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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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.
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