as if time ceased to exist between Garcia poking the ball goal-wards after latching onto a loose ball and the referee pointing to the centre circle, with a deafening roar soon to follow.
Even referee Lubos Michel’s job was made harder by Anfield’s fervent atmosphere, as he explained: “Roman (assistant referee) beeped me to signal the foul by [Petr] Cech, but I didn’t know that ’til later. It was the noise from the crowd that stopped me hearing it.
“I have refereed at places like Barcelona, Ibrox, Manchester United and Arsenal, but I’ve never in my life been involved in such an atmosphere. It was incredible.”
In the decades since, debate has raged on over whether the ball crossed the line, but Liverpool would have been awarded a penalty as Chelsea went down to 10 if the referee did not award it.
Chelsea ought to consider themselves lucky, not that Mourinho will ever reach that level of acceptance.
“Mourinho still cries about it now, but I think every Liverpool supporter and player would have preferred the alternative – a penalty at the Kop end and Chelsea playing with 10 men for 86 minutes,” says Matt Ladson, This Is Anfield co-founder.
On the goal that decided the tie, McLoughlin offered a unique perspective: “I was ghostwriting Alan Hansen’s column in the old LFC Weekly Magazine at the time and I also happened to be sitting fairly near him and his son in the Main Stand that night.
“I thought the ball had crossed the line, but when you’ve got the best pundit in the country to ask – who just happened to have a prime view of Garcia’s goal – then why not let him call it? So I did…”
Hansen said: “The atmosphere inside Anfield took my breath away. For anybody who was there, it was extra special and it was an honour and a privilege to be there myself.
“I have never experienced anything like a night like that in my life. Even when I was playing it was never like that.
“I was in the Main Stand right on line with Garcia’s goal – and unfortunately Eidur Gudjohnsen chance at the end! – and, being totally unbiased, it looked in to me. I was right in line with it and both my son and I thought it was in.
“The problem was that when I saw it later on television from the first two angles it looked in, but from the third angle it didn’t.
“Over the course of a season, three seasons or five seasons you get things that go for you and things that go against you. This one went for us.
“The thing is though if it wasn’t a goal then it was certainly a penalty kick and the ‘keeper’s off. It was a great ball from Steve Gerrard, Milan Baros was definitely fouled and Petr Cech would have to have gone.
“But that’s history now. It was given and it stands.”
SIX minutes of added time
If you thought time came to a standstill when Garcia made it 1-0, the anxiety that came from the second half and the six minutes of stoppage time were palpable.
But Anfield could not be stopped, it was a runaway train with only one destination: Istanbul.
“Six minutes. SIX minutes? I can still hear the collective gasp inside Anfield when the fourth official held up that stoppage-time board at the end of the second half,” McLoughlin detailed.
“It was almost as if Roman Abramovich had slipped on a referee’s tracksuit and was holding it up himself.
“Then came the whistles. Incessant whistles. Whistles so ear-piercing that anyone walking a dog on Stanley Park must have been dragged to Anfield Road. They were so loud I couldn’t hear myself whistle.
“And that, weirdly, is what comes to mind when I think back on that heady Anfield night.”
Anfield was pulsing to one beat, beautifully adorned in red and drunk off the fervour of the moment.
You heard the stories of great Anfield nights before this, etched in folklore, but this one crowned a new chapter in the club’s storied European history. Finally, one for a new generation.
Call it divine intervention or destiny, but Liverpool were not leaving Anfield on May 3, 2005, without booking a place in the Champions League final – and this was just a taste of the drama to come.
It has been 20 years since the Miracle of Istanbul, and you can get your hands on a special anniversary souvenir magazine to re-live the club’s fifth European Cup here.
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