The sixth star sewn onto the Liverpool shirt, a club that keeps winning the biggest prize of all through different eras and generations. A place for Jurgen Klopp amongst the greats at Anfield, where they have a European history unsurpassed in the English game of stupendous performances and great finals – of which, strangely, this, the occasion of their sixth European Cup, was neither.

It is hard to reconcile the immense achievement of Klopp’s Liverpool, the transformation of a mediocre Premier League team into the champions of Europe in less than four years, with this: a final forgettable in every aspect save the outcome. Let us take the achievement first, by a team that chased the Premier League down to the last day without success and then, with nothing left in the tank, managed to win something even better. It was, in the end, the perfect performance on an imperfect night.

This Match of the Day au soleil, the hottest ticket in town – which also felt like it was being played in the hottest part of town – was the worst Champions League final in recent memory. Gary Lineker in the television studio likened it to an old English first division, those battles of thud and blunder. Imagine paying £10,000 to watch this, the kind of price that was being quoted by touts for tickets in the febrile atmosphere of downtown Madrid, and not seeing your team win.

What won Liverpool this game was their cussedness, the lessons taught to them in that exhausting pursuit of Manchester City and also perhaps by the ringcraft this time last year of that serial winner Sergio Ramos. There was brilliance from their goalkeeper Alisson, the determination of the great, tired Virgil van Dijk, carrying his team on in the defence of a lead gifted to them by a dubious first-minute penalty.

What was absent was Liverpool’s free-flowing attacking game, even from their penalty goalscorer Mohamed Salah, and yet they seemed to make their peace with this swiftly. They buckled up for the ride, a meagre 35 per cent of possession on the night and all that mattered was the win. Then as Tottenham Hotspur gathered everything for one last push, that old Champions League assassin Divock Origi, a substitute again, scored the second to kill a final which had barely come alive.