Photo: Paul Hazlewood
Yeah and he won it with Ajax in ’95 I
think. So yeah, it’s one of the biggest
highlights but there are many highlights
during my career in England.
asked it hundreds and thousands of times.
At half time when you were three nil down,
what was said in the changing rooms by
Rafa Benitez or any of the players?
Going back to the Champions League,
when you won. Do you still have that
moment in your mind’s eye that it only
happened last week, even though it was
nearly ten years ago?
It was quite a quiet dressing room and
I wouldn’t have thought that many of us
believed that we could come back and
win this game. Normally when the Italians
go one nil up its a very hard game and
that was three nil and then the manager
just said that there’s a lot of people that
have come a long way to support us here
in Turkey and in the second half we need
to give them something back, you know,
as a reward. To come this far to support
us and if it’s a goal, then fine but we
need to do something and I don’t think
anyone expected us to score three goals
in seven and a half minutes but it was
a great night and an exciting game for
everyone to see.
I don’t know. When I see pictures from
the final then of course memories enter
my head but I have a busy job at the
moment and I don’t have too much time
to think about the past, I think it’s better
to live in the present and try to do as
good a job as I can and not worry or not
think about the past too much.
Can I ask you one more question though
about that night? No doubt you’ve been
104
So what attracted you to Brighton as a city,
not as a football club, because the training
complex is an amazing facility, the ground is
superb, and the club has come a long way.
What attracted you to Brighton as a place?
I consider myself a football person and
the club is the reason that I’m here at the
moment. I have a family and, of course,
I talked with them about where we were
going to move to but we are quite easy to
adapt and to go to different places to live. I
didn’t come here because of Brighton but
because of the football club and I didn’t
know a lot about the city before I arrived
but now I’ve had a little experience of the
kind of city it is. I spent the first few months
in a hotel here and visited lots of good
restaurants. It’s a great city, being near the
sea and is a bit of new experience for me.
Of course, we had the river in Liverpool as
well and some beaches there but Brighton