Craig Bellamy - GoodFella (21 page)

21

Nou Dawn

W
hen I got inside Melwood, I saw a copy of The Sun. The headline was ‘Nutter with a Putter’ and they had mocked up a picture of Ginge with so many bandages wrapped round his head that he looked like an Egyptian mummy. All the other lads knew what had happened already but it didn’t stop me getting plenty of stick about it.

When we went outside for training, there were cameras poking out everywhere over the low walls that surround Melwood. It was obvious what picture they wanted. We did a couple of warm-up exercises that involved pairing up. Everybody knew the photographers would be desperate to get me and Ginge together but we didn’t play along. In the end, Pako lost his patience.

“When I next say ‘twos’,” he said, “can John Arne Riise and Craig Bellamy get together. Then everyone gets their picture and we can get on with training.” That was the picture that was in the papers the next day and the row between us was the issue that dominated the build-up to the Barcelona game. The court case in Cardiff got dragged up a lot again and a lot of people were saying this episode would be the last straw for Rafa.

If we lost to Barcelona, everyone said, that would be me finished at Liverpool. We were too far behind to have a chance in the league by then and we had been knocked out of both cups. There was an awful lot riding on that game in the Nou Camp. A lot of people expected Rafa to leave me out. It would have been the easy thing to do in many ways. But Rafa often ignored the easy option. When the teamsheet went up, I was in the starting eleven.

Training at the Nou Camp the day before the game was brilliant. I looked up at the steepling stands all around me and the giant Mes Que Un Club logo written into the seats and I knew this was the big league. We were up against the reigning champions, up against Ronaldinho, Messi, Deco. I didn’t feel nervous. I just felt an overwhelming sense of anticipation.

I just made my mind up I was going to enjoy it. It was everything I had worked for. I knew I might not get the opportunity to play on a stage like that again. To add to it, my elder son, Ellis, was 10 on the day of the game and I flew him out for a birthday treat. Crouchie said to me that if he played, he would do a golf swing celebration if he scored. I said the same. I didn’t know if I was playing at that stage and, to be honest, I wasn’t thinking about goal celebrations. I was just hoping I’d get an opportunity to get on the pitch.

The odds were stacked against us. Not many people gave us a chance because Barcelona were such a fantastic team. We were struggling in the Premier League, too, and a lot of the media presented it as almost a formality that we were going to lose. The only doubt in people’s minds was that Rafa had over-achieved in Europe before.

In the first 20 minutes, Barcelona were brilliant. Actually, they were breathtaking. We couldn’t get near them. The term ‘chasing shadows’ was invented for spells of football like the one we endured at the start of that game and Deco put them ahead with a bullet header after 14 minutes when he ran on to a cross from Gianluca Zambrotta.

But we did not fold. I missed a decent chance with a back post header that I could only nod into the side-netting and then two minutes before half-time, I put us level. I peeled away at the back post again and when Steve Finnan’s cross came to me, I was unmarked.

I put as much power as I could into it and the Barcelona keeper, Victor Valdes, seemed to lose track of where the goal line was. He seemed caught in two minds about whether to try to catch the ball or to parry it and by the time he made up his mind, he was behind the line and so was the ball.

Dirk Kuyt slotted in the rebound when Valdes belatedly pushed the ball away but it was my goal. In the elation of the moment, I forgot all about the celebration for about 20 seconds but eventually I remembered and aimed an imaginary eight iron down the ground. Some people were upset by that. They said it showed a lack of contrition. That wasn’t true. It was just an expression of happiness, mixed with a little mischief and a signal that there was more to me than bouts of bad behaviour.

It was a proud moment looking up at the Nou Camp scoreboard and seeing my name on it. I knew that my son would be looking at it, too, which meant more to me than anything. Because of the impact his birth had had on me, because of my determination to create a good life for him, he was one of the main reasons why I was playing at this level in the first place.

