United on another planet

STEVE McCLAREN must have wondered if he had wandered in to an episode of ‘Life on Mars’.

Outside Old Trafford the boys in blue were grappling with football hooligans. Inside, Manchester United were trouncing Italian opposition while the news was filtering through that Chelsea had joined Sir Alex Ferguson’s team in the semi-finals of the Champions League.

English clubs rule Europe once more. Just as they did in the 1970s and early 1980s when Liverpool lifted four European Cups, Nottingham Forest two and Aston Villa one. All that was missing was a Vauxhall Viva and a blast of the Bee Gees.

And if England manager McClaren was scratching his head and asking himself some harsh questions as he sat in the Old Trafford stand then who could blame him?

How can England players such as Michael Carrick, Wayne Rooney and Rio Ferdinand plus Frank Lampard, John Terry and Joe Cole as well as Liverpool’s Steven Gerrard, Jamie Carragher and Peter Crouch form the backbone of the greatest British European club challenge for a quarter of a century at the same time that the national side are struggling to qualify for the European Championships?

It is one which former England managers Don Revie and Ron Greenwood wrestled with in the 1970s, a decade in which Liverpool sparked a series of six consecutive European Cup triumphs for English clubs but in which England failed to qualify for a single major tournament.

Anyone knowing the exact reason for such a disparity could name their fee as a consultant to the Football Association. After all, Greenwood once played half the Liverpool side in the white of England and failed to extract the red-blooded passion and supreme talent they displayed week in and week out for their club.

The suspicion is that it is a combination of feeble national management, an absence of strength in depth and a lack of balance brought about by an insistence on playing the 11 best players rather than the best team.

That and the fact that you cannot emulate in a sprinkling of national get-togethers the camaraderie, resolve and conviction with which United, Chelsea and Liverpool have approached Europe this season.

If there is a club with greater fight and determination than Chelsea in world football then we have yet to see them. True, they do not thrill the soul with attacking gung-ho but if it is power and pragmatism which pull your chain then they have no peer.

Jose Mourinho simply finds a way to get the job done and if it takes a last-minute Michael Essien goal, as it did against Valencia, then so be it.

Liverpool have much the same attitude. Building from a solid defensive foundation under the ruthless management and tactical acumen of Rafael Benitez, their European form far outstrips their Premiership credentials.

And then there is Manchester United.

I have no torch to carry for Britain’s most famous club. In my view Alex Ferguson can be one of the most boorish characters in the whole of football.

But anyone who was not moved by the sheer awe of United’s 7-1 defeat of Roma must possess a heart of stone.

So much of that was down to Ferguson.

Down to a manager who, for all his personal failings, has never allowed United to forget their traditions as a club committed to attacking football and entertainment.

The speed of their one-touch play against Roma was more than brilliant. It was exquisite.

Think of the light and mystical quality of a Caravaggio masterpiece and you are getting close to the footballing brushstrokes with which Cristiano Ronaldo, Rooney and Carrick adorned Old Trafford.

In another generation it could have been George Best and Denis Law and Bobby Charlton.

Not that we should get carried away. There is still the 70s attachment of the hooligans to address and new UEFA president Michel Platini’s ethos of ‘zero tolerance’ towards violence sits uncomfortably with the ugly scenes inside the Olympic Stadium last week and now outside Old Trafford, from which United fans this time can hardly claim immunity.

How distressing that memories of Heysel and the sort of thuggery for which English clubs were banned from Europe should be rekindled just as United, Chelsea and Liverpool are once more creating a vapour trail of triumph across the footballing skies.