The Scotland international star says he does not like to look back on the incident with the “greatest player that has ever played”
Liverpool ace Andy Robertson admits that he regrets a clash with Lionel Messi in the first minute of last season’s Champions League semi-final second leg at Anfield.
Trailing 3-0 from the first match at Camp Nou, the Reds went into the return fixture with a bullish attitude that they could turn the tie around.
They did so, emerging 4-0 victors in one of European football’s all-time great nights, with Robertson’s early meeting with the six-time Ballon d’Or winner one of the iconic moments of the game.
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He and Fabinho had challenged the Argentine near the edge of the Reds’ box, and with play moving on after the referee deemed the challenge fair, Robertson half ruffled the hair of the Barca ace and half shoved him.
“When I look back on things, I don’t really regret anything because I feel as if everything is experience that makes you what you are,” the 25-year-old left-back told the Daily Mail. “But I do look back on that moment with Messi as one regret. I don’t like seeing it. When I saw it afterwards I was gutted.
“We all had the attitude that day that nothing was standing in our way to get to that final and we created that atmosphere around the stadium – me and Fabinho were tracking him and there was a tangle of legs and we were on the floor. To do that to the greatest player that has ever played…
“I have nothing but respect for him and Barcelona, but we went into that game with the attitude that we were 3-0 down, we needed a miracle, we needed something special and if that little thing stopped the best player in the world playing to his highest potential…
“But I do regret it. That’s not me as a person. That’s not my personality. But that night a lot of things happened that you don’t really remember. There was no thought process behind it.
“We were right up for the game. The fans were roaring and you get caught up in it. You’re a human being.
“We were 3-0 down in the semi-final of the Champions League, which we wanted to put right from the season before. It was the loudest changing room I have been in before the game. You could see the focus and the determination in all of us and maybe I went over the line.”
Robertson, though, admits that it was an action that the supporters appreciated.
“Liverpool fans like the edge, I think,” he said. “I feel that maybe this whole team is quite good at representing Liverpool right now.
“Liverpool is a big working-class city. We go out and show hard work. We get beaten in games but what you can’t question is that every time we go out there, we give 100 per cent.”
Liverpool play West Ham on Monday, needing just 15 more points to guarantee the league title.
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