We hung on a little bit in the second half but 16 minutes from time, Dirk found himself one on one with Valdes. Valdes smothered his shot and the ball ballooned into the air. Rafa Marquez tried to clear the ball with a back header but it came straight to me. I cushioned it on my chest and let it drop. In the split second that it was falling, I thought about shooting but I was aware of Ginge standing to my left and I squared the ball to him on the half-volley.

It came to him on his right foot and he swung at it first time. I didn’t know he could even kick with his right foot but he hit it as sweetly as some of his left-foot pile-drivers and it flew into the top corner of the net. I looked up at the scoreboard again and there were our names in lights, Bellamy and Riise. Football is stranger than fiction sometimes. After everything that had happened the week before, after all the focus on us in the days leading up to the match, events had brought us together again.

There were a few scares in the last quarter of an hour but we saw it out and preserved our precious lead. When the whistle blew, I was overcome. Football: what an amazing game. I felt lucky, too. I’d had plenty of lows in my career but I understood in that moment that not many players get to experience something like that.

It was my favourite moment in football. Whatever might happen to me in the years to come, I thought, nobody could change a moment like that. I saw Ellis afterwards and felt thankful again that he had been there to witness it. I didn’t know where my life was going to go, who I was going to be sharing it with, inside or outside the game, but I did know that if football ended for me tomorrow, I’d have that moment. Sometimes, that’s worth more than anything.

We flew back to England and everyone was revelling in the story of me and Ginge and marvelling at our win. We knew we had a real chance of confounding expectations and getting through to the quarter-finals now. And I thought maybe this would be the catalyst for me at the club, that I would be a more central figure now as the season headed towards its climax.

Wrong again. The first game after we got back from Spain was against Sheffield United at Anfield. When the teamsheet went up on the Friday, I looked at it with a degree of confidence for the first time. My name wasn’t on it. Nowhere on it. Not even among the subs. ‘What the fuck is this about?’ I thought.

I should have been rolling into Anfield that Saturday on a real high and I wasn’t even in the squad. I couldn’t even stand to be in England when the game was on. I had to get far away. I went to Dublin to watch Ireland play England in the Six Nations instead. Being left out of that game broke me a bit. It dented me. I thought ‘I don’t think I can do this again next year, being on the bench, not knowing when you’re starting, not knowing if you’re in the squad’. It didn’t motivate me. It deflated me.

I’m not really criticising Rafa for it. It was the way he worked. And I started the game against Manchester United the following weekend, which we lost to two late goals. I started the second leg against Barcelona, too, which was played in a fantastic atmosphere at Anfield. We hung on a little bit and things got twitchy when Eidur Gudjohnsen put them 1-0 up on the night with 15 minutes left, but we kept them out and went through to the last eight on the away goals rule.

My relationship with Rafa was unaffected by what happened in Portugal. If would have been uncharacteristic if he had let emotion seep into anything. Things stayed the same. I don’t know if the Spanish players were close to him but I never had any proper conversations with him. We were there to work and that was it. The longer it went on, the more draining it became. It wasn’t enjoyment. It was just hard, hard work. After every day of training, I left feeling unfulfilled and flat.

I clung on to the consolations. The main one was that we were in the quarter-finals of the Champions League. Then there was playing with Gerrard and Carragher. And training with Robbie Fowler. His finishing was still in a different league. He could dink it over the keeper, he could move the ball, he could whip it. And he was a lovely bloke, too.

By the time I got to play with him, his legs had gone. He had suffered a bad knee injury and it had robbed him of his acceleration. I didn’t feel sorry for him because he had been a better player than I could ever be and had enjoyed a great career. I just enjoyed watching him and learning from his finishing ability. He is still God. He always will be.

He and I didn’t play together that often but we did both start a League Cup fourth round tie against Birmingham City at St Andrew’s at the start of November. Rafa liked to nominate a penalty-taker for each game and it was Robbie that night.

But when we were awarded one, I decided that I wanted to take it. Robbie and I had a brief argument but he couldn’t be bothered to continue it. He stepped aside. I took it.

The Birmingham keeper, Maik Taylor, saved it. We still won the game but it wasn’t my finest hour.

The next day, Rafa called me in. He asked me why I took the penalty. I said I felt confident and I wanted to score.

