Real Madrid 3-1 Liverpool                      Real Madrid, don't indulge romantic whims. They win trophies. A thirteenth European Cup goes their away. From the moment Mohamed Salah was crushed by the weight of Sergio Ramos, whose strong arm gripped the Egyptian, forcing him to fall unnaturally, and clutch his shoulder, that seemed most likely. Salah departed, sobbing and injured, on 28 minutes. And though Liverpool did so such thing, fighting gamely, you sensed a moment passing.

Astonishingly, this is a third successive Champions League trophy collected by their coach Zinedine Zidane, who joins the likes of Carlo Ancelotti and Bob Paisley as the most-successful coaches in the competition's history. Except that Zidane has done it in his first 29 months of coaching in his first job. And Real Madrid join Ajax and Bayern in achieving that treble. Except, of course, they did it before in the 1950s, with five successive wins.