JAR would have thought about hanging boots up

By Redsfan
May 5 2005

John Arne Riise has said that he’d have considered hanging up his boots or contemplated suicide had Gudjohnsens goal gone in on Tuesday night.

He said:

"When Gudjohnsen had that chance at the end I was s***ing myself. If he had scored I would have started crying. I would have retired on the spot or maybe even shot myself," said an emotional Riise, who then treated the crowd to a celebratory strip-show during manic moments that followed the final whistle.

"I didn't know what I was doing, I just kept giving the fans everything I had on," he adds. "I can't remember if they started calling for me to do it or not, but I had said to the players before the game that if we won I'd strip off and give all my clothes to the fans.

"I suppose I was lucky to escape with my modesty intact. I didn't intend stripping off that much, but they kept yelling for more and I threw them everything I could.

"It was the greatest night ever. You should have seen the dressing room, it was unbelievable. I could have cried. In fact I was crying one minute and laughing the next- and I wasn't the only one.

"The crowd were fantastic, there was no way I could have run like that for 96 minutes if I hadn't been feeding off the crowd. But I think we were probably making even more noise than they were when we got back to the dressing room. It was amazing."

AC Milan now await Liverpool in the final on May 25 and Riise admits it's going to be hard to concentrate on anything else between now and then.

"If you win the Champions League, you've won it, finishing fourth is not on our minds at the moment. We've just two games in the league left, we've got to be focussed, we know it is going to be hard, but we'regoing to enjoy this for a couple of days.

"We have just got to keep working hard, this has given us the confidence to push on. We've beaten some great teams and know we can continue to beat great teams."