Real Madrid Beats Liverpool for another Champions League Trophy

As Liverpool ask what might have been, Gareth Bale and Real Madrid just go and do things so rarely seen. Zinedine Zidane's side completed a feat for the ages in Kyiv by winning a third successive European Cup and fourth in five years, and that after a goal for the ages - if also a goalkeeping mistake for the ages. In a final score of 3-1.

Substitute Bale's supreme overhead kick was the divine moment that ultimately ensured Madrid secured the most overwhelming period of dominance in the competition since their own pioneer predecessors in the 1950s, bringing it to 13 Champions Leagues overall. Yet for all the grandiosity of such achievements, the eye-opening numbers involved and the brilliance of such a goal, it's still difficult not to bring this otherwise disjointed and odd final down to very different specific individual moments of misfortune, and two very different individuals.

A game that had seemed set up for an epic was completely derailed and temporarily deflated when Mohamed Salah had to go off injured after a highly dubious challenge by Sergio Ramos, as the most prestigious fixture in club football lost one of the world's great players. That wasn't necessarily the losing of the game but contributing a big part in it was one of the most calamitous individual performances this fixture has seen.