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The displaced winger performed with the sort of heroic energy and commitment that he had showed in the FA Cup final four days earlier, but against Bayern it was more evident that his talents do not include the sort of withering interdiction which comes naturally to Roy Keane. Beckham’s long diagonal passes over the defence found only the most inadequate response from Andy Cole and Dwight Yorke.But, crucially, United won a dozen corners – six in each half, nine from the right and three from the left (a statistic which suggests the relative degrees to which the designated wingers, Ryan Giggs on the right and Jesper Blomqvist on the left, inconvenienced their opponents). Beckham took all 12 flag-kicks, and virtually every one of them initiated some sort of threat, often producing clearances under pressure. Sometimes the failure of the United attackers to profit merely pointed up their own frailty – as when one corner from the right swept clear across the goalmouth in the 31st minute, and another from the same spot was picked off the grass by Oliver Kahn at the near post two minutes before half-time.Bayern were careful to avoid providing Beckham with opportunities by giving away free-kicks in dangerous areas, but even when restricted to dead-ball kicks from the corner flags he was creating danger.

Not until the second minute of injury time was the threat transformed into a goal- scoring chance, but the possibility had always been there and Sheringham’s arrival turned it into something concrete.At Wembley on Saturday, after Sheringham had scored United’s first goal and laid on the second for Paul Scholes with a wonderfully deft touch, Ferguson was asked if the forward would have a part to play in Barcelona “There’s every chance of that,” he replied. He went on to say that he felt “blessed” by the presence in his squad of four brilliant strikers. Two of them, Sheringham and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, the two he had left on the bench, came into the action to score the goals that gave Manchester United the European Cup. And if he cannot possibly have imagined the scenario of those final 90 seconds, then Ferguson has every right to see the action they contained as the fruit of his generalship.No doubt he will be saying a quiet prayer of thanks for Hitzfeld’s decision to remove Matthaus.

On the face of it, this was the worst substitution since Graham Taylor took off Gary Lineker in Sweden in 1992, when England needed a goal to stay in the European Championship You need a goal, so you take off England’s best striker. You need to close a game up, so you take off the man with more expertise in that area than anyone still playing the game. “I feel for Lothar, because he made a great contribution in the period when we established control of the match,” Hitzfeld said afterwards. “He wanted to play the whole 90 minutes, but he didn’t have the stamina.” Yet his departure robbed Bayern of a man who would still have marshalled the defence and helped Bayern to keep their concentration.Hitzfeld, who was able to see far enough beyond his own bitterness to suggest that United had deserved to win, added that he hoped his players would not be traumatised by the nature of the defeat.

He was thinking no further ahead than the weekend after next, when his team face Werder Bremen in a German Cup final which may reward them with what will surely now be an anticlimactic Double But some of them may take a lot longer to recover. What, as they stood or sat or lay in postures of frozen despair after United’s second goal, could have been going through their heads? How did they feel when the referee, Pierluigi Collina, urged them to take up their positions for the restart, knowing that they would be kicking off only to enable him to blow the final whistle?History, as we know, is the winner’s story. But without such pathos there could have been no heroism, without catastrophe no triumph. And if ever a mere game burst out of its boundaries to approach the proportions of myth, this was it.. THE JOURNEY that ended with Peter Schmeichel and Alex Ferguson lifting the European Cup in the Nou Camp on Wednesday night began in Budapest in 15 September 1993. That was the night Ferguson’s Manchester United took their first faltering steps in the quest to emulate Sir Matt Busby’s legendary team after years of exile from the Continent’s premier club competition.
United beat Kispest Honved 3-2 that night, Eric Cantona scoring the first goal, but tumbled out in the next qualifying round, against Galatasaray. This was the infamous tie when they let slip a two-goal lead at home, drawing 3-3, then, after failing to score in the return in Istanbul, had Cantona sent off.The following year they made the league stage but again fell by the Bosphorus Then came defeats in the post-Christmas knock-out stages.