"This is getting ridiculous, Real Madrid, " Tommy Martin gasped while the rest of us struggled to raise our jaws from the floor. And if you don't have any sympathy for all those reporters who'd already penned their thoughts on yet another all-English Champions League final, and were all set to press 'send', then you've the coldest of hearts.
88: Done and dusted.
89: Hold it. Rodrygo. Goal.
91: Mother of divine Jesus. Rodrygo. Goal.
Ah, football, you’re a mad fecker, little wonder we love the bones of ya.
So much salivating had gone on during that first leg between Manchester City and Real Madrid last week, you'd have needed a bib to collect all the drool, Pep Guardiola's conniptions on the touchline as he tried to compute how his lads only managed to win by a single goal almost as entertaining as the 4-3 ding-dong that played out in front of him.
“He looked like he was fit to explode,” said Brian Kerr as the cameras picked him out sitting in the dug-out, slapping his cheeks, scratching his head, waving his hands, gesticulating manically, thumping his head, rubbing his forehead and inserting his face in his hands. And that was just during the warm-up for the game at the Bernabeu.
Brian was exhausted just looking at him, Tommy Martin admitting that his own emotions were similar when he had to head in to the Virgin Media studio to work with Brian and Damien Delaney, both pundits taking this revelation in good spirits when they could have been deeply offended.
Team news. A parade of world stars. Sterling, Gundogan, Grealish, Fernandinho, Alaba, Asensio, Marcelo, Rodrygo. And that was just the respective subs benches.
And the stadium was buzzing, too, although Tommy neglected to explain why the Madrid fans were displaying a giant banner featuring Michael Healy-Rae's face. Turns out it was meant to be Karim Benzema, so the people of Glengarriff who've been so aggrieved by that Maureen O'Hara statue should count their blessings.
Match time. “Fasten your seatbelts,” Tommy advised, but, disappointingly, both teams had decided it might be better to do some defending this time around, so opted against 1-0-9 formations.
A much cagier affair, then, Madrid misfiring in front of goal, Michael Healy-Rae unable to take the half chances that fell to him.
Although the football was still very gorgeous a good chunk of the time, not least when Modric swept his wand in the direction of the ball. And the duel of the night was the one between Casemiro and the ref, the Madrid man leading 2-0 at half-time in terms of the number of yellow cards he should have received but didn’t.
Zero-zero at half-time, then, Tommy a little crestfallen having told us before the game that 13 was the record for the number of semi-final goals over two legs, and there was no little hope in his heart that that record would be at least matched.
“We’d like to see the chaos again,” he said, speaking for us all, but come the 72nd minute, that looked unlikely. Mahrez. Boom. If he doesn’t call his autobiography ‘My Left Foot’, he’ll be missing a trick.
And then. The madness. Manchester City fans checking to see if there were any seats left on the Eurostar, or if one half of Liverpool had booked them all, when Rodrygo only went and did his thing.
“If you’re a football fan, you’ve been well entertained,” said Gerry Armstrong, sealing the 2002 award for ‘The Most Under-Stated Understatement of the Entire Bloody Year’.
“Brian Kerr, explain this to me,” Tommy pleaded, but even Brian was close enough to being lost for words.
Extra-time. Penalty Madrid. Benzema back in business. City closing down. Pep thumping his head, rubbing his forehead and inserting his face in his hands in the dug-out.
All over. Utterly, fabulously demented.
So then, it’s Real Madrid who’ll have the task of preventing a possible Liverpool quadruple in Paris on May 29th. It’s actually May 28th, but Liverpool turning up a day late might be the only thing that will stop them. Then again, there’s a Real Madrid side who, this year at least, have yet to familiarise themselves with the notion of being beaten. It should be a half decent watch.
