DOMINIC KING: Priority now is having Salah and Van Dijk fit for Madrid

Kostas Tsimikas sent Edouard Mendy the wrong way and so began the charge of the Red Brigade, a group of men delirious with their latest success.

At the back of the posse, though, your eye was drawn to Virgil van Dijk. Plenty of his team-mates had gone from standing to sprinting in the blink of an eye but Liverpool’s No 4 could do nothing more than hobble, looking as if he was trying to negotiate a shingly beach bare-footed.

Rare are the days when Van Dijk doesn’t finish a game he has started. He’s made 179 appearances for Liverpool since his £75million move from Southampton and only four times he had failed to complete the game.

Two of those were in inconsequential League Cup ties against Lincoln and Arsenal in September 2020, the others were against his old club in September 2018, when he cracked a rib, and then at Goodison Park in October 2020 when he suffered that catastrophic knee injury.

So the very fact Jurgen Klopp and Van Dijk, Master and Commander of Liverpool’s defence, decided he could not continue in the FA Cup Final, as extra-time beckoned, had alarm bells ringing loudly. With everything on the line, how could he withdraw from the action?

But Van Dijk wasn’t the main reason those alarm bells had been set off. That moment had come midway through the first half when Mohamed Salah, another man for whom the phrase “durable” could have been invented, went down grimacing and signalled to the bench.

Many might have felt this was like two bricks being removed from a Jenga tower and, suddenly, the absence of two big names, on a huge day, would see Liverpool’s dreams of completing a clean sweep come crashing down.

The pursuit of immortality is coming draining, emotionally and physically. Liverpool had already lost