Well, two goals from Rooney in as enthralling a match as you are likely to see reminded the world of football that there is another young, dynamic, utterly brilliant talent in the running for that particular title.

And there are not just two. Step forward Kaka, another precocious forward, who also scored twice as Manchester United beat AC Milan 3-2 in a compelling first leg of their Champions League semi-final at Old Trafford.

Ronaldo, Rooney, Kaka - the new breed of footballing 'galacticos.'

No wonder this was a match full of attacking verve, fluctuating in control and passion and blessed with imagination on both sides, the sort which explains why football is the planet's most absorbing sport.

At times Ronaldo was magical, Rooney a muscular, hard-working presence, while Paul Scholes and Michael Carrick supplied the drive which wrested control from the Italians in the second half.

But in the end it was United's pride and relentless ambition, the gift of their obsessive manager, which saw them across the line with a Rooney thunderbolt in injury-time.

That was all the more creditable because for so long it had looked as if Sir Alex Ferguson's dream of an all-English Champions League final was about to die because of the injuries suffered by his senior defenders.

It had been billed as Manchester United's dynamic young attack against AC Milan's 'Dad's Army' of a defence.

But it was the absence of Rio Ferdinand, Nemanja Vidic and Gary Neville which proved crucial.

You simply cannot go into a match of this quality with a makeshift defence of Wes Brown, Gabriel Heinze and Patrice Evra, a back line which was unfamiliar at best and at times shambolic.

Of course, Ferguson had no choice and he should be saluted for his courage.

His tactics for this match were obvious, free United's front men to answer the Old Trafford faithful's plea to 'attack, attack, attack.' It is the best form of defence, so they say, and it looked that way when Ronaldo scored with a header which flopped in off the palm of goalkeeper Dida.

We hoped for the pace and tempo United displayed in destroying Roma two weeks ago.

Yet when Kaka pounced twice, quite superbly, on desperate defending from Heinze and Evra, United's treble hopes looked decidedly shaky.

But no Ferguson team has ever accepted defeat easily, never gone down without a scrap. If anything, that is their greatest trait.

Ultimately it was that feistiness which wrested the ascendancy from a classy Milan side. That and the most inventive of passes from Scholes which gave Rooney the opportunity to slide home the equaliser.

And to think that Milan manager Carlo Ancelotti had the nerve to call United "predictable."

There was nothing predictable about this thrilling encounter.

So Ferguson's dream lives on, but it would take a brave man to pick a winner next week.