Liverpool was beaten 1-0 by Real Madrid, 6-2 in aggregate. This score line has ended their dream in this year Champions League tournament and also seal their fate of not winning a trophy this year.

Liverpool needed a miracle against Real Madrid and miracles have happened to them before in this competition. But this time they failed to catch light.

It was always somewhat unlikely, wasn’t it? Coming from three behind to beat Barcelona in 2019 was a sensational achievement, but even that came in front of a baying home crowd and against a team which had lost from three goals up a year earlier. And while what happened in Istanbul in 2005 might have been the most remarkable comeback in the history of the European Cup final, that came in a final against a Milan team who’d managed to convince themselves by half-time that they’d already won.

But this was different. This was against the old masters of European football, and on their patch. Real Madrid don’t soil themselves in public in the way that the Barcelona team of the end of the last decade did. They’re disciplined enough not to let them start believing that a job is done when it’s actually only half-done.

And Liverpool arrived at the Bernabeu in a dramatically Jekyll & Hydesque frame of mind, having followed up the result of a lifetime against Manchester United, with all its ‘LIVERPOOL ARE BACK’ implications, by losing to Bournemouth in a manner of Sideshow Bob on a lawn covered in garden rakes. These were two performances in less than six days that looked as though they were played by two completely different teams. Now they beaten by Real Madrid. Their chance of winning a trophy this season is over.