Remarkable climax

IN Moscow – 22 May 2008 06:00 AM

The clock in the Luzhniki Stadium showed 1.34am before the best of English could be separated. Nicolas Anelka struck the ball to the left, Edwin van der Sar guessed correctly, and it was over.

Manchester United were the champions of Europe, again. Chelsea were not and, having come as breathlessly close as this, some will fear they never will be no matter how many millions Roman Abramovich throws at his grand obsession.

Had John Terry, the Chelsea captain, scored the tenth penalty of the evening, the trophy would have been theirs. Instead after 14 tries from the spot, it was the final kick of the game from Manchester United, taken by none other than Ryan Giggs, making his 759th appearance for the club -- breaking Bobby Charlton's record, that sent the biggest prize in European football back to Old Trafford for the second time in Alex Ferguson's reign.

It was a terrible way to decide a momentous match, however, performing the impossible feat of making you almost feel sorry for Chelsea.

After 15 minutes, Ferguson could be spied looking at his watch and he would not have been alone. This was shaping up to be the match the neutrals had dreaded: clumsy, proof that English football may have the riches, but in technical terms the game had not evolved.

And then a funny thing happened: from this unpromising beginning, a proper football match broke out. A proper, fast-paced, highly skilled, cliffhanger of a contest that banished memories of previous one-nation finals, the turgid Italians, AC Milan and Juventus, deadlocked in Manchester in 2003, and the one-sided Spaniards, Real Madrid thrashing Valencia in Paris three years earlier.

It was kicked off, as often happens in matches in England, by a physical clash, rather than a moment of beauty. When the ball broke free from a Chelsea clearance in the 22nd minute, Paul Scholes and Claude Makelele jumped together, full-blooded, if not entirely fairly, and the temperature went up a few degrees as players jostled and skirmished and Scholes lay prone on the ground.

He had been the guilty party, yet came off second best, with a couple of facial wounds, and Makelele's caution was a travesty, Scholes's less so. In a strange way it was what the game needed, and from there the first half did not look back.

The thing to remember about United's opening goal is that Michael Essien, the Chelsea right back, is not a defender. Then again, Cristiano Ronaldo is meant to be a tricky winger, so the fact that he was lurking at the back post for his ninth headed goal of the season says something about refusing to entertain limitations.

Essien was the great gamble of Avram Grant, the Chelsea first-team coach, and it did not pay off. Identifying the built-in weakness in the Chelsea team, Ferguson merely switched his most dangerous player, Ronaldo, to the left flank, where he ran riot.

His goal was created on the right, but it was Essien's failure to do the marking job that would have been second nature to, say, Paulo Ferreira that caused the problem.

The passing move on the right was a joy. Scholes to Wes Brown, Brown to Scholes, Scholes back to Brown, the ball zipping around Frank Lampard as if forming a cat's cradle, until Brown centred, finding Ronaldo in a Red Square of space, Essien alert to the danger only after it was too late.

Petr Cech may be wearing a new orange strip to make his figure look bigger and more imposing, but when a header is as impeccably directed as Ronaldo's he may as well have been wearing Harry Potter's invisibility cloak.

Had United taken all of their first-half chances the game could have been as good as over. They were queueing up to score in the 34th minute when Wayne Rooney played a long diagonal ball to Ronaldo on the left and, after his cross, Cech produced a brilliant save from Carlos Tevez's diving header. John Terry, off balance, only half cleared and the ball ran to Michael Carrick, who returned it with interest, Cech recovering to save again.

Rooney was the architect of the next opportunity, too, his cross being inches away from Tevez, who may have scored had his boots been a size bigger. Yet all the time Chelsea were edging their way back in. When the equaliser came, though, there should be no prizes for guessing the scorer.

Lampard's great talent is that he keeps going, long after most midfield players have got nervous and checked their run on the edge of the penalty area, and that is why he scores so often from close range.

By his standards, this was textbook. Essien hit the shot from outside the area, there was a deflection that wrong-footed Ferdinand and Van der Sar, and Lampard was first on site, his left-foot finish every bit as perfect and worthy as a 30-yard screamer. Immediately, he looked to the heavens. It was that kind of night.

It must go down as one of the most remarkable climaxes to a Champions League final. With minutes of extra time remaining, emotions boiled over and Drogba was sent off for slapping Nemanja Vidic, the United defender, after an unseemly melee which also saw Ballack and Tevez booked.

It contributed to Chelsea's persecution complex, with the post, the bar, the linesman, everything conspiring to frustrate them. In normal time, Drogba hit a post from 20 yards with Van der Sar beaten and Lampard struck the bar from inside the area in extra time.