Rafael Benítez: ‘When I see Ancelotti, we don’t talk about Istanbul much’

“I f I say Istanbul, he says Athens.” Rafa Benítez smiles. It is almost 18 years since Liverpool’s comeback against Milan in the 2005 Champions League final, but everywhere he goes, everyone he speaks to, it is always there. Well, almosteveryone. “When I see Carlo Ancelotti we don’t talk about it much,” the former Liverpool manager says. “He doesn’t like talking about it and I don’t like talking about the final two years later. In Athens we were better and didn’t win; in Istanbul they had a great team and didn’t. That’s football.”

For Benítez, it is the moment and it helped form Ancelotti, who often cites that night as a lesson. “Experience is a rank,” Benítez says, a recurring theme soon revealing itself: the defence of a generation. Two years later, Ancelotti’s Milan team defeated Liverpool in the final. The Italian then won Madrid’s 10th European Cup, rescued by a 94th-minute goal, in 2014. And he travels to Anfield on Tuesday for the first leg of their last-16 tie defending probably the most extraordinary Champions League campaign there has been, a collection of ridiculous comebacks last season that lacked only an Istanbul at the end.

“One thing that’s not up for discussion is that Istanbul was the best European Cup final in history in emotional terms and probably will be for many years,” Benítez says. “All those things. The atmosphere, the fans singing. [Gennaro] Gattuso: did he touch the cup? The turnaround. The amount of times I have been asked about half-time. That can never be repeated. And for both of us, it was an experience. I’m a better coach for it; a better coach now than I was years ago.”

There is a warmth as Benítez talks about Ancelotti, one year his senior and with a career path that crossed his,