There are myriad reasons Liverpool’s extraordinary fifth European Cup triumph will be remembered and celebrated by supporters for as long as the club exists.
The miraculous fightback from three goals down at half-time against a star-studded AC Milan side, the Reds regaining their crown as Kings of Europe after a long 21-year wait, and Rafa Benitez’s side blunting the taunts of Everton fans cock-a-hoop at their side finishing above Liverpool and qualifying for the Champions League play-offs to name but three.
That redemptive aspect also applies to a fair few of the Liverpool players who wrote themselves into immortality on that heady night in the Turkish capital. Nobody could ever credibly claim the Reds’ 2005 vintage was among the club’s greatest when it came to ability – or arguably, even in the top 10 – but that such a relatively limited outfit managed to defy the odds and overcome a clearly superior outfit of proven winners only adds extra lustre in the eyes of many.
As does the fact several of squad who engineered the Reds to glory had long been written off as duds, including one much-maligned defender who only months earlier had become a figure of ridicule after a high-profile, hall-of-fame own goal but was picked up off the floor by an inspiring pep talk from a team-mate who knew only too well how it feels when your name becomes a punch-line.
Djimi Traore, who turns 44 today, was only 18 when he arrived at Anfield in February 1999 as one of Gerard Houllier’s first signings as Liverpool manager, the Frenchman having only taken sole charge of the Reds three months earlier after initially joining the club in an ill-fated partnership alongside Boot Room stalwart Roy Evans, and he wasted little time in returning to his home country as he began his Anfield revolution, paying £1.5m within weeks to rescue former Nantes midfielder Jean-Michel Ferri from a brief, unhappy spell with Istanbulspor in Turkey.
A further £2.6m was splashed soon afterwards on Cameroon centre-back Rigobert Song who had made his name in France during four seasons with Metz before moving to Salernitana in Italy as the Reds boss made defensive reinforcements – both immediate and for the future – a priority, spending £700,000 on Lillestrøm’s giant Norwegian stopper Frode Kippe before using the knowledge gained during his role as the French Football Federation’s technical director by snapping one of his country’s most promising young defenders.
Although Traore had only made a handful of appearances after breaking through at his local club, Stade Lavallois, the teenager – able to operate both at centre-half and left-back – had already drawn interest from Paris St Germain, AC Milan, Parma and Lazio and Houllier wasted no time in tying up £550,000 deal to bring him to Merseyside as one for the future, declaring to the Liverpool public via the press having completed the deal: “You’ll thank me for signing him.” It would be the start of the following campaign before the manager felt he was ready for a first-team bow and, although the young defender started both legs of the Reds’ League Cup second-round tie with Hull City, they would be his only appearances until almost another year later and the opening day of the 2000-01 season when he began the first five Premier League matches at left-back.
It was the campaign which truly began Houllier’s reign in earnest with his side winning an unprecedented cup Treble but Traore’s youthful naivety was evident from those early-season games, inadvertently setting up Southampton’s Marian Pahars for the stoppage-time equaliser which earned the Saints a point after they had been three goals behind on Liverpool’s last-ever visit to the Dell and soon after clumsily conceding a penalty to Alf-Inge Haaland (father of Erling) which enabled Manchester City to draw level from two goals down at Anfield before a late Dietmar Hamann winner salvaged victory.
The young Frenchman would make 12 appearances in total that campaign but none after late November and the following summer returned to France on a season-long loan with Lens, where alongside Senegal forward El-Hadji Diouf – who would join the Reds at the end of that campaign – he picked up valuable experience and almost won the French championship, a significant stage of his learning curve.
“Before I joined Liverpool I had only played five games as a professional and that was in the second division in France,” Traore admitted. “I wasn’t well-known and didn’t have much experience as a professional, Liverpool was my learning process and it was a high level, so it was not easy. I had to play a year-and-a-half in the reserves, where we won the championship and I was named captain, wherever I’ve been people have said I’m one of the future but that never stopped me wanting to play earlier than that.
At first I was a bit apprehensive about coming to Liverpool but fortunately I knew there were some players like Rigobert Song and Jean-Michel Ferri who could take me under their wing and the fact the manager and his coaches are French influenced my choice. There were no regrets.
“I started off as an attacking midfielder at Laval and did quite well because I scored pretty regularly and got forward very often. But after a while I was pulled back into a defensive role because I kept hold of the ball too much. Well, that’s what people told me. You see, my game was based too much on the football I used to play when I was with my friends in Paris, where we wouldn’t run back after we lost the ball. I prefer to play in the middle of the defence as that’s where I learnt my trade but I’ve noticed that in France and in England too that people tend to have more confidence in a youngster who plays left-back rather than central defence.”
On his return to Anfield, Traore was thrust straight into the first team and would start 45 of the 60 games Liverpool played that term, an early season injury to Stephane Henchoz giving the young Frenchman a run in his preferred position of centre-back. But it proved to be the campaign when Gerard Houllier’s reign started to decline after such promising beginnings.
The manager had returned from his life-threatening heart problems towards the end of the previous campaign with his side in contention for both Premier League and Champions League silverware and, as he memorably put it, “10 games from greatness”, and although neither materialised, a modern era record points tally (80) and league finish (2nd) fostered real belief that – with the right summer additions – the Reds could be in with a real shout of the top prizes next time around.
But the decision not to make former Arsenal striker Nicolas Anelka’s loan permanent and instead sign Traore’s former Lens team-mate Diouf instead – along with two more acquisitions from the French league, Salif Diao and Bruno Cheyrou – highlighted how Houllier’s golden touch had begun to desert him since his illness and although the Reds began the season well, leading and remaining unbeaten in the Premier League until early November, a defeat at Middlesbrough sparked an 11-game winless run from which the campaign – and in truth the Frenchman’s time as manager – never recovered.
Three days later, Liverpool crashed out of the Champions League in the group stages after drawing a game at Swiss minnows FC Basel they had to win and, although the League Cup was won the following March after victory in Cardiff over Manchester United (a match Traore was left on the bench for), defeat at Chelsea on the final day confirmed failure to even qualify for the following season’s Champions League, a deeply disappointing end to a campaign which had begun with genuine title ambitions.
Traore would score his first Liverpool goal the following season – a superb strike in a rain-sodden UEFA Cup draw at Steaua Bucharest, when he received a short Steven Gerrard corner on the edge of the box and did well to keep his footing in the treacherous conditions before cutting on to his weaker right foot and curling an unstoppable drive into the bottom corner – but that was one of only 14 appearances he made in all competitions as he seemed to fall completely out of favour. It was another campaign of depressing decline with Liverpool never close to being even on the fringes of a title shout while suffering domestic cup exits to lower division Bolton Wanderers and Crystal Palace and being knocked out of Europe by Marseille in the quarter-finals.
The Reds did at least manage to finish fourth and qualify for the following season’s Champions League, helped by rivals Newcastle United frittering away the advantage they held in the final weeks, but nobody was surprised when Houllier’s five-and-a-half year spell in charge was brought to a close with Traore admitting he had lost trust in his former mentor and would have left had he stayed in charge.
He said: “He was much appreciated by the Englishmen and I can see why. But a lot of the French players didn’t have a chance to play and express themselves. We had to work twice as hard to play. I mainly played left-back but left-back was not my position; centre-back was. And when I played centre-back it was on the right because I was mainly next to Sami Hyypia and Sami didn’t like playing on the right. For a left-footed player that is also not easy. In the end, I didn’t trust him anymore. I was upset. So many times I knocked on his door saying I wanted to leave the club. It was frustrating because I didn’t play. And nothing changed. If he would have stayed then I would not be at Liverpool anymore.”
