Liverpool Football Club just went out in the Champions League Final to the terrifyingly good looking Spanish team Real Madrid.

I can only chalk it up to one of two things: bad luck for Liverpool, or Real Madrid’s deal with the devil finally paying off.

We lost Salah some thirty minutes into the game because Ramos took him out (my brother later texted me he wanted to “Punch Ramos” in a not very nice place). It’s extremely unfortunate to lose our little Egyptian who just broke the all time Premier League scoring record this year, but Ramos has been around long enough to know where the referee was standing and how to get down to business.

Oh and he sold his soul to the devil to win the final because Real didn’t have enough trophies already.

But great games are won by great competitors, and also sometimes great cheaters. Would a Liverpool fan have chuckled softly if Milner had done the same thing to one of theirs? Likely. But that’s not what we’re talking about.

Then our goalkeeper happened to himself.

He had the ball in his hands. Full possession and no hurry whatsoever, so he did what one does when one buckles like a Jr high girl under pressure, he turned to roll the ball to his defence and threw it against Real’s striker’s foot and into the back of his own net.

On a nothing ball. In the middle of nowhere. For no apparent reason.

I juggle two knives in the air when Liverpool are losing, one is called Despair and the other Trash Talking. I Trash Talk the opposing teams choice of clothes, and in some case faces. One moment it’s “Why are we terrible at football??” And the next “Well, at least Liverpool fans aren’t ugly like that!!!”

Childish really, but accurate. And I’ve convinced myself it’s helped us win games, even though I always work Saturday mornings and PVR them, so while I’m superstitiously cheering I’m really trying to affect a game that’s been over for several hours.

The guilt of making fun of the actual physical appearance of the opposing team fans results in the inevitable guilt, which makes me feel a certain retribution from the gods might be coming down the pike, which makes me take it back immediately and try to find something nice to say.

But on this particular day I was juggling Despair and … Nothing. Because Real Madrid fans are quite beautiful compared to ours.

It’s also why Liverpool lost. Sure, dirty, disgusting Ramos cheated like a cheater, Salah was injured, our goalie scored his first premier league goal against himself, and let another ridiculously easy save in,

but I know it was me. I should have foreseen the Madrid fans ethereal, tanned beauty and found something much more painful to exploit, but they cast a spell on me.

I had an English apprentice in the trades who did the same thing during Story Time at coffee (It’s a thing if you have an Englishman). I was enthralled and he could do no wrong until the day I got a call from a site he was supposed to have finished a couple of weeks before by some of my crew who dropped by.

“We’ve been trying to tell you he’s terrible for months!!! He cast a spell on you!”

Fair enough, his accent was cool and he also gave me free Radiohead albums, and I’m a sucker for free things that I like.

But he wasn’t beautiful and certainly wasn’t a tanned knockout like every single person in Madrid.

Even so I guess we’ll take our lumps now. It’s hard to be too upset with beautiful people,

even if they sold their sultry souls to the devil so they would win at football…