For 86 minutes, this game looked to be a story of Mohamed Salah and redemption.
From crying in Kiev to marksman in Madrid, the Egyptian’s penalty had seemingly guaranteed him the headlines as well as the Champions League trophy.
But then Divock Origi came on in a huge game, and every Liverpool supporter in the Wanda Metropolitano probably knew what was coming.
Jurgen Klopp’s team had effectively been under the cosh for the entirety of the second half, Spurs’ changing shape and additional attackers causing constant problems.
But then Origi, so nearly sold to Wolves last summer, had his customary decisive moment and that was that: the European Cup was coming back to Anfield for a sixth time.
In fairness, it could so easily have been any other player taking the spotlight in Madrid.
Origi and Salah aren’t the only stories in this Liverpool squad crafted by Klopp, and that is perhaps why there is so much character in this dressing room.
Consider Jordan Henderson, a man who has regularly been accused - occasionally by his own supporters - of being unfit to captain the club.
Now, his name sits alongside Emyln Hughes, Phil Thompson, Graeme Souness and Steven Gerrard thanks to this victory.
What about Virgil van Dijk? The man whose £75million fee came with expectations that he would single-handedly fix the Reds’ defensive performance.
A trophy-winning clean sheet in Madrid did little harm to suggestions that he has done exactly that.
And then Klopp himself, bottler of finals, ‘passion merchant’, and that social media favourite, a ‘fraud’.
The German has seen his team play better than this in finals and lose but, if anyone deserved a scrappy showpiece win, it is him.
Ending up empty handed after a 97-point Premier League season and a second consecutive appearance in the biggest game of them all would have been less than this team and its manager deserved.
Of course, in football, that is exactly what you sometimes get, as Tottenham found out.
Klopp could not have been more effusive in his praise of opposite number Mauricio Pochettino in the build-up to this game.
And in dominating so much of the contest at the end of their own unforgettable run to the final, Spurs showed exactly why.
But this Liverpool team simply refused to let its own fascinating narrative fall by the wayside, they had come too far, learned too much to allow that to happen.
And if anyone ever needs to remind themselves of the journey that brought about that outcome, they need only look at the sixth European Cup in the Anfield trophy cabinet.
