Judging from the previous three meetings that season, the odds weren’t stacked in Liverpool’s favour to be the Premier League’s representative in Istanbul.
Chelsea had won all three matches between the two sides, home and away in the league, and then again in the League Cup final. While Liverpool would limp (quite literally given how much their squad was decimated by injuries throughout the season) home to a fifth-placed finish, Chelsea would win the league for the first time in fifty years under new manager Jose Mourinho. This was at the height of Roman Abramovich’s splurging on transfers, with Chelsea spending more per point won than any other club in the league, despite finishing on a then-record 95 points, a full 37 ahead of Liverpool.
“The only way we could make up for the difference in quality was to focus”, Benitez recalls. “We set our defensive line, as we had in Turin, at three-quarters. Not too high, not too deep. We could not afford to invite Chelsea to attack us: a team with that many attacking options would score, for certain, if we tried to defend the edge of our box. And we practised the off-side trap too, because Mourinho’s team looked to Tiago, the Portuguese midfielder, to play penetrating passes behind the defence… ‘Close the passes, make sure they cannot counter-attack, and watch for the switch of play'”.
Both sides played conservatively, making for an uneventful, albeit tension-filled, game.
Liverpool set up primarily to defend. They would drop back into two banks of four, with Milan Baros and Steven Gerrard rarely pressuring Ricardo Carvalho or John Terry, allowing them to stride forward with the ball. Gerrard would instead focus his attentions on Claude Makélélé, staying close to him to cut off Chelsea’s ball into midfield.
Once the ball entered Liverpool’s half though, they would defend with much greater intensity, quickly sticking to their men. With Liverpool’s tight lines, their was little space for Chelsea to work the ball through, and the away side afforded them no time on the ball.
Frank Lampard would often drop back alongside Makélélé to help work the ball forward, however Chelsea struggled to create much.
Both Eidur Gudjohnsen and Joe Cole came inside, looking for space between the lines. Occasionally a ball would slip through and they would find some space to get at the heart of the defence, but these opportunities were few and far between.
Both William Gallas and Glen Johnson would venture into Liverpool’s half, but they wouldn’t get high and wide, leaving Chelsea congested in the middle.
Liverpool rarely committed much to attacking either. Gerrard would often drop back into midfield to pick up the ball, with Luis Garcia – looking sharp with several nice touches – moving central behind Baros. Liverpool’s captain would frequently look to either switch the play to John Arne Riise wide left, where the majority of Liverpool’s attacking came from, or replace Garcia on the right flank and cross into the box himself.
Neither side really pushed for a win. Chelsea generally seemed pretty content to simply avoid an away goal, confident in their ability to beat Liverpool over two legs, although Mourinho brought on Arjen Robben and Mateja Kezman in attacking changes. Liverpool broke forward in search of an away goal when the opportunity arose, but, rather than overpowering Chelsea early on as they had against Leverkusen and Juventus, their main priority was ensuring Chelsea didn’t run away with the tie.
Who would advance would depend entirely on what happened at Anfield.
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