'Did we really score four?'

George Boateng is still on cloud nine after his Middlesbrough FC side reached the UEFA Cup final at the expense of FC Steaua Bucuresti with an unbelievable 4-2 win at the Riverside stadium last Thursday. As he tells uefa.com, no amount of experience can prepare a player for nights like that.

I've been a professional for 14 years and I've never experienced anything like this in my life. I thought the FC Basel 1893 game was unrepeatable! I am normally so optimistic, but even I thought we were out of it at 3-0 down on aggregate. Against Basel I always thought we could come back from 3-0 down, but last night against Steaua I thought there was no way.

Half-time conversation
At half-time, when it was 3-1 on aggregate, Mark Viduka stood up and said: "As it stands, we're going out. So why don't we just go for it and forget about conceding. Enjoy the evening." Then the manager asked if we thought we could do it and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink said: "Yes, we believe we can do it." So the manager told us to go out and score four.

'We can do it'
To be honest, at 2-2 on the night we still didn't believe it was going to happen, but when it got to 3-2 then we thought, "Yes, we can do it". I looked at the clock at 86 minutes and I thought time was running out. But Massimo Maccarone popped up to score and it was just beautiful! In the dressing room afterwards Fabio Rochemback asked me: "Did we really score four?" I said: "Yeah, I think so!" Because none of us could believe we had done it. It's crazy. It was like a movie with a happy ending.

Final countdown
We know it's not over yet though. We still have to win the final. Maybe we should give Seville a 3-0 headstart and then we might have a chance. I don't care how boring the final is now, I don't care if we play with no strikers and we win with an own goal – I just want to lift the trophy. After what happened our name has to be written on the cup. Against West Ham United FC in the FA Cup semi-final we could have played all day and we wouldn't have scored. But after Basel and now Steaua, I can already see the red and white ribbons on the UEFA Cup.

'What you live for'
It means so much more because of what we've gone through. Nobody but Middlesbrough season-ticket holders can appreciate what kind of a season this has been. For all the grief they've been through – the 4-0 defeat by Aston Villa FC, the 7-0 defeat by Arsenal FC - this is our way of saying sorry. People sometimes think the players don't care, but you just have to look at us last night to see that's not true. When people see footballers they just think of the cars, the big houses, the holidays – but believe me, when it comes to moments like this every single player on the pitch cares. It's what you live for.