Champions League final: Tottenham freeze in the worst possible moment as Liverpool win in Madrid

There’s no shame in losing but Spurs will have a lingering regret that they made so little an impression on such a big game

This time, when Tottenham Hotspur went to the well of magic and miracles that has fuelled this Champions League campaign, they came back empty.

They needed it, they needed that extra force to get past Liverpool tonight and lift the European Cup. That power, the energia universal that Mauricio Pochettino puts his faith in, has lifted them all the way to Madrid, after all. They would not have been here tonight without it.

But this time it was missing. Spurs needed to play beyond themselves again to win this game. But they played within themselves instead.

Of course there is no shame in losing a final, especially to this wonderful Liverpool team, the worthy champions of Europe. But for Tottenham there may be some lingering regret that when they got all this way, to the biggest game in their modern history, they made so little impression on it. They contributed little to a dismal first half, and by the time that they got back into the game in the second half it was almost too late. They had some half chances at 1-0 – Dele Alli’s header, Christian Eriksen’s freekick – but nothing good enough.

It felt as if they were waiting for one more comic-book moment, like Lucas Moura at the Nou Camp, or Fernando Llorente’s hip, or the Raheem Sterling VAR decision, or Lucas in Amsterdam, but this time it never came.

As if Tottenham had used up all of their force, their emotional reserves, their charisma, their personality, and even their luck in the long journey of this campaign before tonight. They have already made so many historic moments this year, moments that will be remembered for as long as this football club exists – Barcelona, Manchester City, Ajax – but this was not one them.

What might be so frustrating for Spurs, though, is that they had spent the last three weeks trying to make sure that this was not the case. Trying to make sure that they came into this final with the same fearless spirit that had got them this far.

Pochettino said before the game that finals are won in the mind, that emotions were the “trigger” for performance. If they could get the mindset right, and conquer their fears, then the football would follow from that. But here they looked as if their emotional trigger was jammed. As if all that work over the last three weeks, the daily motivational sessions, the fire-walking, the arrow-snapping, the body language exercises, had the opposite of their intended effect. Pochettino said before the game that people fall into two groups: those who tackle their fears, and those who are frozen by them. Tonight Spurs were the latter.

From the start they looked anxious, nervous, as if the occasion was too big for them. As if they had finally realised, after everything they have achieved this season, how high up they were now. As if they finally got a dose of vertigo at the worst possible moment.

Harry Kane reacts to the full-time whistle (Getty) (Tottenham Hotspur FC via Getty I)

Anyone in the world can lose to this Liverpool team but there were far too moments out there when it looked as if Spurs were beating themselves. Balls bouncing away from players’ touches. Simple passes not making it to available team-mates. Desperate hacks under little pressure at the back. Perhaps the penalty decision against Moussa Sissoko was harsh but he should not have stuck out his arm in the first place.

Put all of these things together and it was a first half performance when Spurs looked inhibited, withdrawn, somehow less than their normal selves. And it did not help that Pochettino’s great gamble, playing Harry Kane even after almost eight weeks out with an ankle injury, did not come off. Kane at his best plays with a confrontational physicality, relishing the collisions with defenders, coming off on top, using his body to open up space.

But tonight Kane’s body was second best. He was up against Virgil van Dijk, the most formidable physical presence in the game. Had Kane been 100 per cent then it might have been a contest. But this version of Kane was nowhere near.

It only took 14 seconds for that much to be clear. With the ball still bouncing around the middle of the pitch, as the players dipped their toes into the water of the game, Kane and Van Dijk went up for a header on the half-way line. Van Dijk brushed Kane aside, Liverpool went on the attack and 12 seconds later the ball hit Sissoko’s arm and the whistle blew. Every subsequent time Kane went up against Van Dijk, he lost the ball.

We will never know how this game would have gone had Kane not started (Reuters) (REUTERS)

We will never know how the game would have gone if Lucas Moura had started instead. Would he have been able to spin into the space behind Van Dijk and Joel Matip? Would he have run forward with the ball and prompted a mistake or a slip, won a free-kick or a penalty, found the narrow gap that Kane could not? Or would he have given Liverpool enough to worry about that Heung Min Son – their best player on the night – found more room for himself? All of this is unknowable now. But it is hard to see how it could have worked less well than this. It is hard to imagine a flatter Spurs performance than this one.

As the game went on, Kane learned to drop deeper and deeper, seeing more of the ball, turning and taking it forward. With Son and Alli and Lucas on the pitch, he did have lively runners in front of him to test Liverpool out. And on another day it might have worked and found an equaliser. The margins are always still fine.

And going on recent history, you might have expected Tottenham to dig it out, to produce one more last-gasp miracle, on the biggest stage of them all. But that moment of deliverance just never came.