Carlo Ancelotti_ The Beautiful Games of an Ordinary Genius - Alessandro Alciato [57]
They were clapping and cheering. We weren’t counting our chickens, we were just getting revved up, filled with positive energy. That happens. In the little dressing room next door, the players I had sent up into the stands were putting on our victory shirts under their team uniforms. Our victory—a victory that, however, remained to be won.
The air was sparkling and cool, which seemed appropriate. A. C. Milan, ready for the bubbly. So I let the team vent and applaud for a few minutes, then I told them to calm down: “Look, when you’re playing against Brits, a match is never really over, so let’s be careful here. Let’s make sure they don’t seize control at the beginning of the second half. We can’t, and we shouldn’t, collapse. Let’s manage our control of the ball and our control of the game. Go! Go, Milan!” That was my speech. Nothing more, nothing less.
That evening, Liverpool had begun the match with a single striker, Baroš which is why I would have expected Cissě to come onto the field at the beginning of the second half. It didn’t happen. Strange tactics Rafa Benítez was employing. And, in fact, everything looked great for us when the game resumed; we came close to ratcheting the score up to 4–0. Then, the unforeseeable happened: a six-minute blackout. The impossible became possible. (“Impossible is nothing” is a slogan that I’ve always hated, because it turned ugly on us that day.) We were our own worst nightmare. The world turned upside down. The second and minute hands of my watch started twirling in the wrong direction: ladies and gentlemen, we’re running on disaster time now. We were hurtling into the dreamworld of the English bookmakers, and well beyond. If we had bet against ourselves, we would have become richer than we already were. The score: 3–1; 3–2; 3–3. I couldn’t believe it. This couldn’t be happening. I was paralyzed, and I didn’t even have time to react. I was baffled; nothing made sense. Who could have kept their senses? In the course of just 360 seconds, destiny had changed the direction of the match, twirling it 180 degrees. A complete change of course, an inexorable and continuous decline. The light had gone out, and there was no time to change the bulb. It was moving too fast, there was no chance to run for shelter. A perfect piece of machinery in an irreversible nosedive. Incredible but true.
People often ask me what went through my mind during Liverpool’s recovery. The answer is simple: nothing. Zero. My brain was a perfect vacuum, the vacuum of deep space. I did my best to focus, to concentrate. We went into overtime and finally started playing like the team we were, the team we believed we were, the team that still could, and had to, beat Liverpool. Even then, deep down, I still hoped to pull it off. Right up to the very last minute, when Dudek made a miracle save against Shevchenko. Andriy headed the ball toward goal, and we were already celebrating sweet victory, but the goalkeeper managed to block the shot. Andriy regained possession of the ball, and Dudek blocked it again, just as he was getting back up from the ground. Corner kick. Ouch. It was then, and only then, that I began to see ghosts—not until then. My brain began functioning again, and I managed to put together a complete and coherent thought: “This is starting to look bad.”
In the meantime, the match had gone into a penalty shootout. I looked my players in the eyes, and I saw that something had gone wrong. They