Defeat

There is no question that the team UEFA and media pundits would probably have liked to see win the Champions League were the team who won it.  Liverpool should have won the Premier League title and they sit at the head table of European powerhouses like Real Madrid, AC Milan, Barcelona etc - teams who have won this competition the most times, so there is no begrudging them as champions.   Liverpool while having spent big are not anywhere near the richest teams in the world, but they have the most passionate supporters along side Benfica, Manchester United, Real Madrid, Barcelona and other Italian and German giants.  This contrasts with teams with rich benefactors like Manchester City and PSG who are fully powered by money.   The more money there is in professional soccer the greater the steroid - and if injection of money makes clubs like PSG, Manchester City and Chelsea into global powerhouses - why did they strip Ben Johnson for injection of drugs.  The world of football has become a huge moneyfest.

So what does the word defeat mean in this context.  For Ajax it was a defeat because their story should have been completed in this Champions league final - so the last second defeat against Spurs is a geniune heartfelt defeat.  For Lucas Moura, not starting this champions league match because Harry Kane bullied his way back to the starting job was a a personal defeat for Moura.   A player who had the heart being replaced by a player who has the status and money but who should never have been allowed to play - costing Spurs a shot at an unexpected Champions league victory.

Defeat is for a player like Danny Rose, who did his utmost to try to stir life in the front four of Spurs, a front four full of players who either are moving away from Spurs or who underachieved greatly.   None other than the yet to star unfulfilled potential of Deli Alli, still an expensive luxury in a team that needs far more out of him.  Defeat is for Lucas Moura who was sacrificed for the ego need of Harry Kane to play the full game in the Champions League.   The Spurs midfield did everything they could to win the title but the front four played in a straight line made weaker by the inclusion of Harry Kane.

Liverpool won this title while no where near their best.   Their passing percentage was a woeful 68% compared to 80% accuracy for Spurs and with the help of a 23 second penalty that totally changed the game without even a minute of the game being played, they deserve the title only for the reason of what they have accomplished all year long.  Yet this Spurs team could have won this game.  Pochettino should get credit for getting them to the final but Pochettino is also an unproven manager.  His decision making as he threw on players to save the game was yet again suspect, especially another failed gamble to throw on Llorente, hoping for some miraculous moment, but a football manager cannot keep managing on the basis of miracles.

He played Kieron Trippier for the whole game, even though the advantage Trippier gives in accurate crosses can be replicated by Jan Vertonghen and the missing speed can be made up by Lucas Moura.  He took off Harry Winks knowing that Moussa Sissoko has been injured during prior Champions League matches, and Spurs need two central holding players to connect defense to attack.  He has kept playing Alderweireld on his weaker foot, when the Belgian's real gift is his accurate long passes - so while Pochettino is known for varying his tactics, the gift of varying tactics means nothing if that managers team cannot win the big trophies.

Pochettino further showed his naivety about winning by trying to make a statement that all 24 players will be in the team picture before the final, bucking the tradition of taking a photograph of the starting 11.  His philosophy is that of an emotional man, in a game run by ruthless power.  Spurs fans should feel the sting of defeat the most because they can see they had every chance of bucking the odds.  That is what Andy Ruiz Jr did in a Heavyweight title fight hours later in Madison Gardens, New York as the heavily marketed Anthony Joshua fell four times like a rag doll, as if turning up to the fight was the only thing he needed to do.  His lackadaisical approach can be interrupted by his use of the word "long-game".  In today's billion dollar sports business, the idea of defeat can actually be a money maker.  Anthony Joshua stands to make more money and write a more compelling story if he is a part of "boxing history".  The history element here is the first Mexican fighter to win the World Heavyweight Title. 

This is not the age of football teams who were not doped up and injected by buying one's way to a championship and money invested well can turn a team into a champion, just as drugs nearly made Ben Johnson a World record holding 100 meter Olympic Champion - except Ben Johnson was humiliated and made an example of to stamp out drugs from sport.  Yet the whole point of drugs in sport is about a level playing field and fair competition.  Little of that seems to resemble the money game of professional sport.  How do we know that Anthony Joshua paid little heed to the fight in New York, because his long-game is coming back to London and claiming his title back.   Sport no longer favours excellence, it favours a mythological story-line that pretends that it was excellence that won - instead of decisions that trump excellence for calculations that totally change the true meaning of defeat.