Liverpool v West Ham: Re-watching The Gerrard Final 20 years on as a Hammer | OneFootball

I’ve always been drawn towards life’s bittersweet moments, shards of happiness that you wouldn’t necessarily want to linger on.

It’s probably why I’ve never been described as a ray of sunshine. But these memories are simply more interesting to me; life is fleeting and the best moments are so vivid in our subconscious because of their rarity.

So it’s safe to say that West Ham chose me more than anything else. This is a club to make you appreciate both clouds and silver linings.

The first season I remember was the infamous ‘Too Good to Go Down’ year, when West Ham got 42 points and were relegated with half the England team.

And I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles is an incredibly melancholic club anthem, befitting of supporting one of England’s more skittish clubs.

It was after the 2006 FA Cup final, after Anton Ferdinand had missed the decisive penalty and my 11-year-old self had burst into tears at home, that Bubbles rang around the Millennium Stadium.

The celebrating Liverpool fans stopped their celebrations and turned to the West Ham end. In 2026, this would be a moment to mock and upload. Instead, they applauded this show of proud defiance. It’s easier to be magnanimous in victory, but we’ve all got more in common than we think.

In many ways, I’ve spent the last 20 years wishing we’d lost that game 2-0 in the most forgettable manner. A goal in each half, one shot on target and footnoted before the end of 90 minutes.

Instead, our doomed heroism contributed to the best FA Cup final of the 21st century. I relive it every year when the BBC plays Steven Gerrard’s goal in their boosterist ‘Magic of the Cup’ montages.

Even now, ‘that goal’ is an excuse to change the channel or become strangely fascinated by the fabric of my t-shirt.

So why volunteer to rewatch the game on the 20th anniversary? Nobody made me and pouring your heart out for a morning’s content seems an ill-fitting tribute to a defining childhood memory.

But two decades is a long time. I was in Prague for the Europa Conference League final, behind the goal when Jarrod Bowen scored the winner against Fiorentina.

That trophy itch, a day without complications when people reach out and congratulate you, has been scratched. And it can’t be more heart-wrenching than going back to Upton Park.

So, on an unseasonably warm April afternoon with an unseasonably heavy cold, I fire up YouTube to poke this particular wound with a stick.

The first thing to say is how perfect the setting looks, with the sun shining and Cardiff’s steep stands towering over the pitch. The FA should have immediately stopped building work at Wembley and annexed south Wales instead. It probably would’ve worked out cheaper.

And, with hindsight, this match was perfectly poised. It’s an essential component of Cup final day that a clear, but not infallible, favourite meets an underdog capable of bloodying a few noses and to whom the occasion means everything.

That’s why Manchester City v Crystal Palace is infinitely more satisfying than Manchester City v Chelsea. An all-underdog final is great for novelty, but riddled with fear. This was the Goldilocks zone.

West Ham kick off and it’s noticeable how the instinct of both teams is to move the ball forward. There’s little sterile possession and, despite the prominence of ProZone, the full weight of data paralysis has clearly not taken full effect.

Rafa Benitez sits in the dugout, looking uncannily like a Spanish Captain Mainwaring. His counterpart, Alan Pardew, stalks the touchline in the type of sweatshirt you’d wear down the local tip.

I have two distinct memories of the build-up; firstly, being at a birthday party during the semi with Middlesbrough and my mum telling me West Ham had won when picking me up. ‘They’ll lose the final anyway’ was the first thing anyone else said.

Secondly, on the day itself, coming back from the shops with snacks and a group of kids singing Liverpool chants when we walked past.

Growing up outside Bristol, everyone knew our family supported West Ham and were pre-rubbernecking at the inevitable loss on national television that was forthcoming.

But Pardew’s men are brave and brilliant, taking the match to opponents who were Champions League holders and going 2-0 up.

I can’t quite remember whether I believed when Jamie Carragher trips over his own shoelaces for the own goal or when Dean Ashton snaffles a second.

But the celebrations in the crowd seem as much disbelieving as delirious. As ever supporting West Ham, there’s an urge to check the small print and wonder what karma has in store in penance for a glimpse of utopia.

