SOCCER: It was well past midnight when regular traffic had to scatter on Corso Vittorio Emanuele. The high-speed convoy of police motorcycles and cars, with shrill sirens and throbbing lights, held in its midst a few drab buses packed with Merseyside fans. Kevin McCarra reports.

This was a security operation, but the whole disconsolate city of Turin was in a hurry to get Liverpool out of town, out of mind. Now they are Chelsea's problem.

Rafael Benitez' side had shamed Juventus in the goalless return leg of the Champions League quarter-final, making the Serie A footballers wither by starving them of possession. That sort of ploy is the key to success in European football and it could yet be Liverpool who unlock the door to the final itself.

The three defeats by Chelsea this season might be mistaken for confirmation of irredeemable inferiority, but the situation is not so clear-cut. A rampant Liverpool might have gone ahead at Anfield if Tiago's hand-ball in the area had not gone disgracefully unnoticed.

Benitez' team would not have deserved to win the League Cup, but they came close to doing so until Steven Gerrard's own-goal in the 79th minute. The faith that Chelsea can be overcome this time does not rest, all the same, on any entitlement to a change of fortune.

It is the manner in which Liverpool's manager can alter his side's characteristics over the course of a tie that will be important.

A blistering half-hour of Premiership vehemence set up the 2-1 win over an astonished Juventus at Anfield. Fabio Capello was then even more baffled to find composed opponents setting a cerebral tone at the Stadio delle Alpi. Of England's clubs, perhaps only Chelsea themselves could be as versatile.

Benitez is a strategist and the immediacy of England's domestic competitions is still alien to him. With the side engaged in no more than a blundersome bid for fourth place, the Premiership has been a short, sharp shock. He prefers the long game and will have a minimum of three hours to pit his wits against Jose Mourinho.

The moderation of Benitez is such that even the club's obsession with Gerrard can be tamed. The captain was missing with a thigh strain on Wednesday and he was also absent from the first part of the tie with Bayer Leverkusen in the previous round. Redoubtable as he is, it was simpler for Liverpool to strike the note they wanted without him in Turin.

Gerrard is an adventurer, a game-changer, but Liverpool yearned to cram the match with secure passing so that there was no room for goals. His infatuation with the defence-splitting delivery was better shelved for future use.

Xabi Alonso, uncannily good on his return from a broken ankle and aided significantly by Igor Biscan, was the embodiment of the Benitez blueprint. "The manager prepared for the game very thoroughly and knew exactly what Juventus were going to do," Alonso said. "His role was very important. He prepared for the game very thoroughly, he knew exactly what Juventus were going to do and how we needed to play to stop them doing what they wanted.

"Before the game he told us what was required and I think every player turned in a good performance."

With five alert players in midfield, Liverpool ensured that Pavel Nedved, who had roamed tellingly at Anfield, had nowhere meaningful to go.

Even if they are suited to European football, it nonetheless has to be borne in mind that the victors are no superpower. It is not so long ago that former players jostled one another to be first at the microphone in damning this team as the club's worst in decades. Benitez himself was scorned in the process. It is as well this manager is patient, since there has been a long wait for the change of circumstances.

A transformation is a fragile business, too, and it was nearly smashed in Turin.

Late in the match Fabio Cannavaro's header struck a post and was bound for the net after ricocheting off Djimi Traore until Jerzy Dudek saved on the line. It would have been savage ill fortune if Juventus, thanks to the away-goals rule, had prevailed in that fashion, but memories would still have surged back of the defender's part in the FA Cup defeat by Burnley.

At Turf Moor, Traore had attempted to deal with a cross by first working it on to his left foot but, with a cumbersome parody of the Cruyff turn, put through his own goal. His rehabilitation and that of Liverpool are provisional.

Even so, Chelsea are currently more exasperated by injuries, particularly to defenders. The visitors, for their part, will hold the ball more reliably during the first leg of the Champions League tie at Stamford Bridge on April 27th than they did in the League Cup final, when they seemed confused to have a lead to protect after 45 seconds.

Gerrard is probably still correct in his suggestion that Liverpool are not good enough to win the Champions League, but the side might just ensure that Chelsea cannot do so either.