Today marks 18 years exactly since former Liverpool boss Gerard Houllier made his return to the Anfield dugout in perhaps the first big European night of the modern Liverpool era.
Goals from Jari Litmanen (a penalty to open the scoring after Danny Murphy had been fouled inside the area) and Emile Heskey (the second on the night, a downward header that caused Anfield to explode) saw the Reds take their place in the Champions League quarter finals for the first time since 1985.
More important than that was the return of Houllier, back in the dugout for the first time in almost six months.
He had been taken ill during half-time earlier that season in a league game against Leeds United in October 2001, with stress and intense pressure blamed for his heart attack.
Now the Frenchman had come back, much earlier than many had anticipated at the time.
He looked frail and would later admit he came back too soon, but no one knew that then.
At the time, much attention was focused only on the game in hand: as football so often is, taking one game at a time, rather than looking further into the future.
Liverpool's performance on the night was fitting for the occasion.
Despite Michael Owen being missing from the squad through injury - a problem that would ravage him in the months to come, a large part of the reason Houllier's reign unravelled towards the end - Liverpool were exceptional.
Fabio Capello, then in the opposing dugout, simply said post-match: “I have never seen Liverpool play like this.”
It was the second group phase of the Champions League, something abandoned after the following season, with the Reds in with Barcelona, AS Roma and Galatasary.
They progressed with seven points and only one victory - this one, at home on the final day.
Anything other than a win would have seen them crash out, but they advanced on head-to-head rankings.
It was important in a footballing sense, remembered too for the fact that Houllier returned after ill-health, yet that night was far from the only significant match of Houllier's era.
He had already led Liverpool to the Carling Cup, FA Cup and Uefa Cup in 2001.
The following year - and the one of that Champions League tie with Roma - Liverpool finished second in the Premiership, as it was called then.
They were knocked out in Europe at the quarter-final stage against Michael Ballack and Dimitar Berbatov's Bayer Leverkusen.
Houllier's legacy is a curious one. He won more trophies than Rafael Benitez, but not the big one in terms of what would then have been a fifth European Cup.
The way in which each of them is remembered seems vastly different.
Neither of them won the league, of course, but both have played a part in the Reds' success of the last two decades.
Houllier placed Liverpool in a position of being able to compete; Benitez took them over that final step with the run to Istanbul, and of course the final itself.
Yes, there were transfer dealings that let him down - take El Hadji Diouf, Bruno Cheyrou and Salif Diao, for example - but there was plenty of good that came of that period too.
In 2003, the season that followed that infamous summer of transfer dealings, the Reds were pipped to fourth place - and the Champions League - by Chelsea, a move which saw English football change.
Roman Abramovich's Stamford Bridge outfit would become one of the Reds' main rivals in the years to come, but this was their first chance at Europe's top table under their new Russian owner.
That now feels like a big moment - defining even - in what was to follow.
Chelsea overtook Liverpool in terms of success, of that there is no doubt, in the decade that followed.
But with the financial power that Chelsea had, that would have almost certainly come at some stage regardless, whether it was then, the season after, or another point entirely.
Houllier was brought in to instil discipline. Liverpool's first foreign manager, he improved the club through his management and guidance, particularly defensively, at least until the end, and he brought through both Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher, two players who were to go on to perform at incredible levels for the club.
Carragher, initially played as a full-back, rather than in the central slot that he would later nail down, needed a patient approach as he came through as a teenager.
Defensively, encouraging young players to emerge into the first team is a difficult balancing act.
There is no guarantee of immediate success with any player in any position, but certainly in defensive areas, mistakes, which young players will all make, prove costly.
Houllier was brave, made the right call, and Liverpool, rather than him, got the long-term reward.
With Gerrard, it was a more straightforward decision in terms of playing him. It was clear from the start that he was a prodigious talent.
As he broke through, though, and had difficulties with injuries as he adapted to the men's game, patience was required here too.
Houllier sent Gerrard off to France to work with specialist physios, and gave him game time only when the time was right.
Had the Frenchman not taken that approach with the midfielder, who knows how the rest of Gerrard's career could have panned out.
And who, therefore, knows how the rest of Liverpool's history to date could have panned out had Gerrard not been primed and ready to drag them forward.
The trajectory of the Reds without Gerrard would have been very different - and perhaps even opposite in it's direction.
Houllier is liked around Anfield, there can be no doubting that. But he is not loved in the way many of his peers are.
There are no Houllier banners on the Kop, nor is his name sung as other manager's names have been over the years, even long after they had departed.
Liverpool, as a club, was drifting towards mediocrity when Houllier took charge, and it was the Frenchman's managerial talent that turned the tide.
Houllier nearly gave his life to the cause so desperate was the Frenchman, now 72, to get Liverpool back to the top, yet now, he comes nowhere close to Benitez when it comes to those most highly thought of.
Houllier almost died for Liverpool, such was his passion and determination to get his job done.
Now, of all times, given football is paused to allow for health on a global scale to take precedence, is the perfect time to reflect on that.
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