“But you weren’t on penalties,” he said. “I have to fine you.”

“Really?” I said.

“Yes,” Rafa said. “I pick the penalty taker. Not you.”

I don’t know how much the fine was. I didn’t dare think about it because it would have driven me mad.

But at the end of it all, Rafa was successful. I could question his methods as much as I wanted but we were in the quarter-finals of the Champions League and we had just drawn PSV so we had every chance of making the semis. When I thought about the way Rafa worked, I started to wonder if this was how you had to be to win stuff.

We didn’t have any problems against PSV. I had a rib injury so I was left on the bench. The first leg was at Anfield and we beat them even more comfortably than we had in the group phase. Gerrard, Riise and Crouch scored the goals in a 3-0 win which put the tie out of PSV’s reach. Stevie’s goal took him beyond Ian Rush to establish him as the leading scorer in Europe in Liverpool’s history. We won the return leg in Eindhoven as well to finish with a 4-0 aggregate victory. When the draw was made for the last four, we got Chelsea.

Two years earlier, Liverpool and Chelsea had been involved in one of the most titanic semi-final clashes in the short history of the Champions League.

On a thunderous night at Anfield, the tie had been settled by what the Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho famously described as ‘a ghost goal’ by Luis Garcia. Liverpool went on to beat AC Milan in the final in what became known as the ‘Miracle of Istanbul’. Not many teams had a psychological advantage over Mourinho’s Chelsea but that victory gave us one. And Rafa was one of the only bosses I’ve ever seen who managed to get under Mourinho’s skin. Usually, Mourinho was the one who sent the opposition manager into a rage but Rafa had the ability to do that to Mourinho.

We were up against the usual suspects at Chelsea. Mourinho was still the boss. This time, there was no Barcelona in his way and he was desperate to win the Champions League with Chelsea. The players that he had won the league with twice – Lampard, Drogba, Terry – were probably at their peak that year. It looked like it would be their best chance to win it.

The first leg was at Stamford Bridge on a Wednesday night. We stayed in Mayfair the night before the game and after we’d trained, we went back to the hotel and watched Manchester United against AC Milan in the other semi-final. United won 3-2 but the abiding memory was of Kaka scoring twice and picking United apart. Milan were the favourites to go through.

That suited us. Everyone at the club was concerned about the idea of playing United in the final. In many ways, Europe was still our refuge. We had won five European Cups and United had only won two. They couldn’t get close to our history. They didn’t have any bragging rights over us and I think, sub-consciously, we were nervous about the thought of losing that sanctuary if we had to face them in a final.

We knew Chelsea would be tough. They were a very good side with top, top players and a brilliant manager. I started the first leg at the Bridge but I didn’t make much of an impact and I was substituted six minutes into the second half when Rafa brought Crouchie on. We were trailing to a Joe Cole goal by then and Pepe Reina had to make a couple of outstanding saves to stop the gap widening. They deserved their win and we went back to Anfield feeling grateful we were still in the tie.

I have never witnessed an atmosphere like the one that greeted us in the stadium that night. I was on the bench but even when I went out for the warm-up, it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I understood the logic for Rafa’s team selection. He had picked me at Stamford Bridge because he wanted to exploit Chelsea’s lack of pace at the back. But at Anfield, he thought Chelsea would sit back and not leave as much space behind their defence, so he chose Crouchie to lead the line.

Rafa called it just right. Before the game, we worked and worked on set-pieces. He said he was sure that was how the game would be decided and that was what happened. Midway through the first half, Joe Cole fouled Gerrard on the left and instead of swinging the free-kick into the area, Stevie slid it across the face of the box and Daniel Agger slammed it into the net with his left foot.

That meant we were level on aggregate. Both sides had chances but it went to extra-time. Rafa brought me on for Crouchie with 14 minutes to go and Fowler came on for Mascherano two minutes from the end, ready for the penalty shoot-out.

Psychologically, I still felt we had the edge. They had experienced what it felt like to lose in the semi-final at Anfield before and now that they had failed to beat us, I think they felt it heading their way again.