For completely selfish reasons, the night Celtic silenced around 35,000 Liverpool fans at Anfield will live forever in my memory.

Now there has always been a good rapport between both sets of fans and that continued during the two legs of a monumental tussle. Liverpool were favourites to go through, as all English teams are when they come up against Scottish opponents.

All Anglo-Scottish games usually take on the “Battle of Britain” tag, but this one ended up with a Scottish victory. I know Manchester United have beaten both Rangers and Celtic recently, but Celtic have also taken care of the Red Devils at Parkhead.

'As the game wore on, Liverpool were becoming increasingly frustrated and running out of ideas'


Whether it is a slight superiority complex or arrogance that causes the eventual downfall of English clubs against the Scots, we don’t know. In this case, Liverpool had travelled to the East End of Glasgow and recorded a 1-1 scoreline, reinforcing the belief in England and Scotland that Celtic’s UEFA Cup run was about to come to an end a week later.

Indeed, with the loss of influential striker Chris Sutton, it was thought that Celtic might not have enough firepower. And so it was that on  March 20, 2003, some 44,238 Liverpudlian and Glaswegian fanatics filled Anfield to the brim. The atmosphere was electric and another rousing rendition of "You’ll Never Walk Alone" was belted out by both sets of fans.

Without Sutton, Celtic manager Martin O’Neill bolstered his midfield by replacing the Englishman with club captain Paul Lambert. This provided Celtic with an extra edge in the middle of the park in terms of tackling and endless running, not giving the Reds any time to settle on the ball.

Celtic fired a few early-warning shots, with Alan Thompson, John Hartson and Henrik Larsson testing Jerzy Dudek in the Liverpool goal. Thompson and Hartson, in particular, were to have a large say in the outcome of this tie. In a free-flowing and pulsating game Michael Owen, Steven Gerrard and Emile Heskey went close for the Reds, but Celtic’s dominance in midfield was telling.

One minute into first-half injury time Celtic’s pressure paid off. Larsson was fouled 25 yards out and Dudek organised the wall. With Thompson hovering around the ball, everyone, including Dudek, was expecting a dipping left-foot shot into the top left-hand corner. Thompson instead hit a daisy-cutter under the jumping Liverpool wall and into the back of the net.

The second-half response from Liverpool was to bombard the Celtic defence with passing and quick movement but, led by the stubborn and industrious Neil Lennon, the Scottish team's midfield just wouldn’t buckle. Indeed, Celtic had the best chance to kill off the game when a Larsson header was smartly saved by Dudek.

As the game wore on, Liverpool were becoming increasingly frustrated and running out of ideas. And with nine minutes to go came the sucker punch they could never recover from. Big bad Hartson picked the ball up on the left, turned inside and unleashed an unstoppable right-foot rocket past the despairing hands of Dudek. It was an absolute screamer and killed the tie right there and then.

It was a famous victory and the fact that it was won “down south” made it all the more sweet. Scotland could look down on England with a huge smile after defying all the odds. Celtic had made it to the semi-finals of the UEFA Cup at Liverpool's expense.