sport news Miracles by Liverpool and Spurs remind us why so many love football

It was one of the greatest weeks in the history of English football. Liverpool and Spurs pulled off miraculous fightbacks to clinch a place at next month's Champions League final in Madrid.

ROB DRAPER was at Anfield and then the Johan Cruyff Arena in Amsterdam to capture the essence of a thrilling double header for UEFA's elite competition. 

Here are his recollections of two nights which sent a love of the beautiful game reverberating around the globe. 

It is close to midnight on a Tuesday evening and a group of young women, swathed in expensive-looking dresses, are enjoying a night out. They make their way past Liverpool Lime Street Station, led by a petite woman in her late teens.

She reaches up to touch her elaborately-styled hair, then smiles and punches the cold night air. 'Allez! Allez! Allez!' she roars.

Her companions join the refrain. 'Allez! Allez! Allez!'

Up the road, the 917 bus is making its way back from Anfield to the city centre. Middle-aged men aboard it have squeezed their portly frames into tracksuit tops and retro football shirts.

They stamp their feet and sing: 'We've conquered all of Europe! We're never going to stop! From Paris down to Turkey! We've won the f**king lot!'

Their stamping, and the rising excitement, shakes the bus and alarms the driver. 'If you don't stop stamping, I won't continue the journey' he deadpans in the irritated monotone of officialdom everywhere. Apologies are offered. Promises are made to stop stamping. But the song resumes. 'Bob Paisley and Bill Shankly! The Fields of Anfield Road! We are loyal supporters! And we come from Liverpool!'

In the streets, strangers are embracing and reminding themselves of all they've seen and all they've felt.

'Trent's corner,' one exclaims. 'What about that!'

This city has seen pretty much everything football has to offer — it's been at the forefront of the highs and lows — but on Tuesday it experienced something extraordinary. Something quite dazzling and uplifting that touched not only the city, but the whole footballing world.

The story had begun five hours earlier as football fans gathered at Anfield convincing themselves that, despite all evidence to the contrary, their team could emerge victorious. Fans are like that: it's a ritual they undergo before a match begins … a process of convincing themselves that even when all hope appears lost, there's still a point to it all … still a chance.

It is modern folklore and an appeal to blind superstition. They delve into the tribe's history to bolster a false sense of self belief. They talk about a semi-final they played and won in dramatic style against Saint-Etienne in 1977, the first year Liverpool captured the European Cup.

And the semi-final against Chelsea in 2005. Of course, they talk about Istanbul, that same year, and the last time Liverpool somehow won a Champions League final, having been 3-0 down to mighty AC Milan at half-time.

What they don't talk about is how unlikely victory is against Barcelona. Liverpool are an exceptional side but they go into the game 3-0 down to the greatest club of the past decade with the greatest living footballer among their number. Oh, and Liverpool are missing their best player and their centre forward. The opening to Gerry Marsden's most famous song is starkly abrupt. 'When you walk …' he sings, acapella, pausing and waiting for the piano and guitar to kick in. At Anfield they need no prompt. They pick up the song from the first beat, this sentimental music hall hit from another century that grabs hold of you and shakes you until you shiver.

Barcelona fans join in as well. English football, this song and Anfield remain a touchstone among foreign fans. 'Walk on!' they sing. 'Walk on! With hope in your heart! And you'll never walk alone! You'll never walk alone.'

It stirs the senses and engenders more false hope. This game was lost in Barcelona a week earlier but we must behave as if it isn't. Then Liverpool score and we can suspend belief a little longer.

The volume is extraordinary at Anfield. The ground literally vibrates. But it isn't so much the noise that catches you unaware and stimulates senses this Tuesday night. It's more the roar of collective hope that knocks you sideways, sending adrenaline surging through you.

And so to the second half, two goals by Gini Wijnaldum making it 3-3 on aggregate. Now everyone believes. Then there is Trent Alexander-Arnold whose corner kick for the decisive fourth remains a delight days after the event.

'It was just instinctive,' he says later that night, looking extraordinarily composed given what has occurred. 'I just walked away, took a look back and saw that they'd switched off and Div [Origi] was in the middle of the goal by himself … and I hit it. It's unbelievable the way he's just reacted to the ball and put it away.'

