The Final Battle

When referee Weber blew the final whistle, cheers from Liverpool fans rang out across Wembley Stadium.

The Liverpool players on the field also breathed a sigh of relief and burst into laughter.

Two-one. The scoreboard at Wembley Stadium displayed the final score.

In the eighty-second minute of the second half, Chelsea launched a counterattack. Anelka assisted Lampard, whose long-range shot found the net, pulling one back for Chelsea and saving them some face.

That had been Hiddink's strategy for this match.

After Liverpool scored twice in succession, the Blues did not immediately launch a counterattack. Instead, they mounted an attack toward the end of the first half, then spent a period of time attacking aggressively at the start of the second half.

However, at the start of the second half, Liverpool had also produced several dangerous counterattacks. Yang Yang's counterattack in the fiftieth minute and his long-range shot from outside the box in the fifty-eighth minute had been the most threatening.

Chelsea then returned to a strategy of solid defense and counterattacks. It was not until the seventy-fifth minute that they began making wholesale substitutions and launching a full-scale assault. In the eighty-second minute, they capitalized on a lapse in Liverpool's defense, with Lampard scoring from long range.

But over the following nearly ten minutes, Chelsea never managed to threaten Liverpool's goal again.

The two-one scoreline held until the final whistle.

Three-time champions!

The instant the whistle sounded, Yang Yang seemed to catch fire.

He had been in superb form throughout the match. That was not only because he had spent the recent period constantly adjusting himself; he had even gone so far as to summon Winston Bogarde to Liverpool to arrange training for him.

At the same time, Benitez had invited the group of Spanish physiologists from two