IAN LADYMAN: Pochettino must look at what Klopp has at Liverpool and WEEP

As Liverpool and their manager Jurgen Klopp began their celebrations at full-time, Mauricio Pochettino of Chelsea turned and looked the other way. Some things, after all, are just too painful to observe.

For this was not just a football match lost by Pochettino and his team. No, this was a triumph of one creed over another, a victory for continuity, patience and planning over the crudeness of a boom-and-bust football culture that once served Chelsea well but in these times of financial restrictions is now starting to drag at the London club’s heels.

Pochettino is a good football manager who understands his sport and understands people. The Argentine must look at what Klopp will bequeath to whoever succeeds him next season and weep. It is a million miles away from what he has at Chelsea.

Liverpool are a club future-proofed to be competitive, a club shot through with the values and principles installed steadily and without pause by Klopp during his eight-and-a-half years at Anfield. It is this that enabled them to win this final with just a couple of first picks left on the field at the end of extra-time.

Chelsea, on the other hand, have been thrown together at great expense, a vast group of talented but inexperienced players not so much assembled but spat out by an enormous football data machine. It is this that enabled them to lose this final against Klopp’s mish-mash of seniors, reserves and kids.

Chelsea could have won this game. They had their chances. Liverpool’s reserve goalkeeper Caoimhin Kelleher was terrific. So too the defensive pairing of Virgil van Dijk and Ibrahima Konate.

But the truth is that Chelsea were inferior in all the statistical areas that matter. Possession, shots, attempts on target and, of course,