John Arne Riise ‘unable to talk’ about Champions League mistake

Apr 24 2008 by Ian Doyle, Liverpool Daily Post

John Arne Riise

DISTRAUGHT John Arne Riise has not yet been able to bring himself to even talk to his family after his Champions League calamity against Chelsea.

The Liverpool defender sent a diving header past his own goalkeeper Pepe Reina in the fifth minute of injury time to gift the Londoners a potentially decisive 1-1 draw at Anfield in their semi-final first leg on Tuesday night.

Riise was only on the pitch as a substitute for the unlucky Fabio Aurelio, who suffered an adductor injury that is likely to keep him out of next Wednesday’s second leg at Stamford Bridge.

And Riise’s brother Bjorn Helge, who plays in the Norwegian league for Lillestrom, has revealed the depths of the left-back’s despair.

“I tried getting in contact with John Arne after the game,” he said. “Eventually he sent me back a text message saying, ‘I don’t want to speak. I’m so disappointed. Give me a call back in a couple of days and we’ll speak then’.”

Riise himself only said afterwards: “What can I say? I’m just so disappointed.”

Liverpool’s players have rallied round in support of Riise while refusing to point the finger of blame at the hapless Norway international

“What could John say to me?” said Reina.

“Of course it was a bad way to concede, but he was just trying to clear the ball. It was an accident.

“Going into the last minute it was going to be a great result for us, but we have to help him now and he knows that. I just said to him ‘carry on, that’s football.’ How many times has he cleared things and played fantastic for us. We have to support him.”

Jamie Carragher said: “It was just bad luck. We’ve all been there, all done something like that. There’s no blame attached to John.

“I think a couple of things happened before that and there were a couple of things we could have done to stop the cross even coming in. It’s a team game, we are all in it together.”