Real Madrid's Gareth Bale celebrates after scoring his side's third goal during the Champions League Final soccer match between Real Madrid and Liverpool. Photo / AP
By the end of the night it felt that whatever Gareth Bale tried in this Champions League final would find the back of the Liverpool net, and even if what he attempted was not good enough then it would be Loris Karius' misfortune to make it that way.
An outrageous divergence of fortunes on European football's biggest night, when Bale came on and changed once again the trajectory of his career with a first goal that was good enough to win all three of the Champions League finals which Real Madrid have collected in the last three years. The Welshman rose from the bench on 61 minutes, scored twice and played the Cristiano Ronaldo role with Cristiano Ronaldo still on the pitch, thoroughly upstaged.
Bale's first, an overhead kick two minutes after coming on was applauded by Zinedine Zidane in the knowledge that his swivel and volley goal in the 2002 final at Hampden Park has now been eclipsed as arguably the greatest goal ever scored on this stage. The second from Bale was a catastrophe for Karius, a swish of a boot from Bale from 40 yards out that was straight at the Liverpool goalkeeper's nose and yet one that he then slapped into his own goal.
The first Madrid goal had been Karius's fault too, a ball thrown against Karim Benzema's outstretched foot that you would be disappointed to concede in the Monday night five-a-side. And then in the meantime there was Mohamed Salah, walking off in tears on 29 minutes after being thrown to the ground by Sergio Ramos. If it could do wrong then it did go wrong for Liverpool, and in the end the 13th European Cup for Madrid never truly looked in doubt.
This was not Salah's night, and it was not Ronaldo's night, it was Bale's night, five years after he joined the club, collecting his fourth European Cup title and coming back from the shadows to take centre-stage.
On the biggest stage in club football, one of the greatest goals in football history.
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) May 26, 2018
Take a bow, @GarethBale11. pic.twitter.com/bdcRNYWgbS
More you see it, better it looks. What a strike.
— Jake Humphrey (@mrjakehumphrey) May 26, 2018
That's the best Champions League final goal since Zidane against Bayer Leverkusen. Possibly even better.
— Tom Williams (@tomwfootball) May 26, 2018
The entanglement between Salah and Sergio Ramos was one of those moments that might have passed without mention until when you watched it again and again and the nature of the damage was obvious.
The natural assumption was that Ramos meant it, that he knew that to trap Salah's right arm and twist him over so he fell in a precipitous headfirst downward motion – neck and shoulder crushed into the turf – was all planned. That is what Ramos is perceived to be, the great cynical win-at-all-costs merchant with a diabolical plan for every occasion.
Yet, it is hard to say for sure that he wanted to inflict such obvious discomfort on Liverpool's star player that when Salah went down for the second time in agony from his left shoulder that he came up shedding tears. Sure, Ramos locked that right arm of Salah's for longer than might be supposed meaning that the Liverpool man could not break his fall, and he sent him down like a wrestler onto the mat headfirst. Whether he intended such damage is hard to say.
It was a grievous blow for Liverpool who had been blown around for periods of the first half, incapable of breaking the rhythms of Madrid's passing, and the Spanish side finished the half with 65 per cent of the possession. When Liverpool did break forward they were urgent and they did have the one attempt on target of the first half, a shot from Trent Alexander-Arnold that Keylor Navas saved easily.
That was arguably their best moment of the first half on 23 minutes when Andy Robertson was released down the left after an exchange with Sadio Mane and his cross was first controlled and struck goalward by Roberto Firmino. When that was blocked it came to Alexander-Arnold, the first teenager to start a Champions League final since Johan Neeskens for Ajax in 1971.
Salah's shoulder slam into the turf came just two minutes later and his departure threw his team-mates. They have become so used to the power he gives them over opposing sides that they struggled for confidence in the late stages of the first half and his replacement Adam Lallana, who had previously played 16 minutes since the end of March, needed time to adjust to the pace of the game.
In the closing stages of the half Karim Benzema had the ball in the Liverpool goal after Loris Karius had elected to punch Cristiano Ronaldo's header but the latter had already been flagged offside. Generally Liverpool had looked confident in defence, led by Virgil Van Dijk in the centre while Dejan Lovren had almost put Ronaldo into the halfway line television camera within 30 seconds of the kick-off.
But the pace of the first half was dictated by Madrid. There were times when they were sloppy with the ball, and Ronaldo switched from the left to the right too little effect in the first 45 minutes. Yet Madrid had so much of the ball that when it did finally fall into Liverpool's possession they were too eager move it quickly when they might just have granted themselves some time in control.
Their best period before the break was the first ten minutes when Alexander-Arnold, Salah and Firmino combined at different times to open up the left side of Madrid's defence. Their passing was crisp and it felt they were tuning up for something more dangerous when Madrid gradually seized control. Madrid also lost a player to injury before the first half, and Dani Carvajal also departed in tears but if there was one they could afford to lose then it was their right-back.
Isco hit the bar within three minutes of the start if the new half, the kind of chance that he should really have taken when Lallana failed to get the ball away and it dropped for the Madrid man in the area. That time Karius was stranded and could do nothing about the outcome although the Benzema goal was a different story.
The German had the ball in his hands and Benzema, perhaps slightly more tenaciously than expected, dangled a foot in front of the goalkeeper's under-arm distribution and got the full force of it. It dribbled off Benzema's foot and into the corner of Liverpool's goal in a second when many might have looked away from the match.
They looked up to see Karius protesting – protesting what? – and Jurgen Klopp, a man of so many emotions, unable to express a single one on the touchline. If anything, once the initial shock had subsided, it liberated Liverpool a little. From Milner's cross from the right they won the corner which Lovren won over the top of Ramos for Sadio Mane to squeeze in.
Bale had come on after the hour for Isco, who had not taken his chances and within two minutes he had taken his opportunity. It is hard enough to execute an overhead kick in any circumstances and Bale did not have time to fully rotate and extend. But he caught Marcelo's cross at the perfect point of the arc and you knew instantly you had seen one of the goals of a lifetime. His second of the night was a disaster for Karius who slumped to the floor at the end of the game, and Bale was one of the first to try to pick him off the turf.
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