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Twenty years on from that double save, those spaghetti legs and the miracle of Liverpool’s fifth European Cup triumph and Turkey has not lost the capacity to make a champion out of Jerzy Dudek. “I won the Turkish Open golf last week and it reminded me a bit of Istanbul,” the former Liverpool goalkeeper says. “It is my favourite place, my lucky place, and it stays with me all the time. If I go on holiday to Turkey I always go with a big smile.”
Sunday promises to have the same effect on everyone associated with Liverpool. The presentation of the Premier League trophy to Arne Slot’s champions at Anfield coincides with the 20th anniversary of the “Miracle of Istanbul”, when Liverpool overcame a 3-0 half-time deficit to defeat Milan on penalties in the Champions League final. Not that any Liverpool fan needs reminding of the details. The sights and sounds of Ataturk Stadium remain as vivid to Dudek now as they were on 25 May, 2005.
“It’s unbelievable that famous final was 20 years ago, it feels like a week ago,” says the 52-year-old, whose sporting prowess continued with victory in the Turkish Airlines World Golf Cup amateur series in Antalya last week. “The time has flown by but the memories are clear. Probably my clearest is coming out of the tunnel for the second half and hearing our supporters singing You’ll Never Walk Alone in a very difficult moment. I can still see Steven Gerrard calling all the players together when the supporters were singing. He got us all together in a circle on the pitch and said: ‘Are you hearing that guys? They believe in us and we have to give them something back. We have to show them that we are Liverpool.’ That memory is inside me very deep.”
Dudek recalls every detail, from Paolo Maldini’s goal inside the first minute to Hernán Crespo adding two more before the break, to how it felt to start Liverpool’s first European Cup final in 20 years. “We felt the pressure in the first half,” he admits. “I don’t know if the expectation blocked our legs, our legs were much heavier, but it felt different to other finals we had played.”
Half-time at Ataturk Stadium has entered Liverpool folklore for the changes that Rafael Benítez made – planned and enforced – to turn the tide on Carlo Ancelotti’s rampant team. “Being 3-0 down at half-time in a Champions League final is not the best feeling I would say,” the popular former Poland international says. “Everyone who has been in a situation like this knows there is going to be a big exchange between the players. Only Rafa wasn’t panicking. He was doing his job.
“You don’t have much time to correct things. There was big chaos because he said thank you to Djimi Traoré and Djimi was already under the shower when Steve Finnan told the physio his injury was getting worse and worse and he might need to come off after 20-25 minutes. Then Rafa decided to change Steve Finnan instead of Djimi Traoré. It was a really tough to manage and respect to Rafa, he did well in such a short time.
“Then of course we were trying to motivate ourselves. Alex Miller, Rafa’s assistant, was stood in front of the door telling us we needed to forget about the first half and score a goal as fast as possible. He said Milan wouldn’t panic at that but if we scored the second they might start to panic and start kicking balls away. We could use that to our advantage and score a third goal. And it turned out exactly like that.
“But when we came out and saw this fantastic support that changed our mentality and our energy as well. It created a fantastic, positive energy around the Ataturk Stadium and it all started thanks to Liverpool supporters. They created an atmosphere that was crucial to us getting the result back.”
There was something in the air that night and after Gerrard, Vladimir Smicer and Xabi Alonso hauled Liverpool level with three goals in six minutes, Dudek performed his own series of miracles. “My performance was just a little performance that was needed at the time,” he says with undue modesty. “We had many more heroes that night – Djimi Traoré, Steven Gerrard, Vladi Smicer … .”
Dudek’s astonishing double save from Andriy Shevchenko in the final moments of extra time has been voted one of the greatest moments in Champions League history. “Amazing to believe,” says Dudek, who is promoting the “Miracle Can” that Carlsberg have brought out to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Istanbul. “Good for history, good for my kids and my friends – over the next 20 years I can remind them of what a great game we had. For everyone who was involved in the game, players, coaching staff, everyone who works for the club and the supporters, that was probably the proudest moment of our lives.”
Then came the penalty shootout that cemented Dudek’s place in Liverpool history, saving from Andrea Pirlo and the decisive spot-kick by Shevchenko after Serginho had blazed Milan’s first over the bar. “I had watched maybe 100 of their penalties and I had a book on them,” Dudek says. “I asked my goalkeeping coach, José Ochotorena, to help me. I said to him: ‘When you see their players coming, look at their name in my book and raise the hand left or right’. Then I could more or less provoke them into going to their favourite side.
“Then Carra [Jamie Carragher] came and was telling me to put more pressure on them in the shootout. He said, ‘You should do something like Bruce Grobbelaar did with the spaghetti legs [in Liverpool’s victory over Roma in the 1984 final], do you remember?’ I did remember but I said I needed to study my book and he was saying, ‘Yes, yes, but remember to put pressure on them, every time, don’t stop’. So I tried to do that as well. I was moving left, right on the line when Serginho came to take their first penalty. He missed it, like the guy from AS Roma missed against Grobbelaar in ’84, so I thought: ‘OK, it works.’
“I continued to put the pressure on every time I saw them walking from the halfway line to the penalty spot. That can be stressful for a player but I was full of confidence. After the double save from Shevchenko, I thought, ‘We cannot lose this.’
“Afterwards I was thinking about my whole football career and how I had done something special, something that I had been waiting for. I was thinking about my critics, about the good times, the bad times and I said to myself: ‘What now? I did it.’ As a sportsman you work hard all your life to be remembered for something. Sometimes we get it, sometimes we don’t. We played the final of our lives and I played my small part in it. It was crazy. Crazy.”
Dudek describes Istanbul as a lesson for life. He has been stopped on the street and asked about it in the United States, South Africa and across Asia. “It’s nice,” he says. “To be a football player is an absolute privilege. You need to have a little distance to it because people are watching you and expecting things from you, but you can really change their life.”
