Long after the final whistle in Amsterdam, when Mauricio Pochettino was conducting the Tottenham crowd in choruses of their serenade to him, when he was on his knees in a salute to his coaching staff, when the sense of wonder remained fresh, contrasting phenomena added to the magnificent ludicrousness of it all.
For Tottenham to reach the European Cup final, 57 years after their sole previous semi-final, may remain a unique achievement.
And yet to do so from a 3-0 aggregate deficit merely emulated the improbable antics of the previous night. Tottenham are making history, but history repeated itself. Now whatever the scoreline, no one should dare turn off the all-English final against Liverpool early.
Whoever loses can take consolation from the knowledge they have performed one of the greatest comebacks in the history of European football.
If football is in part about the memories, the journey, the feeling of individuals doing things few had ever thought them capable of and teams being greater than the sum of their parts then Pochettino and Jurgen Klopp, two criticised for their lack of trophies, are already winners.
Tottenham’s is scarcely a failsafe formula. A comeback was fitting, because their entire campaign has consisted of one.
Theirs is among the strangest routes to the final, via Fernando Llorente’s hip, which provided the eventual decider against City, aided by VAR, which ruled out Raheem Sterling’s seeming injury-time clincher.
They were behind for 165 minutes, plus injury-time, of the semi-final, before Lucas Moura completed an astonishing hat-trick.
They took one point from their first three group games and have been playing sudden-death football since. They would not have made the knockout stages had Inter Milan beaten an already eliminated PSV Eindhoven side but have been brilliant at brinkmanship.
But one of English football’s great strengths lay in the never-say-die spirit its teams demonstrated that. Perhaps it took two imports, an Argentinian and a German, to reconnect it with historic strengths, adding quality to the inherent excitement. Pochettino and Klopp’s high-tempo games fit their adopted homes.
Their influences came from Marcelo Bielsa and, indirectly, Arrigo Sacchi respectively.
And yet they belong in a tradition. Drama is a constant for England’s European champions in the Premier League era. None has been a straightforward progression to glory. Liverpool, in 2005, and Chelsea, seven years later, were sensational against-the-odds triumphs.
There is a far stronger case for anointing Manchester United’s Europe’s best team in 1999 and 2008 respectively, but they relied on two injury-time goals and a penalty shootout respectively to lift the most coveted trophy.
But since Chelsea, there has been a vacuum. Two years ago, England’s only quarter-finalists were Leicester City’s overachievers. The 2017 was the fifth in a row without Premier League representation. It had only supplied two semi-finalists, Chelsea and Manchester City, in that time.
The Premier League has been slow in converting his financial might into European domination, but the paradox is that Tottenham are the club who famously have not bought a player for 15 months, whose wage bill is only fractionally higher than Everton’s. They are England’s austerity Champions League finalists.
Perhaps there was an irony in that their most recent signing was Moura, Wednesday’s hat-trick hero. Exiled from Paris Saint-Germain after they bought his compatriot Neymar, the Brazilian has now scored more goals in Champions League semi-finals than his former club.
It has a symbolic value: Tottenham are a team, PSG a star vehicle. Moura was sacrificed on the altar of Neymar’s narcissism.
He proved Tottenham’s invaluable understudy. The parallels with Liverpool continued. For Divock Origi, standing in for Mohamed Salah and Roberto Firmino, read Moura, deputising for the injured Harry Kane.
Tottenham scored three goals each at City and Ajax without their top scorer. It was illogical. It was wonderful. And there may yet be one more comeback to come.
