Six of the best for Liverpool in a steamy night in Madrid

Saturday night was Europe football's biggest night of the season. The UEFA Champions League final between Liverpool and Tottenham. The final was held in Atletico Madrid's Wanda Metropolitano Stadium. The teams are coming in with different experiences and histories of finals. Tottenham was entering their 5th ever European final, but this is the first time that they are in Europe's top competitions final. Meanwhile, Liverpool is in their 9th final and are back looking to finish the job that they started last season. Both teams had difficult roads to the final, and no one would say they would be in the final by October.

Semi-final hero Lucas Moura coming on for Spurs

Spurs were staring elimination by the end of matchday 3 after being in 3rd place with 1 point. They fought all the way to finish 2nd, 6 points behind Barcelona. They then had a relatively easy last 16 round beating Borrusia Dortmund 4-0 on aggregate. Spurs then took on Manchester City and had an infamous second leg match and knocked out City by away goals after a classic that would just be the start of the heart-pounding games. They then took on Ajax in the semi-finals and defeated them on away goals after being 3-0 down at half-time. There was the talk by Pochettino that if Spurs win he would be his final game in charge of Spurs. Here are those famous quarter-final and semi-final if you want a recap. This is the quarter-final https://marksworldofsports.blogspot.com/2019/04/what-night-at-etihad.html. https://marksworldofsports.blogspot.com/2019/05/what-just-happened.html, this one is the semi-final.

James Milner (Red 7) sailing his shot wide right

Meanwhile, Liverpool also had to do another famous last match game miracle and surviving by defeating Napoli and qualifying by them scoring more goals than Napoli in the group stage. The last 16 was a chance for manager Jurgen Klopp to get some revenge for 2013 final by taking on Bayern Munich. And his team did by beating them 3-1 in Munich's home ground. Their quarter-final was a 6-1 thrashing against FC Porto. Then in the semi-finals, they took on tournament favourites Barcelona. The first leg went Barcelona's way with a 3-0 victory thanks to magic work by Lionel Messi. However, the return leg at Anfield was a case of how good Liverpool have been at Anfield for the last few years defeating them 4-0 making it 4-3 on aggregate to Liverpool. If you want to read the match report here, it is. https://marksworldofsports.blogspot.com/2019/05/miracle-of-istanbul-move-over-for.html

The teams were announced with Spur's hat-trick hero Lucas Moura being on the bench and replaced by Harry Kane. For Liverpool, Roberto Firmino returned for Divock Origi, and Gini Wijnaldum was in the team for James Milner. There was talk before the game about Kane coming on being a huge gamble and how unlucky Lucas Moura was for not playing in the final. Before the game, there was a minute silence for former Arsenal player Jose Antonio Reyes who died earlier on Saturday in a car crash.

Salah scoring the first goal

The most controversial part of the game came in the first 40 seconds as Moussa Sissoko appeared to handle the ball and the referee gave a penalty which VAR confirmed. And then Mo Salah who was taken off half an hour into last years final stepped up and scored to make it 1-0 Liverpool. After that Spurs decided to make it a possession game and force Liverpool to get exhausted especially in a steamy stadium. However, despite the ball control game, it just wasn't developing into meaningful attacks. Liverpool's last chance of the first half fell to Robertson. his shot, however, was tipped over the bar by Lloris.

There was talk about whether playing Harry Kane despite being out for 2 months was a big gamble which wasn't paying off for Spurs and that Moura should've been playing instead of Kane. That didn't appear to be the case as Spurs were attacking Liverpool more at the start of the second half however they kept running into Allison.

Origi(second from left) coming on for Firmino

Then the merry-go-round of substitutes started and the first sub was Liverpool's semi-final hero Divock Origi who came on to replace a not running on all cylinders Roberto Firmino. The next was Gini Wijnaldium coming off for James Milner. Spurs were still pressing the attack and decided to throw on their semi-final hero Lucas Moura for Harry Winks. One of Liverpool's subs Milner nearly made it 2-0; however, his attempt just went wide of the post.

The game was running out of time, and Liverpool was hanging on thanks to Spurs for not taking their chances. Then with 3 minutes to go in the game on a poorly defended corner and with help from Joel Matip, Divock Origi sealed himself into Liverpool folklore by slotting the ball in past Lloris. That sealed the match for Liverpool and despite Spurs looking for a consolation goal they just ended up with the same issues which were having the ball saved by Allison who was the difference between Liverpool's defeat last year and their victory this year.

Origi with the winning strike

At the full-time whistle, the Liverpool players were celebrating which was different to last season, and the fans walked out of the stadium saying that they won a trophy this season which was the least the team deserved especially after the fight they had with City in the Premier League this season. It also puts them alone in 3rd place in European Cup/Champions Leagues won with Real Madrid 1st with 13 and AC Milan just ahead with 7.

Well, that's another football season, done and dusted for another year. I'll be back with more sports soon.

KRO Mark