The Champions League final of 2005 remains one of the most extraordinary turnarounds in sporting history.
With AC Milan's superteam of Andrea Pirlo, Kaka, Paolo Maldini and Hernan Crespo linking up to great effect in the first half, the Italians were 3-0 up and seemingly out of sight at the break in Istanbul.
But Liverpool - inspired by the brilliance of captain Steven Gerrard - pulled off a thoroughly unexpected comeback, levelling up the tie in normal time before forcing penalties and taking a famous win.
⏪ 2005: THAT Liverpool comeback against AC Milan in in Istanbul... @LFC | #UCLdraw pic.twitter.com/yHm3QtTGTH
— UEFA Champions League (@ChampionsLeague) August 26, 2021
The Milan team were understandably shell shocked. In his 2014 autobiography, Andrea Pirlo said that the defeat took such a toll on him that he could barely enjoy the team's revenge in the 2007 final, and that he almost quit football as a result of Milan's collapse in Istanbul.
Andrea Pirlo: Legendary Italian still wears scars of Istanbul 2005
Liverpool's win in the 2005 Champions League final has been ranked by many as the greatest comeback in the modern history of the European Cup, and it is certainly hard to argue.
Though fans of the English club were understandably overjoyed with the result, it naturally led to utter devastation for the Milan players.
In his autobiography I Think Therefore I Play, Andrea Pirlo detailed just how far into the pits of despair he fell after the 2005 defeat:
I thought about quitting because, after Istanbul, nothing made sense any more. The 2005 Champions League final simply suffocated me.
In time the truly painful sentence was realising that we were entirely to blame.
How it happened I don't know, but the fact remains that when the impossible becomes reality, somebody's fucked up - in this case, the entire team. A mass suicide where we all joined hands and jumped off the Bosphorus Bridge.
I no longer felt like a player, and that was devastating enough. But even worse, I no longer felt like a man. All of a sudden, football became the least important thing, precisely because it was the most important: a very painful contradiction.
I didn't dare look in the mirror in case my reflection spat back at me. The only possible solution I could think of was to retire. And what a dishonourable retirement it would have been. My last performance had been so comically pathetic they wouldn't even have taken me on Zelig.
Yikes.
Pirlo would come around eventually, and went on to win another Champions League when Milan got their revenge against the same opposition in the 2007 final in Athens. He would also prove an invaluable cog in the Italian machine that won the 2006 World Cup.
But the scars of that final ran deep, and Pirlo says he has never forgotten that final - indeed, he suggests that AC Milan should list it alongside their list of honours, so that it is never forgotten by the club either.
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