Magic moment: Avram Grant drops to his knees after
Chelsea's victory over Liverpool in the Champions League semi-final
last year.
Minutes remain before the most daunting fixture of the
season and inside the Stamford Bridge dressing room Chelsea's
players are asked to turn their attention to the tactics board one
last time.
Avram Grant organises his magnets in the formation he wants his
side to employ. The formation he tells them will finally conquer
the Liverpool team that has become their nemesis in the Champions
League. But there's a problem and Michael Ballack is the first to
notice. 'Boss,' he cries, 'are we only playing with 10 men?'
'I'm glad to see someone is paying attention!' replies Grant
before everyone collapses with laughter. For Chelsea's then manager
it was mission accomplished. A very deliberate ploy to suck all
that tension out of the room. 'After losing to Liverpool in Europe
for the previous years it was not just a tactical battle but a
psychological one,' recalled Grant yesterday.
'I needed to find a way of relaxing the players. I knew they
were nervous. So I had this idea beforehand to play a trick with
the tactics board and it worked perfectly.'
While the two defeats against Liverpool under Jose Mourinho had
clearly taken their toll, Grant was faced with an additional
problem in the build-up to the second leg of last year's
semi-final. Whether to select Frank Lampard at a time when he was
still reeling from the shock of losing his mother Pat.
'I remember Henk Ten Cate coming up to me and saying, "Avram,
you'd better get this decision right because we're talking about
the biggest game in Chelsea's history". '"Thanks Henk," I said.
"That really helps".
'But he was right, and playing Frank was a tough call. The death
of his mother had affected him deeply. He hadn't trained. He hadn't
played. He'd missed the win against Manchester United the weekend
prior to the tie.
'But I talked to him the day before the game. He was still very
depressed. But sometimes sadness can be a kind of energy and I
decided he needed to play as much as we needed him to play.'
Lampard was outstanding, crowning a fine display with the
penalty that was so memorably followed by that emotional goal
celebration. A look to the stars and a salute to his father.
In Grant's opinion, his contribution was one of a number of
reasons why Chelsea won and something Guus Hiddink should reflect
on.
'Tactically, Rafa Benitez is very good and that was something
Mourinho did not quite appreciate,' said Grant, who still hopes to
return to the Barclays Premier League.
'He simply thought he was better than Benitez, and because he
thought he was better he lost.
'One of Liverpool's great strengths is the way Benitez organises
them as a team. They work for each other. But we applied some very
simple ideas. 'You have to dominate them. That's the first thing.
But we also focused on key areas and, more important, key
individuals.
'Fernando Torres and Steven Gerrard work brilliantly together
and even when Torres is not at his best he can still produce a
great goal out of nothing. He did that at Stamford Bridge that
night and took the game into extra time. He's one of the best
strikers I have ever seen and I tried very hard to get him to
Chelsea.
'But, if you can put pressure on Gerrard, you can make it more
difficult for Torres and that night Claude Makelele did a great
job. He made it hard for Gerrard and John Obi Mikel must do the
same.'