Alexander-Arnold pauses. 'I probably would have been shouted at if it never came off. But it was worth the risk,' he adds.

At 20, Alexander-Arnold is young enough to be a throwback to childhood. He is bashful, but also playful and cheeky.

In the 79th minute of the game he performs the kind of move we all tried as kids in the playground, trying to catch out our classmates as they dispute a decision with an imaginary referee. Alexander-Arnold just happens to be playing against Barcelona in the Champions League semi-final.

As the roars envelop the ground, Lionel Messi waits in the centre circle, his shoulders drooped and his head shaking with contempt for his team-mates.

It is the privilege of this job to witness Messi defy the boundaries of this game so many times. For two years, when he was 18 and 19, I lived in Barcelona and watched him play at Camp Nou every week. Maybe it was because my first child was born at that time, but it felt good to be alive and watching this teenager. And this was in a Barcelona team, before Pep Guardiola, that won nothing.

So often he exhilarates. It had been like that in the first leg. He took a game in which Liverpool were superior and rendered that fact meaningless. But here mortality caught up with him.

He's 31. No age really, unless you're an elite athlete. Messi stopped running in the second half. He simply couldn't keep up. The intensity was beyond him.

When his shoulders slump and his head goes down, it's a terrible sign. I've seen it before and it happened at Anfield. He prowled the centre circle, an observer, willing to do his bit if only the team could get the ball to him. But he had stopped defending, stopped pressing. He had stopped doing the very basic things that afford his genius the chance to shine.

The game finishes with Liverpool not having taken a backward step; mentally or physically. There is a danger within all of this that Liverpool's win is reduced merely to them having more heart and soul. For the record, Liverpool have run 69.6miles to Barca's 65miles.

The game was about much more than that: some of Liverpool's passing from the back was as crisp and skilful as anything we have seen. Still, it's pretty difficult to compete if your outfield players run almost half a mile less than their opposite numbers over 90 minutes.

After the match, players filter into the dressing room, joyously celebrating as they go. Jordan Henderson, raucously leading the singing of 'Allez, Allez, Allez!'

But the crowd remain. And Alexander-Arnold, born in Liverpool, raised the city's suburb of West Derby, stands alone in front of the Kop. All these players are special, of course. But Alexander-Arnold?

Maybe he's just that little bit more special, like Phil Thompson, Robbie Fowler, Jamie Carragher and Steven Gerrard before him. Alexander-Arnold doesn't want to leave. He's only 20 but he must have sensed that these moments can pass all too quickly. So he stands and applauds the Kop.

And they, of course, rapturously applaud in return. And Alexander-Arnold slowly walks around the stadium, alongside the Sir Kenny Dalglish Stand and the Anfield Road End, acknowledging his own people and drinking in every moment of a special night: a boy weaned on tales of Saint- Etienne, Chelsea and Istanbul, writing his own page of history.

'I was just trying to tell the fans that we couldn't do it without them and that it's down to them that these magical nights happen.'

On a train to London the next morning, the discussion is about whether this was the greatest Liverpool team ever. On the morning after a night like that, successful games need to be ranked. This was the best ever, at Anfield at least, they decide.

At St Pancras Station the mood is different. Tottenham fans queue for their Eurostar to Amsterdam. They are excited, expectant. And unlike Liverpool, this is virgin territory for them. They have been in a semi-final of this competition only once before, in 1962, with their greatest ever team. You would have to be well into your 60s to even have a vague recall.

In small groups they discuss the events of the night before. Naturally, it gives them hope. Spurs are 1-0 down to Ajax from the first leg but unlike Liverpool's task, this doesn't look hopeless.

Cans of lager are cracked open. It's 11am after all. Plenty of drinking time to Amsterdam. An overexcited fan on the phone announces at top volume in the style of Dom Joly, at each staging post: 'WE'RE JUST GETTING INTO BRUSSELS!' and then 'WE'RE PULLING INTO ANTWERP. WE'LL BE WITH YOU IN AN HOUR!'

Tottenham have less reason than Liverpool to be fearful. This Ajax side are wonderful but they have been constructed on a fraction of the budget of their opponents.

Their journey has seen them cross swords equitably with Bayern Munich and humiliate Real Madrid and Juventus. They are a throwback to 1995, when the Dutch club last won this

read more from dailymail.....