Keith Duggan/Sideline CutMany Irish fans had no choice but to bolt for Manchester the old-fashioned way to attend Real Madrid's visit to Old Trafford on Wednesday evening.

All the small Lancashire airports were packed with the arrival of United's diaspora and so, small battalions from this island resorted to the time-honoured tradition of the ferry. It is hardly the mode of transport preferred by United's more celebrated Emerald-Isle fans nowadays but all things considered, the boat-goers were the lucky ones.

This was a sporting event that demanded several hours of confinement on the high seas, with only cold food and warm beer for sustenance, in order to be fully considered and appreciated. It was less a match than an insight into the possibilities of soccer at its richest.

Rarely does the appellation of "the beautiful game" come across as anything other than a wishful conceit or a sobriquet dragged from an earlier and better era. Already, this has been hailed as one of the European club matches for the ages but there remains the troubling fact Real were never truly stretched or alarmed enough for the game to be considered as a truly gargantuan struggle.

That they ran at each other with the elemental enthusiasm of schoolyard innocents heightened the appeal of the game as a spectacle beyond what we normally hope or dare to expect from big-time professional sport.

It was an evening soaked in the joy of its own magnificence. For that, and for the splendour or Ronaldo's sense of occasion on this visit to the so-called Theatre of Dreams, it will be passed on through the generations as a significant episode in the evolution of the game and it will probably become a popular gift choice in the decades ahead when grandkids buy it for doddering oldsters who still believe in using DVDs.

By then, the game might also be identified as the point of decline of the Ferguson Empire. The signs it had begun to crumble have been there for the past couple of seasons but on Wednesday they were lit up.

Most obvious was the David Beckham dilemma. None of the commentators closest to the English game have been able to say with any great conviction that Ferguson's curtailment of the glamorous one has been purely tactical. Nor has a declaration of a battle of wills between the notoriously stubborn Scot and the proud if petulant Londoner been made outright. But there is the suspicion Ferguson's refusal to select his cover-star midfielder is down to a personal loss of patience and a desire to off-load the glam-rags' royal family to another place.

And if Ferguson is indulging in mind games during this crucial period of the season, then he has unarguably lost sight of the iron-clad focus and resolution of which Roy Keane is supposedly emblematic.

There was something poignant about the great Corkman's performance on Wednesday evening. He played quite well and with his usual intelligence and on one occasion, he sprinted back three quarters of the field to make a tackle and repossess a ball he had initially lost. But he carried himself with an obvious self-containment that he seems to have decided on as his new patent. Snarl was the word they liked using for Roy. There was none of that on Wednesday night.

Keane is such a zealot he appears as incapable of deviating from his new role as a Zen-like conduit as he was from restraining himself throughout his many chimes and crimes of passion that set countless football games aflame. With Keane sage and subdued, Manchester United required another soul to awaken the sense of injustice and cause under which Ferguson's sides have traditionally thrived.

The audition for successor highlighted the strengths and weaknesses of the fin-de-siecle Ferguson regime. It was heartening from an Irish perspective that the most fearless United player during the early period was John O'Shea.

Two years ago, Ferguson murmured that he expected the Waterford boy to make it through and his glorious nutmeg on Figo illuminated just how right the manager was. Ruud van Nistelrooy was little short of heroic up front. Elsewhere, though, there were shortcomings. Nicky Butt learned endeavour can only cover up limitations to a certain extent. Seba Veron still floats through games as if undecided whether soccer is really for him. There are signs Ryan Giggs has reached the apex of his career. Fabien Barthez definitely has, while Rio Ferdinand may never reach his.

The chances are that Manchester United will finish this season without silverware and that the core of the team will be dismantled. But it is debatable whether they will be able to spend enough to return to the threshold of European greatness they glimpsed in 1999.

As the season ends, there are two ways of viewing United under Ferguson. Either the richest club in the world used Ferguson's sharp eye and shrewd finance and a superb youth policy to fashion three sides that dominated the English game for over a decade and enjoyed a perfect season culminating in the 1999 Champions League victory.

Or a great and legendary but distinctly local club ballooned into a hollow sports corporation and did not have the imagination to extend its domain beyond the soulless, cash- happy Premiership except for one essentially lucky season.

European domination of the kind Ferguson so covets continues to elude him. Funny, for all the talk about the Scot's incredible presence, he never conducted himself like a man who expects to win against the continental legends. There was always something graceless and unprofessional about his habit of jumping around the stands whenever his players scored. He could learn from Real's Vicente Del Bosque, who celebrated Ronaldo's hat-trick with a single hand-clap.

But say one thing for Ferguson; his teams go to war for him. Even Beckham ran around like a man possessed when he was finally granted clemency from his place on the bench. It was impossible not to be moved by the way United poured forward again and again trying to topple football logic.

The sight of Keane retiring nine minutes from time on a gala evening for European football was unforgettable. How quickly and intractably an athlete's moment in the sun passes. It is the same for teams. Even if United eclipse Arsenal in the local race, it is hard to escape the sense Ferguson's last stand will be unsettling for the legions obsessed with all things Manchester. And it will seem as though all of the glories and faults of the Ferguson epoch came to life in that single, magical game.