Fergie sets sights on doing it again

It's not the only challenge. First, there's Liverpool's 18 League titles set to be equalled and should United win in Rome, they would be the first team to retain the European Cup since Arrigo Sacchi's AC Milan in 1990 and the first ever to successfully defend it since the Champions League format was introduced.

"It is not easy but the young players who have tasted success here will want to do it again," he said. "I think we are good enough. We have made one step forward towards getting a respectable figure in terms of Champions League wins and we want to add more and get up there alongside the Liverpools, Bayern Munichs and Ajaxs.

"And then you never know what ambition can do to you. Real Madrid have nine wins and it is a target you take for granted - perhaps not in my lifetime - but it is worth chasing."

Note the careful insertion of the word 'perhaps'. Ferguson has never set limits on what he believes is possible; you wouldn't put it past him to think he'd only be 72 when they won their ninth.

Like Steve Waugh's old Australian cricket team, he goes by the motto 'Never Satisfied' and though it may be more for the greater glory of club and not for himself that he keeps pursuing success at the age of 66, the potential by-product is that over the next few years before his retirement he could make redundant any serious argument over who's the greatest football manager of them all.

Wednesday's triumph, of course, only strengthened any case to be made that he may already hold that accolade.

Amid all the emotion flying about over the 1958 Munich and 1968 Wembley anniversaries, much less attention was paid to how it was also 25 years since he'd lifted his first European trophy, the Cup Winners' Cup, with Aberdeen.

Those days of extraordinary over-achievement at Pittodrie, where he won 10 trophies and smashed through the Old Firm duopoly, will always be the definitive answer to anyone who dares suggest that, at mighty United, he's never had to build bricks from straw in the way that, say, the great Brian Clough had to do at more homespun Derby and Nottingham Forest. The simple fact is that, in club management, Ferguson has done the lot.

He's done a Clough, winning in Europe with an unfashionable club; he's done a Fabio Capello, lifting league titles in two different countries; he's done a Rafa Benitez and a Jose Mourinho, collecting European silverware with two clubs; he's done a Giovanni Trapattoni, annexing trophies in three successive decades.

There is an argument to suggest that he has not yet quite matched the achievements of Bob Paisley, who won three European Cups in his nine years in charge of Liverpool.

But Ferguson has built dramatic teams and then rebuilt them even more compellingly so that, as his assistant Carlos Queiroz proclaimed yesterday, we have to talk about "without doubt the best manager of his generation". Maybe any generation?

The sheer weight of the statistics would say so. Wednesday's was the 32nd major winners' medal of his management career, 21 more than Capello and 11 more than even that venerable serial winner, Trap - but no stats can convey the attractive bouquet of each successive Ferguson vintage. Chateau Fergie 2008 will doubtless be improved this summer with the odd dramatic signing in the goalscoring department.

Like the thrilling young Lyon striker Karim Benzema, perhaps? Or a brilliant enigma who thinks he deserves a sparkling new home? Yes, Fergie could make Dimitar Berbatov the champion he ought to be.

And even while there may be a little local difficulty to sort out with Cristiano Ronaldo still seemingly playing silly b's about his future - I wouldn't contest Ferguson's bet that he'll woo the Portuguese to still be at the club next season.

Ultimately the only real concern at Old Trafford would be not if the best player in the world left tomorrow, but if the best manager in the world suddenly decided it was time to retire tomorrow.

And that's about as likely as Chelsea embracing the concept of managerial security and continuity.