Relentless Newcastle find new identity in slice of history

After decades of being a club built on resistance, this may be the moment they joined football's establishment

- Jonathan Liew

The last few minutes are a kind of perfection. Liverpool score after a video assistant referee delay to make the score 2-1. Newcastle United restart, pump the ball into the Liverpool corner and from that moment a kind of elemental life force seems to surge through them. This is what you came for. This is how you wanted it, where you wanted it. Remember your training. Can there be any more forlorn, godforsaken assignment than trying to wrestle Newcastle away from the corner flag in the dying seconds of a Wembley final? Curtis Jones tries and Harvey Elliott tries and Jarell Quansah tries, but these are players desperately unsuited to the task.

So Newcastle win a throw-in and all of a sudden nobody is around to take it. Sandro Tonali pauses over a corner kick to tie his shoelaces - double knot, maybe triple to be certain? - and accepts his yellow card as if it is the Iron Cross. Alexander Isak is suddenly a player built entirely out of elbows. Liverpool, the champions-elect of England, have five minutes to find an equalising goal, and don't manage a single touch in the opposition third.