Barcelona Showdown Gives Alex Ferguson a Chance to Win With Style at Last

If there is one man outside Catalunya particularly delighted by Barcelona's heart-stopping success in reaching the 2009 European Cup final, it must be Sir Alex Ferguson. In his 23rd season in charge at Old Trafford, the Scot will be savoring the opportunity to send his players into Rome's Olympic stadium to face a team acclaimed all year as the most attractive Europe has to offer.

The alternative would have suited him fine, too, since he would have relished a chance to deprive Chelsea of their heart's desire for a second year in succession. But Ferguson is a man whose footballing horizons were decisively expanded when, as a teenager among a crowd of 135,000 at Hampden Park in May 1960, he saw the Real Madrid of Alfredo di Stefano, Ferenc Puskas and Francisco Gento go a goal down to Eintracht Frankfurt before fashioning a delirious 7-3 victory.

The European Cup means a great deal to him, and his third visit to the final will provide him with the opportunity, at the helm of the squad he considers the best he has assembled, to rectify the impression given during the two earlier matches, in 1999 and 2008, when Manchester United beat Bayern Munich and Chelsea with functional football that never threatened to enchant neutral spectators and, in the end, depended on luck.

The priority in Rome will be to win the match, of course, but the presence of Barcelona puts the onus on United to defend the trophy with style and a sense of adventure. Ferguson would enjoy nothing better than the sight of a side including Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney, Dimitar Berbatov and Ryan Giggs performing to the fullest extent of their capacity against another of the competition's great names.

Since his side hit their stride with the addition of Eric Cantona to the squad in the winter of 1992-93 they have often played as if motivated by his personal determination to show later generations football played with the deadly panache that allowed Di Stefano and company to prevail in 1960. Against Bayern in Barcelona nine years ago, suspensions and positional switches short-circuited the team's normal fluency and the win was scraped from two corners in stoppage time. In Moscow last year a heavyweight bout between two Premier League teams was notable for ferocity rather than finesse and could just as easily have gone the other way.

He will surely relish, too, the confrontation with Josep Guardiola, a contest between not just the oldest and the second youngest manager in this year's Champions League (Paulo Bento of Sporting Lisbon is six months younger than Guardiola, who was 40 in January) but the most and the least experienced.

Ferguson, aged 67, has been a manager for 35 years, his opponent for barely nine months. The Scot has led teams through 1,904 matches, 1,271 of them with United, while the Catalan has supervised a mere 64, including half a dozen pre-season friendlies. Guardiola's only advantage is in his depth of experience as a player at the very highest level.

A less exalted reason for Ferguson's pleasure at the identity of his opponents on 27 May might be the knowledge that Barcelona's team sheet will lack the names of four of their most experienced defenders. In addition to the unavailability of Daniel Alves and Eric Abidal, both suspended as a result of the events at Stamford Bridge, the Argentina international Gabriel Milito has been out all season and Rafael Márquez was removed from contention by an injury in the first leg of the semi-final. Carles Puyol will return from suspension for the final, ­perhaps at right-back, while Yaya Touré may continue alongside Gerard Piqué in the center of the defence, with Sylvinho, the former Arsenal full-back, taking Abidal's place.

United will be deprived of Darren Fletcher, whose interceptions were a crucial factor at the Emirates stadium, and Ferguson will be depending on Anderson, Michael Carrick and perhaps Paul Scholes to blunt the dagger thrusts of Xavi Hernández and Andrés Iniesta, while Patrice Evra will find Lionel Messi rather more of a handful than Theo Walcott proved to be. And he would be justified in believing that Barcelona's spatchcocked defence will have trouble coping with the kind of lightning-fast counter-attack that lacerated Arsenal's defence to complete United's victory on Tuesday, a goal straight from Ferguson's dreams.

Barcelona's two matches against Chelsea proved that Guardiola's side run riot only when faced with the right conditions, as they were in their recent runaway victories over Lyon (5–2), Bayern (4–0) and Real Madrid (6–2 at the Bernabéu). But the astonishing finale at Stamford Bridge on Wednesday showed that they are capable of riding their luck and maintaining their intensity until fate finally hands them an ace. Just like Ferguson's United, you might say.