Five questions following the Champions League final | OneFootball

Excitement, emotion and ecstasy.

We might well be talking about the 2018 Champions League final for a long time to come, and here are the biggest questions raised by Saturday’s amazing spectacle in Kyiv.

Did Sergio Ramos take Mohamed Salah out on purpose?

Prior to this game, not a single Liverpool player had ever played in a Champions League final before yet for the first 30 minutes, you’d think it was the team in red who had the more experience of the two on the grandest of stages.

As they’ve so often done in the Champions League this season, Liverpool began fearlessly and Madrid struggled to cope with their opponents’ high press. The Reds’ front three buzzed around dangerously and the men in white struggled to stem the tide. A Liverpool goal felt imminent.

But just before the half hour mark came the game-changing moment. A tussle with Madrid captain Sergio Ramos resulted in Liverpool’s star man Mohamed Salah landing awkwardly on his shoulder and it immediately looked bad. The Egyptian tried valiantly to carry on but it quickly became clear his game was over, and the tears were instantaneous.

Only Ramos will truly know whether he meant to injure Salah, and replays proved rather inconclusive. From one angle it looked like an honest coming together, whereas from another it was a violent UFC manoeuvre.

The Spaniard is a master of the dark arts – the sort of guy who would ask you to hold his drink while he danced with your girlfriend – and part of his remit in Kyiv would definitely have been to rough Liverpool’s most dangerous player up a little bit. Later in the game, he appeared to catch goalkeeper Loris Karius in the face with an elbow which was at least made to look somewhat like an accident.

Hate him all you want but he’s one of football’s greatest gamesmen and you have to admire him for getting away with it, if nothing else.

Salah’s heartbreaking exit had a dramatic effect on the course of events. With him on the pitch, Liverpool managed 31 passes in the attacking third and nine shots, but in the 15 minutes before half time following his substitution, they completed just one attacking-third pass, and failed to manufacture a single effort on goal.

Losing your talisman in such a high pressure situation must have a huge psychological impact and it was a blow from which Liverpool never really recovered. Without Salah they looked much more ordinary and though the final was won and lost by two moments of madness and one moment of genius, Madrid were more than worthy victors in the end.

Fingers crossed Salah’s injury isn’t serious enough to keep him out of this summer’s World Cup because after the season he’s had, that would be an incredible shame.

Is there anyway back for Loris Karius?

Loris Karius is not a terrible goalkeeper, but boy, did he have a terrible, terrible night.

The German made two monumental mistakes in the biggest game of his life and who knows whether he will ever get an opportunity of such magnitude again.

His first error was the result of criminally mindless over-confidence while his second would be inexcusable for an amateur, never mind a professional goalkeeper playing at European club football’s highest level.

But with all the ridicule and vitriol coming his way, you’d have to be inhuman to not feel at least a pang of sympathy for him, especially during those gut-wrenching scenes immediately after the final whistle.

The last few months were comfortably the best spell of the 24-year-old’s Liverpool career yet in the space of 40 minutes, he may well have blown any chance he had of starting a big game for the club again.

Karius can bounce back from this setback, but whether he will is another matter entirely. Confidence is so important to goalkeepers and those blunders against Madrid may well stay with him forever.

From Liverpool’s perspective, surely the signing of a top class goalkeeper must now be close to the top of their list of summer priorities. They managed to get as far as a Champions League final with Karius and Simon Mignolet but if they want to go that step further, they’re going to need a bigger boat.

Did Gareth Bale score the greatest goal of all-time?

With 61 minutes on the clock at the Olimpiyskiy Stadium, Madrid boss Zinedine Zidane made his second substitution of the night. Two minutes later, the man he brought on had put his side back in front with a goal which seemed to stop time, defy physics and beggar belief.

Zidane himself knows all about amazing goals in Champions League finals. His insane volley against Bayer Leverkusen in 2002 is undisputedly one of the greatest strikes in the history of the sport but even he might have to admit that Bale’s bicycle kick in Kyiv had that little bit extra je ne sais quoi.

Bale had no right to leap that high to meet the cross and his connection to send the ball looping wonderfully into the top corner was better than perfect. The goal brought millions of people around the world either to their feet or to their knees, and nobody who witnessed it is ever likely to forget it.

Like art, great goals are entirely subjective. You may have a personal preference for Diego Maradona’s against England in 1986, or Lionel Messi’s against Getafe in 2007, or even Cristiano Ronaldo’s against Juventus earlier this season. Different goals, different needs.

But nobody can deny that the sheer brilliance of it combined with the moment in which it was scored means Bale’s goal is worthy of a spot near the very top of the list, and watching it live was an absolute privilege.

Is Jürgen Klopp’s record in finals becoming a problem?

As you may already be aware, Saturday night’s was the sixth successive final in which Liverpool boss Jürgen Klopp has ended up on the losing side, going back to his time at Borussia Dortmund.

A manager should never be held wholly responsible for his team’s failings, nor should he take all the credit for their success. Klopp is one of the finest coaches and man-managers on the planet and the very fact he has been able to take Dortmund and Liverpool to Champions League finals should be regarded as an achievement in itself.

Were it not for a series of unfortunate incidents, the German may well have lifted his first major silverware since 2012 in Kyiv, but perhaps he must take at least a small share of the blame for his side’s defeat.

Liverpool retreated into their shell after Salah went off and seemed to be lacking in a contingency plan for the Egyptian’s absence. Furthermore, as has been notable at various stages during his Anfield tenure, Klopp’s so-called “heavy metal” style of football often requires his team to score a spurt of goals and build up an unassailable lead to fall back on later in the game. It was always going to be difficult for Liverpool to find an answer to Bale’s first goal given the energy-sapping nature of their first half tactics.

Make no mistake, Klopp is the best thing to have happened to Liverpool in many years and with a strong summer, they should be in a good position to challenge for honours domestically and in Europe again next season.

It has been a remarkable season for the red half of Merseyside, despite the fact they’ve ended it empty handed. But Klopp will need something to show for his efforts soon, because nobody remembers losing finalists.

Should this Real Madrid be remembered as one of Europe’s greatest ever teams?

Real Madrid have now won three Champions Leagues in a row, and four of the last five.

Zinedine Zidane has never not won the Champions League as a manager, and has already surpassed Sir Alex Ferguson’s record of European success in just two-and-a-half years of coaching.

Yet there’s something about this coach and this team which makes them seem somehow unworthy of legendary status.

Zidane is clearly a very talented coach, especially when it comes to knockout football. His decision to replace Isco with Bale in Kyiv is just the latest example of the Frenchman getting a substitution spot on and when it comes to game-management, he’s one of the best in the business.

Madrid possess some wonderful individual talents too. For all his faults, Ramos is a world-class central defender, Marcelo is amazing and Luka Modrić is probably the best central midfielder in the world.

Ronaldo is Ronaldo, Bale showed exactly what he’s capable of and Los Blancos have plenty of other era-defining “clutch” players all over the pitch.

But while Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona are widely regarded as the finest club side of the modern era, despite their superior record of lifting silverware, this Madrid team seems to be lacking in a solid identity and it will be interesting to see how they are remembered in years to come.

Perhaps time will be kind to them, or perhaps they will go down in history as the team who won everything except our hearts and minds.