How I won the Champions League for Liverpool

The time has come to admit it, with apologies to Tottenham fans. In 2019, Liverpool and Spurs contested an all-English Champions League final in Madrid. Many reasons have been advanced for Liverpool’s 2-0 triumph. Some – well, mainly Glenn Hoddle – say the early Liverpool penalty was harsh. Some say Liverpool controlled the game from start to finish because they had better players. Some rue a couple of missed Spurs chances in the second half.

Only now can I reveal the real reason. From the night that Liverpool got to the final – after that astonishing 4-0 demolition of Barcelona at Anfield – I missed the bottom step every time I walked down a flight of stairs. Truly! I have no idea why this superstitious gesture – which started in a triumphant dash back from the loo after the semi final win – had the impact it did. But for what seemed an age between the semi and the final, I stepped over the bottom step every time – sometimes nearly injuring myself on escalators. This was my private ‘for luck in the final’ superstition.

You may scoff, but it worked. Liverpool won their sixth European Cup.

This is not an isolated example. I’ve been laughed at for wearing a Liverpool shirt while watching games on the telly – and for changing it at half time when things aren’t going well. The sight of a single magpie on match day has been known to convince me of an impending defeat. And I have scrabbled around picking up filthy pennies on dusty floors to bring luck not to me, but my favourite football team.

When my daughter was a child, she watched a large portion of a vital Liverpool match at Crystal Palace, and went to bed when we were 3-0 up. Unbelievably, Palace clawed it back to 3-3, seemingly wrecking the dream of a first Liverpool league title since 1990. My deranged response was to wake my sleeping child and insist she watch the rest of the match with me – my infallible logic was that her being in the room had put Liverpool three goals up. Sadly, I must report that the intervention did not work on this occasion. I obviously should have not let her go to bed in the first place as it clearly broke the spell.

It’s not just me, by the way. Football fans as a breed are weird. From wearing the same pants they wore during a particular victory, to threatening not to shave until their team wins a game or even a cup, bizarre fan superstitions and rituals are rife if not always hygenic. I’ve read of a guy who thinks if he glances at the match clock and the number is symmetrical, his team will win. Of a woman who ran around the garden when willing her team to score – and then kept up the tradition for years afterwards when they did. Of fans eating the same pre-match meal, of sitting in a particular seat to watch or even refusing to watch with people they deem ‘unlucky’. Some shout the same mantra at the start of every game, whether they are there for it to be heard or not. And players themselves have their own closely repeated pre-match rituals that they hope will bring them luck.

All of this of course reflects that football (like any sport) often requires a degree of luck for results to go your way. If you can’t influence it at all – especially as a fan, where the most you can do is a sing a song or yell at players/officials in the ground if you’re actually there. It’s enirely, 100% out of your hands and seemingly in the lap of the gods.

Little wonder that we invent little superstitions, mantras and rituals and kid ourselves they might make a difference. It’s another form of praying, I guess – I’m sure Heaven has to put on extra staff during penalty shoot-outs. Everyone is the main character in their own drama and so of course you want to influence the script, even if the reality is you have no means of doing so. Or as psychologist Dr Josephine Perry puts it: “When we’re out of control, or feel out of control because we can’t control the thing that’s in front of is, we like to find things to take control.”

Every football ground, every sports stadium, every pub or household where people gather to watch sport, all of these places are full of people who have dressed, eaten, danced or in my case stepped their way through a bizarre tradition that they hope will give them that control. The fact that it won’t doesn’t matter – it’s just part of being a fan and part of the madness of loving sport.

And reflecting on that sixth European Cup, you can talk about the heroics of Mo Salah,and Divock Origi all you like. But you need to know that neither was scoring that night if a strange man in his 50s hadn’t nearly broken his neck leaping over bottom steps for several weeks before it.