"I must give credit to my players as after a 62-game season a lot of them had cramp, but they kept going until the end, never gave up and have done a fantastic job," said Reds manager Rafael Benitez.

The Reds never held the advantage during the match and appeared to be on the losing side until Steven Gerrard netted his second goal of the day in stoppage time to make it a 3-3 affair.

After extra time, the match was still deadlocked at three heading into penalty kicks. Pepe Reina stole the show in the shootout, saving three of the four shots he faced.

Dietmar Hamman, Gerrard and John Arne Riise all found the back of the net in the penalty kick round for the Reds, who won the world's oldest cup competition for the seventh time.

Teddy Sheringham was the only West Ham player to beat Reina in the shootout. Bobby Zamora, Paul Konchesky and Anton Ferdinand were all turned away by the Liverpool goalkeeper.

"Pepe is famous back in Spain for saving penalties so we had confidence in him and he did his job for us," said Benitez.

West Ham opened up the scoring in the 21st minute when Jamie Carragher kicked a cross into his own net.

Only seven minutes later, West Ham doubled its lead when Dean Ashton raced to a rebound and fired it in from close range.

Before the first-half whistle, the Reds trimmed the deficit to 2-1. In the 32nd minute, Djibril Cisse got Liverpool on the board after finishing off a volley from Gerrard.

In the 54th minute, it was Gerrard on the receiving end as he knotted it up at two with a hard shot which he deposited into the top corner of the net.

Ten minutes later though, West Ham regained control courtesy of a Konchesky tally in the 64th minute. Konchesky was simply only trying to cross the ball, but instead, it found a vacancy right underneath the top bar on the far post.

Many of the fans thought that was going to be the game winner, but Gerrard and the Reds had different plans. In injury time, the captain blasted the ball into the back of the West Ham net from 30 yards out to make it a 3-3 match.

"Steven Gerrard scored two fantastic goals and you know the quality he has," said Benitez. I give him credit, but for me it was the success of the team. Steven would say that himself and the energy levels the players showed was amazing. It was a fantastic final."

It was the 125th FA Cup, and the second straight year that the final went to a penalty shootout.

Image by: AFP - CARL DE SOUZA