It was a season of highs, including home victories over Manchester United, Arsenal and champions Chelsea. Yet, one dark afternoon in February stands out as a key moment for McClaren, who had a season ticket thrown at him by an angry fan as a Luke Moore hat-trick inspired Aston Villa to a 4-0 victory at the Riverside.
“We’d put all our eggs in two baskets, and the league was suffering because of that,” he admits. “I had to wait to escape out of the back door of the stadium after the game; everyone was calling for my head. I had one of the best chairmen in Steve Gibson, but I thought he was going to sack me. That night, he took me upstairs and I thought: ‘Oh, this is it.’ I got up to his office and there was a pint laid out for me. He just said: ‘Get that down you!’
“A week later, we beat Chelsea 3-0.”
Speculation was rife that McClaren would be replacing Sven-Goran Eriksson as England manager by the spring. Allan believes that didn’t help Boro’s cause, but McClaren says it was put to bed well before the final.
“I thought his ambition was too much,” Allan says. “I’d always give him a briefing before a press conference. We went through his notes and he says: ‘All these questions are about England, not about the match.’ I said: ‘There aren’t going to be any questions about the match. The story is ‘Is Steve McClaren the new England manager?’ He says: ‘That is a bit off, isn’t it?’ I said it was fair enough, and just as I was about to leave the room, I turned and asked: ‘You’re not going to take it, are you Steve?’ He said: ‘You don’t turn down the England job, Dave.'”
“Everything was decided before [the final],” McClaren recalls. “There were more things that could have sidelined us during both semi-finals. After that we were focused and I could put England to one side. We prepared like mad for Sevilla.”
The final proved too much in the end. Sevilla won 4-0, thanks to goals from Luis Fabiano and Freddie Kanoute, which sandwiched an Enzo Maresca brace. Three goals were scored in the final 12 minutes.
“It was one match too far,” McClaren adds. “We’d had a backlog of fixtures; we had to play Fulham and Everton and we were on our last legs. Maybe if the FA Cup run hadn’t happened, we’d have had the energy for the final. Sevilla were head and shoulders above anyone in that competition. We took risks like before, but we got punished.”
“We turned up and we had the belief to beat them,” says Downing. “Ten or 15 minutes in, you think: ‘Wow, nobody has done this to us before.’ The speed of their play was something else; I had Jesus Navas and Dani Alves down my side. The combinations they were playing were incredible. We couldn’t get the ball into areas to hurt them; Alves just played so high and had so much possession. I think we’d reached our level; we had a go late on again, got the strikers on, but they picked us apart.”
Southgate retired and replaced McClaren as manager that summer, but Boro were never able to build on the foundations he left. After finishing 14th in the league that season, they reached 12th and 13th before relegation in 2009. They have only been back to the top flight once in 11 years.
But the likes of Downing, who left and then returned before leaving again for Blackburn Rovers, and McClaren, a resident of the area even today, will always be fondly remembered for making Middlesbrough a small town in Europe.
