Liverpool’s sixth European Cup restores them among the world’s super-clubs – with more to come

For Liverpool to go from drifting without direction in 2015 to the pinnacle of club football in 2019 is hugely impressive, and vindication for an exceptionally well-run modern football club

In the uncontainable ecstasy of victory, where joyous emotion just takes over the mind, there was only one rational thought James Milner could form. It regarded one of the main walls at Liverpool’s Melwood training ground. There, the club’s trophy haul is recorded in bright colours.

“They’re going to have to change it!” Milner beamed on the Metropolitano pitch in Madrid, his manager Jurgen Klopp elsewhere referencing the required alteration in song.

“Let’s talk about six, baby!” the German smiled to cameras.

They’re going to have to record this, satisfactorily marking a first change to the wall in seven years, and a first change to that over the biggest trophy of all in 14 years. It will now read that they have six Champions Leagues.

That will be amended by the time Milner and the rest of the players go back to Melwood, their achievement now written down, part of history.

The gravitas of that should should not be underestimated given the greatness of the competition and it does gradually lead to questions over what it actually means for football history; what its grander significance is; what the rationale behind the emotion is.

That doesn’t always have to be the case, of course – sometimes a win just is a win – but that is what the Champions League has come to represent. It has replaced the World Cup as the pinnacle and benchmark of the sport, setting the trends and offering a reflection of where the game is going, so there is genuinely always a deeper meaning there.

With Real Madrid’s recent domination, it marked the final supremacy of the super-clubs, and how a certain level of lavish quality in a knockout competition like this will always elevate you; always give you that chance.

This is however all the more relevant to what Liverpool’s win represents, because they have not been a super-club.

They were until very recently a club that could barely get into the Champions League at all. They only appeared in it once between the true rise of the super-clubs, in 2010, and 2017, when they got back there for the first time with Klopp.

The most basic meaning of this win is thereby that it restores Liverpool to the highest level, where they feel they belong, given that this sixth trophy outright made them the third most successful club in the competition again.

It also restores a feeling of being a champion for Klopp, as he claimed his first trophy since 2012, and finally won the Champions League at the third time of asking.

No one will call him a “loser” or a “fraud” any time soon, as he joined a select group of 41 managers to have lifted the trophy in its 65 years.

It is why Mauricio Pochettino should be spared any deeper criticism at this juncture, and a reminder that no defeat should ever be judged too definitively.

Liverpool parade through the streets (AFP)

A previous “bottler” in Arjen Robben already proved that with the last-minute match-winner in Klopp’s first final with Borussia Dortmund, and the German’s Liverpool side have similarly followed that Bayern Munich 2012-13 and AC Milan 1993-94 to become the third European champions to have immediately recovered from loss in the previous year’s final.

That in itself points to the greater meaning for the sport from this victory, and how Liverpool have been able to live with the super-clubs like Real Madrid, not to mention those they beat on the way here like Paris Saint-Germain and Barcelona.

Liverpool have been honed and completed by such experiences, but they got such experiences because of the exacting calculation of the hierarchy.

They have become a model club, having shown world-class decision-making from the most modern thinking.

It is precisely why this victory doesn’t seem the utter sensation of 2005, but instead a more natural step up from so many sophisticated and sensible moves.

There was first of all the move to – and gradual evolution of – the most advanced player recruitment approach, that also involved the promotion of Michael Edwards to director of football. This saw a series of genuinely enlightened signings, from Roberto Firmino to Andy Robertson and Mohamed Salah.

It was of course essential that the club then appointed a manager – or, really, a figurehead – that could bring so much of this together and fitted it all so well because he saw it all so clearly in Klopp.

He put in place an identifiable style of play, from which everything could be worked. If current players weren’t fully up to it, no matter. They could be coached and worked with, even temporarily improved. Others, like Jordan Henderson, would be fundamentally improved.

If current targets were not available, no matter. The club would wait. As with the appointment of Klopp himself, and most famously with Virgil van Dijk, it is best to get who you actually want rather than a compromise. Best to fundamentally and forensically improve the team.

Many will mention the money paid for Van Dijk and Alisson but the true relevance to that is where the money came from, and the thinking behind spending it. It was not extra investment, but from the sale of Philippe Coutinho. That decision was just more evidence of this evolved thinking. It was initially unwanted, but ended up giving them so much they wanted, and needed.

Klopp has been highly credited for the triumph (AP)

It also might be a lesson for the defeated Tottenham Hotspur, especially as debate grows over whether they should spend their transfer budget on a series of cheaper players for the future or one or two major signings who would instantly improve the side.

Spurs don’t need too many lessons, though, because they are another example of a well-run modern club.

This is what you need now. This is what Liverpool have led in. This is the intelligence you have to display to compete at super-club level, and this is how the wealthiest super-clubs like Manchester City have get to the level of their domestic dominance.

Such thinking is the equivalent now of historic European Cup-winning influences like the signing of Alfredo Di Stefano, the imposing implementation of Catenaccio at the Milan clubs, or the invention of Total Football at Ajax.

This is where the game is really played, as much as on the pitch. Intelligent infrastructure is as essential as an integrated team.

This is the historic meaning of the 2019 campaign, and the lesson of Liverpool.

This is what even clubs like Manchester United can take solace from, as painful as it will have been for them to watch. This is how quickly it can be turned around, if you have the will to make the right decisions.

For Liverpool to go from drifting without direction in 2015 to the pinnacle of club football in 2019 is hugely impressive.

There will be some inevitable churlishness at the quality of the crowning performance, and the fact they have not won the domestic title in 29-going-on-30 years.

The former doesn’t change the fact they have been brilliant this season, often playing raucously good football. The latter is just the modern Champions League, something we’ve long got used to.

Only one of the last eight European champions would have qualified “the old-fashioned way”, first winning their domestic title.

And the reality is, as Liverpool’s relentless league form and that record club points haul proved, they are every bit as good as most champions. They are only fractionally off the English champions, who are the most lavishly funded project in football history. They are better than many European champions in history. They are thereby very worthy champions, on another level to 2005.

And it looks like there’s more to come. This team is on an upward curve. They’re that well set up.

There might be more changes to that Melwood wall yet. That, at this point, is the rational conclusion amid all the emotion.