Liverpool’s Champions League hopes have been ended for another year after losing out to PSG on Tuesday.
The Reds had been hopeful of progressing the the quarter-finals for the first time since 2022, but were edged out on penalties by the French side.
With this year’s final coming 20 years on from their famous Champions League win of 2005, it would have been a good way for Liverpool to celebrate two decades since Istanbul.
There’s little question that Arne Slot’s class of 2025 is certainly a cut above the Liverpool squad which went all the way under Rafael Benitez.
There were some brilliant players involved in that team, of course. The likes of Steven Gerrard and Xabi Alonso could have graced any team in world football, for example.
But it’s also true to say that the squad who inexplicably pipped AC Milan to the trophy was full of players who had no business being there. Perhaps top of this list of journeymen is a player some at Anfield will barely even remember: Antonio Nunez.
Photo by liewig christian/Corbis via Getty Images
Photo by liewig christian/Corbis via Getty Images
Antonio Nunez left teammates laughing in training
Liverpool’s starting XI in Istanbul was actually very good. From front to back it was a team who racked up plenty of trophies and history playing at Anfield.
The substitutes were good as well. Vladimir Smicer, Didi Hamann and Djibril Cisse were all notable players for Liverpool at one time or another.
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However, the same cannot be said of the four players who remained as unused substitutes by Benitez that evening. Josemi, the Spanish right-back signed from Villarreal, Igor Biscan, who had often been a figure of fun for Liverpool supporters, and Nunez, a summer arrival as part of Real Madrid’s deal to sign Michael Owen.
Up to that point – the final game of his first, and only, season with the Reds – Nunez had played 27 times, scoring once. And according to former teammate at Anfield David Raven, the Spaniard was far from good enough to be a Liverpool player.
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“He was a lovely man, we roomed together a couple of times on the trips and he was a lovely fella, quiet, unassuming, Spanish lad,” Raven told The Football Historian Podcast in November 2024.
“It was just when I seen him play I just couldn’t believe that he was playing at Liverpool, that sounds really bad for me to say that but I still can’t believe it. I don’t know, maybe that’s my judge of player.”
“He got injured in one of his first sessions just running down the line and no one was near him and he fell over and got injured and done his knee,” the former Liverpool academy player recalled.
“And we, the younger lads, thought it was funny at the time and laughed but then realised he was actually seriously injured. We were like, ‘oh my God!’ and he was out for months, there was no one near him.
“He’s just one of them players, I think like he came from Madrid as well and I wonder whether that was part of the deal where Benitez had to play him to justify part of the move, I don’t know, because he’s putting him on at times and this guy could not play football for me, like he couldn’t play.
“He’s not playing in the Football League, never mind in the Premier League, I don’t know – that’s my opinion.”
What happened to Antonio Nunez?
Nunez may not have impressed many of his teammates at Liverpool, but the former Real Madrid man perhaps had the last laugh.
Given his presence as part of the 18-man squad for the final, he will forever be a Champions League winner with Liverpool. No one can take that away from him.
In a bizarre twist, his only goal for the club was also in a final; against Chelsea in the unsuccessful 2005 League Cup final in Cardiff.
As Liverpool gear up for the 2025 edition against Newcastle, it’s well worth a look back at Nunez’s only career goal for the Reds.
Unsurprisingly, the winger left Anfield after one season, heading back to Spain with Celta Vigo. He then played for Murcia, Apollon Limassol in Cyprus, Huesca, Deportivo La Coruna and Recreativo Huelva.
Nunez retired in 2018 and although he may not have lit the world alight at Liverpool, he will always have Istanbul.