Rafa Benitez reflects on Istanbul ahead of Liverpool's return to the Champions League final

'It changed my life in England. I always say Istanbul will be the most emotional final ever because of the way we won, the way we came back'

Rafa Benitez famously guided Liverpool to unexpected glory in the 2005 Champions League final (Getty)

The party really had started, and Rafa Benitez was stood on the wrong side of the entrance, watching something he had created hit full swing.

He had left the hotel in Istanbul 13 years ago after a friend had waved at him through the entrance doors, unable to get in.

Benitez, the victorious manager of one of the most thrilling Champions League finals of all time, then found himself in the same situation.

Doormen are doormen.

The Spaniard, the afterglow of victory still warm, this time looked to his friend for help. “Do you know who you’re in the company of? Do you know who this man is?” his friend asked the uncompromising figure.

There followed a shrug of the shoulders.

“He is God,” said the friend. “This is God.”

Benitez laughs at the memory. “Did I drink when we got back in? No, I don’t drink. What time did I get to bed? 6am.”

There remains something spiritual about Liverpool and the European Cup, and Benitez’s immortality will remain at Anfield, come what may, after that truly dramatic night in 2005.

“Will it change Klopp’s life if Liverpool win?” says Benitez, now, on the eve of the final, in a room at Newcastle’s training ground.

Rafa Benitez with then captain Steven Gerrard after their stunning fightback in Istanbul in 2005 (Getty)

“No I don’t think so. Maybe it will change everything for him in Liverpool. He’s fine, he’s an idol now but he will be more. He was winning with Dortmund but it would be massive for him here because it has been some time since he was winning at this level.

“It changed my life in England. To win the league with Valencia in Spain after 31 years changed my life. To win the Uefa Cup with Valencia changed my life, it changed everything. But to come to England and win the Champions League with a different team was massive. It changed so much.

“I have been in some [other] situations like that and I was really proud of what they’d achieve but you do not realise at this time what it means. That happens after. So two or three days after you went to the city [Liverpool] and saw the fans.

“We were on the top of the bus and it was going really fast and the tree branches were low and the players were diving [he gestures ducking] and you go ‘Whoa!’ I had to tell the driver, ‘Slow down!’”

For Benitez it is always about control. At half-time in Istanbul, there was very little, trailing 3-0 to AC Milan, injuries in the dressing room, substitutions to be made, a need to find a tactical solution amid the mayhem.

Xabi Alonso scores Liverpool’s third goal against AC Milan (Getty)

“I always say Istanbul will be the most emotional final ever because of the way we won, the way we came back,” he adds. “Everything was going wrong, massively wrong and then after half time you see the Liverpool fans singing, even though we were 3-0 down. That was massive.

“Yes, AC Milan was the best team in Europe. They had [Andrea] Pirlo, they had Kaka and nobody could be better than them. But we were better than them. We beat them.

“Now people don’t remember all the players who were there, who were on the pitch that night. But they (the players) will always remember. It was massive for everyone. The way that we did it, and people still think it was just lucky!

“No, the penalties; four or five of them we knew where they were taking the penalties, we had done a lot of work on that [Benitez and his staff had studied every penalty taken by a Milan player in the previous seasons, devised a number strategy with Jersey Dudek for where they would shoot and screamed it at him as each player walked up to the penalty spot].

“We were unlucky at the start of the game because we lost Harry Kewell early [to injury] and we had to change everything. And we were lucky because we scored the goals in a few minutes. And we were much better than them in extra-time. When we changed to three at the back that changed everything. We matched them, we had control of the game.”

It has provided the soundtrack for his life in the last 13 years. Benitez simply cannot avoid it.

Rafa Benitez doesn’t think victory in Saturday’s final will necessarily change Jurgen Klopp’s life (Getty)

“You find Liverpool fans everywhere and they will always want to talk about Istanbul,” he says. “At my home I must have watched hundreds of programmes on Istanbul. When I come here from Liverpool on the train, you have Liverpool fans talking about Istanbul.

“At half time I had to give a speech in English and you know my English now but then, 10 years ago, it was not so good.

“I was thinking about what I would say in English to motivate players because it’s not the same as saying something in Spanish. Speaking English you lose something.

“I said, ‘You have to get something back because for 45 minutes we’ve been working so hard’ and the main thing was to run through the system and make sure we had everybody ready. That was the main thing, that Didi Hamann would control the middle and give some freedom to Steven Gerrard, so we had more control because Kaka was playing between the line and we needed to control the space better.”

Of course, at that point, the instruction was from Rafa Benitez.

Later that evening, he was being ushered into parties with a different moniker.

Jurgen Klopp might not yet have grasped the significance of Saturday night on the rest of his life, and that is possibly no bad thing.