Liverpool 0-1 Real Madrid (Vinicius Jr 59′)
STADE DE FRANCE — Pick your moment to distil why Real Madrid won this final; there were so many similar to each other that it barely matters which.
Was it the stabbed shot on the turn that was stopped by a large left paw? Was it the right-footed sweeping shot, somehow deflected wide? Or perhaps the curling shot that provoked a full-length dive and mini celebration.
In the end, the same stage direction: Salah shoots, Courtois saves. Liverpool’s No 11 came to Paris in search of revenge and redemption. The only person who settled the score on Saturday was Real Madrid’s goalkeeper.
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All hail the true kings of European football. For all the dominance suggested – and surely eventually realised – by the Premier League’s financial power, the old guard cling onto their throne.
Even that nod to Real Madrid’s historical significance is a misrepresentation. Since 1998, they have won the European Cup more times than anyone else has in their entire history. No other country has now won as many as them, let alone clubs.
All hail Carlo Ancelotti too, the first man in the game’s history to win four European Cups. Less than 12 months ago, Ancelotti was Everton manager. You’d probably say that he made the right call to come to the Bernabeu, on reflection. This is a night on which his status as the king of cup competitions was written in stone.
There is an intimidating familiarity to this Real Madrid team. It is not just that it is packed with 30-somethings who share a squillion Champions League appearances between them, nor that five of them started the final in 2016. Everything is just so unerringly predictable without that ever morphing into a weakness. Ancelotti named his team a full two-and-a-half hours before kick-off; why not when everybody knew it anyway?
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And as soon as they scored the opening goal, there was an overwhelming sense of futility to Liverpool’s attempts to get back into the contest. It wasn’t just Courtois, although his golden gloves made him the game’s best and most influential player. Eder Militao was superb, Dani Carvajal coped admirably with Luis Diaz and Casemiro did what he does, a Brazilian central midfield bouncer. The more Liverpool attacked, the more emphatically they were repelled. They outshot Real Madrid by 24 to four. It matters not.
Real’s success lay in both Courtois’s excellence and their ability to turn hopeful clearances into move-starters. With Karim Benzema drifting out wide to create a two vs one situation in full-back areas, Real aimed to win second balls and then spark a counter. It worked more than once, including for the messy late first-half chance that provoked an interminably long VAR delay. The offside law was never quite black and white; it seems to shift further into the murky grey. What we needed was an extra layer of subjectivity about deliberately playing the ball.
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And the longer Liverpool played Battleships, guessing at squares without ever quite sinking their teeth into something to give them real heart, Ancelotti knew that his time would come. His team created exactly the type of chance that Liverpool never did: teasing ball across the face, an attacker running onto the ball rather than stood still, sloppy marking that turns half-chance into simple one.
Charge up the great Trent Alexander-Arnold defensive debate one more time this season. Either Liverpool’s right-back doesn’t even look to see Vinicius Junior’s run or he looks once and then fails to cover it. Either way, it cost Liverpool. For all his surging attacking majesty and his set-piece delivery, it is an identified flaw that the best opponents will look to exploit. It had been previewed extensively as the key individual battle. The wisdom of the crowd principle strikes again.
This is a night that will cause great resentment for Liverpool. There has been a pre-emptive warning delivered towards them in various places this week, in the aftermath of their failure to keep pace with one of the most expensively assembled teams in the game’s history under one of its greatest coaches. It is certainly true that winning only one league title would be at least one too few given their performance since 2018. In part that is reflective of the modern obsession with ranking everything and deeming anything below first place as failure.
But to suggest that a good season could only be a great one with triumph in Paris seems to misjudge the mood, or at least come at it from the wrong angle. If winning trophies was the one true source of joy in sport it could never have maintained its popularity; there are far more losers than winners.
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And if supporting a football team depended only upon success, grounds would be half-empty and anticipatory excitement would be non-existent. You drink and hug and kiss and dance all night not because you’re sure you will win, but because you know you might not. The most weathered football supporters will all tell you the same thing: they have long since stopped the result determining the enjoyment of the occasion. Of course they wanted to win – who doesn’t? But if you think that losing in any competition lessens their love for their club, its manager and his players, you’re missing the point.
Yet Klopp had been keen to stress that you must make the best of your time in the sun, and for Liverpool to end this season with two domestic cups and three major finals played without scoring means that they have failed to fully deliver on clear potential. Captain Jordan Henderson said the same; his tear-stained face as he thanked supporters offered evidence that this will take longer to get over than last weekend.
That resentment clearly stretched far beyond the confines of the Stade de France’s pitch. The coming days and weeks will provide full information, presumably coupled with the official inquiry that Liverpool have formally requested. But it was clear even two hours before the match that thousands of supporters were being forced to congregate in bottlenecks and faced a lengthy queue to get into the stadium.
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The initial message from Uefa, displayed on the big screens in the Stade de France, initially blamed “the late arrival of supporters” for the issue, briefly changed to “a security issue” before the original statement returned. A subsequent statement blamed “thousands of fans who arrived with fake tickets”.
In the stadium, the atmosphere shifted to a vaguely unpleasant impatience. You cannot blame supporters for being frustrated with a 30-minute delay, but as the tension mounted it became clear that the sooner the match was able to start safely, the better. What we really didn’t need was a sparkling opening ceremony while supporters were being pepper sprayed and frantic outside the stadium. Still, that was at least meticulously arranged.
Any investigation must involve some introspection, if that is appropriate. Why were fans who arrived two hours before kick-off not in the stadium before the scheduled start time? Why were the first ticket checks so close to the stadium, rather than nearer the metro stations? Why were fans held in bottlenecks? Why was tear gas and pepper spray used? Why were journalists forcibly stopped from filming this happening? Why were exits closed? Why were fans blamed in those official messages so quickly after the event? If there were so many fake tickets, can we find out the sellers and distributors?
We always want to talk about football. We have talked about football. We will always talk about football because for everyone in the stadium on Saturday, it is the most important non-important thing in life. But this final must mark a line in the sand.
This is not the first showpiece Uefa final that has been dogged with entry issues, but it must be the last. Those supporters who saluted their heroes in white will disagree, but the safety of fans is far more important than Courtois’ fingertips, Liverpool’s misses and Real Madrid’s trophy kisses. Every Liverpool supporter will simply be happy to get home.
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