The Agonies of John Terry: Vol 2

Just how sad does he look in this

After the '05 CL semi:

"But at 80 minutes I started to panic and when I saw the clock going to 88 minutes, my eyes started filling up with tears. When Eidur Gudjohnsen's shot somehow went out into touch in the last minute of injury time I can't explain quite how I felt. It was like everything went from my body. We had had one more chance. This was it. And then it was all gone in a split second.

I was distraught after the game. I didn't know what to do with myself. What I couldn't quite comprehend was that for the second year in succession, we had lost a Champions League semi we were supposed to win.

For the second year in succession we had got so close to the final, the match that is the Holy Grail for every professional footballer, and then we had blown it.

I wanted to run straight back down the tunnel when the final whistle went.

But I went up to Stevie Gerrard and Jamie Carragher and told them: "Go and lift it now. Go and lift it for yourself and for your club." It was hard because a big part of me just wanted to get back to the dressing room away from the cameras and the eyes of the crowd and just wallow in my despair.

When you have got grown men on the pitch crying because they have just lost something they have worked so hard for, the rawness of that can be quite shocking. William Gallas was beside himself with despair. A few of us were.

When I heard the final whistle, I broke down. I was crying. People were saying to me that it wasn't our year and our chance would come. But I was in bits. Willie and Eidur were the same. The manager came over and said "No tears again. We will have our time."

Going back to the dressing room was the lowest I have felt in football. I know when I walk in there next time, when we play Liverpool in October, it's all going to come flooding back and I'm already dreading that.

I sat there in the dressing room that night with a towel over my head, just crying.

Nobody wanted to move from their seat. We sat there for an age. No one wanted to look up, speak, move, to get up to get showered or even wanted to get changed. It was an hour and a half before the lads were out of the dressing room.

I kept thinking about something Marcel Desailly once said to me, that in the Champions League, you get one chance at it and if you don't take it, it doesn't happen. That haunted me as we drove away from Anfield".

From his autobiography. Might need an extra chapter or two.

(Thx Kennedy81)