Over the course of the five-hour Wimbledon men’s final between Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer on Sunday, opinions about the match varied widely on Twitter—as opinions on Twitter tend to do.

The momentum swings were “weird.” Djokovic’s form and mood were “all over the place.” Quality-wise, it couldn’t hold a candle to their Paris Masters semi-final from last year. Federer was the better player, so why wasn’t he winning?

If social media had been around for earlier Wimbledon epics, like Bjorn Borg’s five-set win over John McEnroe in 1980, the mid-match reviews probably would have been similarly mixed—“Why is Borg standing so far back to return?” “Where did McEnroe get that service motion?” While the 2008 final between Federer and Rafael Nadal is the subject of documentaries now, it was a blowout for the majority of its first three sets.

It’s only when a match is over, and all of its acts played out and the result is known, that we can understand what we’ve seen. It’s only in retrospect that it can become historic.

By now, Djokovic-Federer - The War of 13-12 - is already well on its way to classic status. As the fifth set progressed, and the level of play from both men rose even as the match neared the five-hour mark, most of Twitter had to admit that we were witnessing something special.

As both men tried, and failed, to serve it out, and the crowd’s roars for Federer grew louder, the tension in Centre Court became unbearable. The fact that it ended with the first final set tie-break in a Wimbledon singles match, at 12-12, gave this final a surreal sense of an historical destiny fulfilled.

“It was probably the most demanding, mentally most demanding, match I was ever part of,” Djokovic said. “I had the most physically demanding match against Nadal in the finals of Australia that went almost six hours. But mentally this was different level, because of everything.”

We know where it stands on Djokovic’s personal list of matches played; where should the 2019 Wimbledon final go on the all-time list? I’d say it can vie with the 2008 final for the very top spot. Together, Nadal-Federer and Djokovic-Federer serve as bookends on the Big 3 era, two matches of exceedingly high quality, whose finales read like film scripts.

The 2008 final was the last to be played without a roof, and the tennis and weather gods both seemed to have been informed of that fact. The match was accompanied by ominous clouds and interrupted by multiple rain showers; it lasted a total of seven excruciating hours; and it ended with minutes, maybe seconds, to spare in the encroaching darkness.

But it was that darkness, and the flash bulbs that popped all around Centre Court, that will make the match instantly identifiable forever. In the years since, it has become fashionable to say that the 2008 final wasn’t the highest-quality match between Rafa and Roger; but I remember thinking at the time that the two finals they played in 2007 and 2008 - Federer won the first in five sets - were the best-played matches I’d ever seen.

If Nadal-Federer was about the end of the old Wimbledon, Djokovic-Federer was about the start of a new Wimbledon. For the first time in its 142-year history, the event had instituted a final set tie-break, and somehow this was the first singles match in which it was needed.

This was fitting, because Djokovic-Federer was, among other things, about tennis’s uniquely demanding, and occasionally cruel, scoring system. Federer won 14 more points than Djokovic, hit 40 more winners and 15 more aces, and was probably the superior player on the day. But because Djokovic was flawless in all three tie-breaks, including the final one, he walked away with the champion’s trophy.

“Epic ending, so close, so many moments. Yeah, I mean, sure there’s similarities,” a Federer said with a pained smile when he was asked about the 2008 and 2019 finals. “I’m the loser both times, so that’s the only similarity I see.”

But while Federer may have lost two of, if not the greatest tennis matches of all time, the fact that he was in both of them, that he lasted as long and came as close to winning when he was 37 as he did when he was 26, should be a tribute to his unprecedentedly sustained excellence. Taken together, the 2008 and 2019 epics may someday be seen as examples of how far you had to go, and how long you had to play, to beat Roger Federer in a Wimbledon final.