We used to call it helter-skelter football or blitzkrieg football.
When it clicked it was impossible to take your eyes off but thinly veiled chaos was always part of its unique charm, too.
Now it has morphed into something different. Now we can call it winning football and the latest stage of Liverpool's development under Jurgen Klopp threatens to take them somewhere quite special indeed.
Jurgen Klopp has transformed Liverpool's heavy metal football into winning football this year
The Reds were greeted by thousands of Liverpool fans after their Champions League triumph
An overwhelmed Jordan Henderson embraces Klopp after the final whistle in Madrid
This was a strange night in Spain. It was not the spectacle we hoped. But it was no less glorious for it and as we watched Klopp embraced by his players and staff on the pitch at the Wanda Metropolitano Stadium, it was hard to escape the feeling that this was not only the end of one story but the start of another altogether more significant one.
Klopp can shut the door on phase one of Project Anfield now. His first major trophy — the biggest one of all — has his signature on it. It has been quite a ride at times, his Liverpool team reaching the limits of magnificence and almost naive vulnerability on their adventures through Europe and the Premier League over the last two years.
Phase two promises to be a little different. Liverpool are a proper football team now, a side capable of reacting to circumstance and the changing rhythms of an individual game or season.
They no longer play only one way. They have intelligence to match their attacking instincts and confidence and street smarts to call on when their best football eludes them.
There was a moment in the second half on Saturday when we perhaps knew this was going to go Liverpool's way. Under a little pressure, Liverpool suddenly looked very vulnerable as Tottenham's most dangerous and quickest player, Son Heung-min, burst into the penalty area towards Virgil van Dijk.
The big Dutch defender was on his heels and in trouble. At least until a change of gears saw him take the ball away from his opponent, a corner kick the only damage in the end.
The moment that showed it would be Liverpool's night came after Son Heung-min broke clear
Virgil van Dijk's effortless recovery saw him dispossess the Spurs man and nullify the threat
There in an instant we saw so much of the modern Liverpool. This was not the same team who played schoolyard football against Roma in last season's semi-final second leg and who collapsed under the weight of poor goalkeeping in the final in Kiev. No, this was a team capable of mislaying their A-game on a big night and still managing to prevail.
So Liverpool are kings of Europe for a sixth time and despite the mundanity of this performance it is thoroughly deserved, not only for their work this season but also last.
This was an unmemorable final. The Premier League should never again leave their top teams at the mercy of a three-week gap between the end of the domestic season and the final of Europe's blue riband competition. Both Liverpool and poor old Tottenham suffered from ring rust here.
But the details of this red triumph are to be found not in the stilted, cloying football of a hot summer Saturday in Madrid but in the late save that goalkeeper Alisson Becker made as Liverpool clung to
