United trip takes long road

Alex Ferguson is fond of saying that his club never take the easy route, that his players love to push his heart to its outer limits, ensuring that the entire annual output of Wrigley's Spearmint is gummed in the process. But this night in Turin makes their run past Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal to the FA Cup final look like the smoothest of four-lane motorways.

There is no underestimating United's achievement. To dispense with Juventus on their home turf was epic enough, to do it when apparently staggering punch drunk to the ropes was beyond anything even the wildly optimistic Ferguson could have envisaged.

Gianni Agnelli, Juventus's septuagenarian owner, reckons that his side's performance at Old Trafford in the first leg was "the most beautiful" he had ever seen in his time with the club.

Which is saying something, as he has been a fan since the days when Mussolini tried on a black shirt at his local tailors and liked the cut of it so much he ordered 10,000 to go.

"There was only one thing wrong with that game," said the man who, since his remarks about Zinedine Zidane's wife (Zinedine is under her thumb was the gist of it), is unlikely to be high on Germaine Greer's Christmas card list. "It went on a minute too long."

To beat his side, everyone was agreed, and reach their first European Champions League Final since the days when Manchester City were League champions (yes, that long ago, 1968), Ferguson's team would have to play better than ever.

At least the visitors could not carp about the conditions. The weather had been distinctly Mancunian all day, torrents running off the Alps. And the Juve pitch, covered in what looked like giant strips of cling-film until half an hour before kick-off, was a patchwork of shades of green every bit as dreadful as Old Trafford's.

The sense of expectation, of the certainty of forthcoming victory among the home fans, was astonishing to behold. At the mention of each Juve player's name over the public address system, fountains sprayed and danced behind each goal, giant flags swung in the stands, firecrackers boomed. In response, the banner passing over the pocket of United fans reading, bizarrely, "Carrickfergus Reds" looked isolated. A bit like Carrickfergus, in short.

By the seventh minute, you could tell why the home camp was so confident: it appeared this was not to be a night on which expectations, form or history were to be overturned. By then Filippo Inzaghi had already driven United's defence to such distraction they had conceded two goals, provoking a noise which suggested the Juve fans wanted to demolish this much-disliked stadium on the spot. If Old Trafford had been beautiful, up in his stately box, Senor Agnelli must have been scouring his Thesaurus.

But what a spirit Ferguson has built. United would not stop running; the warrior spirit Edgar Davids so derided has much to commend it. And before half an hour had elapsed, a breath of life was restored to the corpse of United's ambition by the indomitable Roy Keane, the restoration continued by Dwight Yorke's clinical header.

You wondered how these two teams could top one of the finest 45 minutes seen in the senior European competition, but they resumed as if fresh from their beds. As the end drew near, the Juve fans began brawling amongst themselves. Presumably someone had dared to suggest that when it comes to things of beauty, it would be hard to top this United performance.