XABI ALONSO opened up on Liverpool’s ‘painful’ and ’embarrassing’ first-half in the 2005 Champions League final against AC Milan in Istanbul.
The Spaniard revealed he was ‘angry with himself’ at half-time before the Reds’ iconic comeback.
Liverpool were 3-0 down to the Italian giants and seemed doomed at the break.
But in one of the most historic comebacks in football, Steven Gerrard, Vladimir Smicer and Alonso himself scored in six second-half minutes to nick a 3-3 draw.
The Merseysiders eventually won the penalty shootout but the 39-year-old admitted he couldn’t see it coming at half-time.
He told team-mate on the night Jamie Carragher’s Greatest Game podcast: “I was angry at myself, thinking ‘we can’t throw it away so easily, this is a beautiful chance’.
“I was kind of embarrassed with what we were doing.
“More than thinking about the others it was painful, that was first (how I felt). Later, Rafa (Benitez) changed. I thought ‘let’s see how this works’.
“To hear the boos from the fans was important because they didn’t want to kill us but we thought ‘let’s try and give them something to believe’, try to have some hope.”
Alonso eventually left Anfield after five years with the club and joined Real Madrid in 2009.
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And during his Los Blancos career he faced Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona team which is widely considered one of the greatest sides ever assembled.
And one particular Clasico stuck in his mind for all the wrong reasons after Barca thrashed Jose Mourinho’s Real 5-0 in 2010-11.
Having started the game alongside Sami Khedira, Alonso said: “We knew in that moment if we were too nice they were going to kill us.
“The league game in the Nou Camp we lost 5-0 and that was the worst night I’ve ever lived on a football pitch.
“After 20 minutes I wanted to leave, to go home, shower and to go home.
“It was so painful. It gave us a big determination. We couldn’t be too nice or we wouldn’t have beaten them (the next season).”
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Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
