REDS REVIVAL SHOULD BE CELEBRATED

REDS REVIVAL SHOULD BE CELEBRATED

By Frank Malley, PA Chief Sports Writer

One is polite, portly and Spanish. The other is rude, swashbuckling and Portuguese.

But when Liverpool's Rafael Benitez and Chelsea's Jose Mourinho pit their wits against each other in the semi-finals of the Champions League later this month they will both be doing their bit for English football.

It's difficult to overstate the kudos to the domestic game in having two of the Barclays Premiership's finest battling it out for a place in the Champions League final.

Just as it is difficult to overstate quite what it means to have a proud and resurgent Liverpool back at the forefront of the game.

"If you are first you are first, if you are second you are nothing," was Bill Shankly's famous philosophy amid his Anfield revolution in the 1960s.

Since then the nation has been through its softly-softly, kissy-kissy phase when there was no such thing as failing a GCSE and when the only thing competitive about so many school sports days was the egg-and-spoon race. Yet, there's no doubt about it.

In terms of Europe's greatest prize Liverpool have been "nothing" ever since that fateful night when 39 fans died in the Heysel Stadium and they were banned from Europe along with the rest of English clubs.

At last Benitez has given a proud football club a reason to believe.

You only had to listen to the delirium down the phone-in airwaves as Liverpool fans, the same ones who were reaching for the razor blades during the latter days of Gerard Houllier's reign, gave thanks for their deliverance.

It couldn't have come at a better time for a football club, a city or a nation.

Heaven knows, Scousers do not always get the best press.

And in a week when stories of the most expensive Scouser of all, namely Wayne Rooney, continued to portray footballers as hard-drinking, soft-minded and foul-mouthed, it was uplifting to witness a Liverpudlian with brains not just below the neck.

Not Steven Gerrard, whose groin injury caused him to miss the glory in Turin, although if the exploits of his team-mates persuade him to stay at his home club rather than take the rouble train to Stamford Bridge this summer then that alone is worth celebration.

Not Michael Owen either, who would never admit it but whose ill-fated move to Real Madrid must have left him feeling like the man who won the lottery but lost the ticket.

No, it's Jamie Carragher, the lad from Bootle with a Scouse accent which could saw wood, who was the epitome of the Shankly ethos on Wednesday night.

Benitez's side does not have the pbutting range or individual talent of the great sides of Liverpool's past. There is no prolific scorer like Ian Rush, no supreme artist such as Kenny Dalglish, nor is there the capacity to overwhelm opponents with the sweeping nature of their football.

But in Carragher they have the consistent and forceful presence every successful team needs, a man steeped in Liverpool history, brought up in the certain knowledge that the club belongs at the forefront of European football.

The pbuttion and commitment of such a character rubs off on all around. Quite simply, Carragher was the toast of Turin for a performance of the richest quality as Liverpool out-defended the Italians. Compliments do not come better than that.

Can they beat Chelsea?

The statistics, three losses against the Londoners this season, say they will struggle.

But Benitez is a canny fox, not one who has performed that well where gutsy, buccaneering football demanded by the Premiership is concerned.

Yet give him a two-legged tactical battle and he is up there with the shrewdest.

For the semi, Gerrard will be back. Xabi Alonso will have had more time to regain match sharpness following recovery from his broken ankle, so too Djibril Cisse from his broken leg. Suddenly Liverpool's squad looks strong and resourceful and how welcome is that for a Premiership which needs everything it can muster to combat the proceeds of the oil well at the bottom of Chelsea's garden.

In the dark days of the late 1980s when English football was enduring the nadir of Heysel, it was former Liverpool manager Roy Evans who put it best. "Liverpool without European football is like a banquet without wine," he said.

Not any more. Liverpool are back and everyone who loves football should drink to that.