Lucy pulling the football away from The Quadruple is perhaps the biggest showcase of her skills. As it got closer, it became harder and felt further away. No team has gotten closer. The more matches that piled on to bring the Reds closer to immortality, the more tired they looked. They fell just before the line because they were stumbling while moving forward.
Fans and the players are in a strange spot. Do you enjoy the chase no matter what happens? Is it empty because it didn't end with the ultimate prizes? They only won two trophies, and it sounds incredibly stupid and outdated to say, "They only won two trophies." There are over a hundred clubs in England that would swap places.
There is a gap. It's one thing to wave off the idea of a Quad at the beginning or middle of the season when it's barely conceivable. It's one thing to look at it and see it disappear over the horizon. Agent K told Agent J that it was better to have loved and lost than to not have loved at all.
The tale of Icarus is an easy parallel that is often cited during the closing run. What a moron, he died in the water because he flew too close to the sun. The wings came apart as the higher the plane flew. It was the feeling of getting to soar through the sky that Icarus knew. He died knowing and feeling something no one else had before, and he saw things no one else had seen before him. The old debate is over. The middle path may be just for those who don't dare to dream.
This might be the last iteration of the team. The front three has been the defining characteristic of this era, and they are even more so now after the arrival of van Dijk. He is the first player on the team to head to the exit door without a plan to replace him. It might have felt like that to some, but Philippe Coutinho wasn't up to the task. They planned what they were going to do because they had a man who could do it. His departure confirms that this will be a look at something previously thought to be impossible.
Maybe it's because they couldn't have done much more, or maybe it's because they were so happy to have gone through it. You always can, but 92 points is the correct score. It would have been enough in 80 percent of the previous seasons.
The better team in the final was the Reds. If they hadn't gotten the best goalkeeping performance in a final, Madrid would have been in serious trouble. There is no whiteboard in a dressing room before a match, and the keeper must turn into a hydra.
You knew what was coming when they didn't score in the first 25 minutes. They showed in all of the matches in May that they only had limited bursts. Everything else was not easy. The FA Cup final was a perfect example of this, tearing into the other team for the first third of the game, but barely threatening the rest to end in a stalemate. They looked labored in Paris after their initial visit. Attacks jammed into Madrid more than trying to unpick them. The patience to link and probe went away, instead of charges or crosses into the muck.
They would have been more energetic if they didn't chase the trophies. If you had taken out three FA Cup games or conceded the league earlier, you could have sneaked one past Thibaut Courtois that would have changed the whole game. On the first Saturday in May, the punch found a winner against the Spurs. On the margins.
The margins are how we define things in sports. We watch and follow because of that. There is clarity present that isn't in many other areas. Either you won or you lost. When the whistle blows, the scorecard tells all. The season is only inches away from divine in a lot of measures. It is divine in its own way.
When the score and table says you lost, we don't attach that feeling. You can't tell the loser from the winner of a seven-game series. After 63 games, one point and one game is almost invisible. In that tiny gap is everything.
They were close to the sun. No one else saw the world from a different angle. We end up in the water.
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