Whatever happens in the remainder of this tournament, and whether or not they lift the trophy, you suspect there will be echoes of Ajax’s class of 2019 reverberating around European football for many years to come.

Easter Sunday, upstairs in Cashman’s Bar, Academy Street, Cork. Liverpool are one up against Cardiff and on their way back to the top of the Premier League.

It would be remarkable if a club that has been lambasted and mocked for failing to win a single trophy since the League Cup in 2008 began their collection with the biggest one of all.

Germany 3 Holland 2

Ajax don’t have a club motto, but if they did it would have to be something like ‘Remember what you’re good at, even when everything seems to be falling apart’.

Gareth Southgate's men capped a promising display with a deserved victory as an experimental England side secured victory thanks to Jesse Lingard's first international goal.

It was not the Busby-inspired brilliance of Best and Charlton, nor a dramatic late victory in Fergie time, but Jose Mourinho’s side did what they needed to do in order to lift the Europa League trophy for the first time, qualify for the Champions League and, more importantly, give a much-needed morale boost to the devastated city of Manchester, writes Gerry Cox.

There was a moment during the last World Cup finals when it seemed the Dutch might be about to write a new chapter in their glorious football history, writes David Shonfield