Liverpool star's "horrible" feeling over Man Utd injury he still struggles with
Liverpool won 1-0, Peter Crouch scored a header and the Reds would eventually go on to win the FA Cup.
But any discussion of the fifth round tie between Liverpool and Manchester United in February 2006 simply isn't complete without discussing the player whose life changed that day. Well, the two players.
It was the innocuousness of it all which got to you both at the time and even now, as it was the sort of thing you see in almost every game. It was exactly what defenders are encouraged to do.
As John Arne Riise smashed his free-kick goalwards in the second half at Anfield, Alan Smith did what Sir Alex Ferguson would have wanted him to do and got in the way. Then his body weight shifted, and his ankle crumpled.
"Personally that's the worst thing that I've experienced in that game," Riise would recall in 2021. "After it had happened I went over to check up on him and I could just see his foot hanging there loose. You get sick, you know. You feel horrible.
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"He's stretchered off and I have to keep playing in the game - a massive game for us - but as soon as the match ended and I got back in the dressing room and showered, I called him in the hospital from my car and spoke to him about what had happened. He knew it wasn't intentional, but at the same time I just wanted to make sure he knew I was sorry so I got his number and spoke to him straight away."
Alan Smith left the pitch on a stretcher (PA)As Smith was take off on a stretcher there was applause from all four corners of Anfield as supporters knew the injury was a bad one, but in the infancy of the social media age there were soon wild rumours about what had happened to the former Leeds United forward once he got in the ambulance.
Accusations of fans throwing bottles towards the vehicle and trying to overturn it circled, and they were treated with such seriousness that both clubs issued a joint statement condemning those apparently responsible.
But Smith says that was all fabricated. “It didn’t happen - fans were still in the ground," he told Four Four Two back in 2015. "I went back to Liverpool a few years later with Newcastle and had a great reception. I had loads of mail from fans after the injury, including a lot from Liverpool. And Liverpool’s medical staff were great."
Smith had made the move from Leeds United to Manchester United (Getty Images)However helpful Liverpool were being, that couldn't console a devastated Riise. The Norwegian says he struggled to get over the incident.
"It was a bad day, a bad night for me, and I'd never wish that kind of thing on anyone," he continued. "It's hard, so I dealt with it in my head for the rest of the day and back home in the evening, and obviously the next day you have to deal with it all again because it's in the papers, but then you have to carry on with your duties and focus on the next match.
"I would text Alan from time to time to see how he was getting on and make sure he was OK and the main thing was that he got well again."
Smith, the Yorkshire firebrand who had swapped the United of Leeds for the one of Manchester upon Leeds' relegation in 2004, was a determined character, but he knew that this was going to be some battle that lay ahead. Sir Alex Ferguson had called it one of the worst injuries he'd ever seen, and he'd seen a few.
"I knew with the injury it would be touch and go whether I could carry on playing – the surgeon said that," Smith told Mirror Sport in 2018 “It would have been easier to walk away and people remember you as a top Premier League player. But I didn’t want that, because I loved playing football.
"Your love of it makes you go through the pain barrier. Arguably, from that day at Liverpool onwards people don’t see the best of you. Adrenaline gets you through for a certain amount of time but you soon realise, 'The stuff I used to do, I can’t do.'"
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Riise would go on to star in the Reds side that won the FA Cup, scoring in the semi-final (AFP)Smith had to reinvent himself. He would eventually recover enough to play 18 times for United the following season, but he was nowhere near the same player.
Having been seen as a spiky forward before the injury, Smith dropped back into midfield. He would have five seasons at Newcastle upon leaving Old Trafford in 2007, but in 94 appearances he never scored. He also suffered another ankle injury which wouldn't have been too serious were in not for the metalwork that was in it from the Anfield incident.
Spells down in the lower leagues at MK Dons and Notts County followed before his retirement in 2018, and he insists there are no regrets about playing on, despite the injury issue.
“I went for a run in the summer and managed to do a couple of miles but stopped and started walking because my ankle was hurting," said Smith in that 2018 interview.
"I went back last month and the surgeon said, 'I don’t want you doing any straight-line running', just because it will damage the joint.
“It is always difficult to walk away but when you see someone and they don’t want you running, you know it is the right decision. I have no regrets, for me I see retiring early being the easy option.”
Smith is happy that he ended up playing on and moving down the divisions against medical advice, and while Riise still shivers when he recalls the incident, he can at least find a small mercy.
"All I can say is I'm glad social media wasn't a thing back then," he says. "Obviously fans can overreact at times and that's normal but thankfully I didn't see too much of what Man United fans were saying about me because we didn't have things like Twitter.
"No one can blame me for what happened; I was just doing my job and trying to have a shot and Alan was doing his job by blocking it. It was just unfortunate."
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