Liverpool comes together for the Champions League final but cup is out of reach

The roar started at the top of Hanover Street near the Adelphi Hotel, and carried down through the squadrons of al fresco drinkers outside the Irish taverns. Liverpool had just scored and the noise was like the distant thunder of an approaching army. Sadio Mané watched Champions League finals not so long ago in a remote Senegalese village. Now he had just scored in one such final.

Even before the might of Real Madrid finally ended Liverpool’s European dream last night with an astonishing goal by the Welshman Gareth Bale that contributed to a 3-1 defeat, these 11 young men in red had attained an immortality of sorts.

The front page of yesterday’s special souvenir edition of the Liverpool Echo carried a montage of the four previous Liverpool captains to have lifted the “cup with the big ears” as it’s become known in these parts after five previous victories: Emlyn Hughes, Phil Thompson, Graeme Souness and Steven Gerrard. The heading underneath simply said: “What we do in life… echoes in eternity.”

Even though their journey ended in defeat the deeds of these Liverpool players have already become legendary and entered the folklore of this big, dramatic and emotional city.

A few hours earlier in the city centre these men were being serenaded by the tens of thousands who had made a pilgrimage to Liverpool. These weren’t triumphalist chants full of traditional football braggadocio in which your opponents are roundly chastised. Rather they were hymns of praise to each of the players who, against all the odds, had managed to reach the greatest club sporting tournament on earth. And none more than Mo Salah, the Egyptian talisman whose goals had propelled his team to their night with destiny in Ukraine.

The 25-year-old even seems to have sparked a renaissance in Islamic art and culture among the working class in the Red districts of this city. Yesterday around 3,000 of them were singing and dancing in the shadow of the city’s revered Adelphi Hotel, whose neo-classical windows had Liverpool FC flags hanging from them. To the tune of Dodgy’s 1996 hit Good Enough multitudes of Ricky Tomlinsons were singing:

“If he’s good enough for you, he’s good enough for me,

If he scores another few, then I’ll be Muslim too.

If he’s good enough for you, he’s good enough for me.

Sitting in the mosque, that’s where I wanna be!”

When he was forced off injured after barely half an hour there was an audible collective groan that seemed to carry down Hanover Street from the drinkers.

Each player it seemed has his own special anthem including the Brazilian Roberto Firmino who always seems to play with a smile permanently etched on his face and Mané the goalscorer.

Paul Holleran, an official with the GMB trade union and lifelong Liverpool supporter had just got into the city with his friend from childhood, Michelle Thornhill. “It means the world to me just to be here; the next best thing to actually being in Kiev. I only came back to live here after working away for the last 40 years so this is extra special.

“You never take anything for granted and each of our previous five European Cup successes were special in their own way, but there is something about this current crop that is joyful and humble too and I think a lot of that is down to the manager Jürgen Klopp.”

Thornhill, who works as a matron at a busy Merseyside hospital just wanted to soak up the atmosphere. “When I hear them sing: ‘You’ll never Walk alone’ it just makes me want to cry. This city has encountered so many social challenges but in the last few years it seems like it has begun to fight back and people are smiling again. The city centre is looking good and vibrant and the success of this Liverpool seems to have encapsulated it.”

Something human and compassionate takes place when these big football occasions occur; stuff that goes far deeper than the all-day drinking sessions and the camaraderie of the terraces. Families come together as sons and daughters who haven’t been home for years feel they need to be with their kith and kin. Reconciliations happen and old hurts are finally laid to rest.

At Anfield last night where the action in Kiev was being beamed back to 30,000 fans there was something sacred taking place too as one little boy made a special pilgrimage of his own. This was his first time at Anfield and on his back was the Liverpool top worn by his older brother who had died not long ago in very tragic circumstances.

For others the pilgrimage to be on these streets and to be in Liverpool on its special day had started early. Waiting on Platform 5 at Glasgow Queen Street for the 8.30am train to York and then over the Pennines to Liverpool stood a little knot of the Reds’ Scottish fan club. At every station – Newcastle, Leeds, Manchester – hundreds more joined them. It was good natured and affable. In each carriage mature ladies in fetching coats and nice shoes en route to a seaside rendezvous with cousin Peggy for the bank holiday weekend were learning by heart the names of the Liverpool team who had last brought the big cup home in 2005.

As the throngs dispersed into the night Paul Holleran was philosophical: “They still did us proud and gave us a season to remember.”