I haven’t watched the final again.
We came together as a group to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the game, and we watched bits of it. But I still haven’t seen the whole thing.
Maybe I will in the future with my son, who also plays football. It will be a good lesson for him – to see how a small team, with modest players, was able to compete against the big teams in Europe.
But we will wait a bit for that. The story hasn’t got a happy ending. It’s cruel. Too cruel.
The 2001 UEFA Cup final was the last final in club football to be decided by the golden goal rule. There was only a few minutes to go until penalties, after we had gone down to just nine men in extra time.
We got to that final thanks to the confidence of that group of players. I played for teams like Atlético Madrid and AC Milan, but I felt best at Alavés and later at Getafe, where I also had the great experience of getting to the UEFA Cup quarter finals.