To put it more bluntly, it felt too good to be true. Soon after, Djibril Cisse sweeps home for Liverpool to halve the deficit.

I’d forgotten how good Nigel Reo-Coker was, the 21-year-old West Ham captain whose form earned him a place on the standby list for England’s World Cup squad.

It all went sour for Reo-Coker, the poster boy of the infamous ‘Baby Bentley’ brigade at Upton Park, but he runs the midfield in the first half.

Straight after half-time, Pepe Reina denies both Yossi Benayoun and Marlon Harewood in quick succession. My journalistic instincts twitch; this feels like the clear turning point.

As the game stretches and becomes increasingly emotional, Gerrard starts to rampage about the place and the mood turns ominous. In a just world, it’d be soundtracked by a haunting Burial instrumental.

The Liverpool captain thrashes home an equaliser. It was around this time in 2006 that my dad switched to the red button, infuriated by John Motson and Mark Lawrenson giving Liverpool a verbal bubble bath on commentary.

The path for a Reds procession seems set, until Paul Konchesky’s cross flies over Reina and makes it 3-2. I note the celebrations of both players and fans are tinged with disbelief once again.

Because that’s the crux as an underdog in these matches; West Ham believed they could win, whereas Liverpool believed they would win.

Despite what followed not constituting a siege – Liverpool seem to run out of ideas after 80 minutes – that inevitability seeps into everything; players are going down with cramp and Pardew makes defensive substitutions.

I was slightly too young to be tainted by the cynicism that riddles me now, probably unable to contain the bubbling excitement as the clock ticked down.

This was about to be my first taste of real success – not just sporting, but probably my life. As we all know, nothing is more important than football when you’re 11. And especially when your school was full of glory-hunting Arsenal, Liverpool and Man United supporters.

Instead, Lionel Scaloni kicks the ball out so Cisse can receive treatment. The future World Cup-winning manager is pressganged by Liverpool into giving it straight back, the ball breaks to Gerrard and I experience genuine heartbreak for the first time.

Twenty years on and I force myself not to look away. It’s clear Gerrard’s shot contains the last reserves of his energy; it was always going in or heading skywards in the direction of Swansea.

It’s hit low with the heat of a thousand suns. Poor Shaka Hislop, by then reaching pension age, stood no chance.

Strangely, my stomach doesn’t drop upon seeing it. Nor do my eyes flood with tears, as they did in 2006.

Instead, I feel almost detached from the events on the screen. As if somehow the moment was Ronnie Radford-levels of over-familiar, despite going out of my way to avoid it for two decades.

But the emotional sting has been drawn by the passage of time, almost without my realising it. It now feels like ‘something that happened’ instead of hitting more existentially.

I watch extra-time on 1.5x speed, marked by an almost impossible save by Reina right at the end. West Ham never look likely to win the penalty shoot-out that follows.

It’s no exaggeration to say I couldn’t stop crying for days. The immediate aftermath was bad, but the worst moment came at school two days later, when people were genuinely sympathetic and it took all my strength to hold it together.

We spend a lot of our lives trying to avoid real emotion, weaving protective webs of coping mechanisms to cocoon ourselves in.

But it’s nice to care about something so deeply, for something that ultimately isn’t life-or-death to mean that much.

And I’ve come to realise my personal identity has been partly shaped by the 2006 Cup final.

It’s become a reference point for fleeting joy, Ground Zero for the complicated beauty of an imperfect experience and the irresistible romantic allure of seeing bubbles nearly reach the sky.

It also subtly set my expectations for life’s big milestones, waiting for the ‘Gerrard moment’ when happiness was whisked away.

As I grew older, I had to consciously fight against this. Bracing yourself for the worst didn’t lessen the emotional impact when things went wrong.

In Prague, I consciously chose to break this pattern and embrace the day to its fullest. That decision had no impact on the pitch, but it helped close the circle of 2006.

Nobody wants to read the book of a contented author, that way lies Steven Bartlett over Oscar Wilde, or peer at the painting of a silver-spooned artist.

And we want our football team’s success to be hard-earned after years of thin gruel and thwarted dreams. It’s no wonder that West Ham chose me.