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There was a moment in the final minutes of the Champions League final in Paris, as Liverpool thudded fruitlessly away at Real Madrid’s defense, when it suddenly seemed that a ceiling might have been hit. Jürgen Klopp and Liverpool have done an extraordinary job in just about keeping pace with Manchester City, despite a net transfer spend of around $500 million less than its chief Premier League foe over the past six years, but perhaps this was it.
The great front three is aging and beginning to break up. The lack of creative guile in midfield had been exposed by the insistence on playing Thiago Alacântara when he was far from fully fit. And there was a sense of weariness, which was probably down to having played the maximum possible number of games that season, but contained also the hint of an end-of-empire staleness. Despite all the sustained success, it marked a third final in which Liverpool failed to score.
