THOSE who are convinced that Turin will provide a shroud for the European Cup hopes of Manchester United have most of the worthwhile evidence on their side. But Alex Ferguson is not alone in questioning the certainty of the doomsayers. The nation's bookmakers are showing an intriguing reluctance to put their names to the death certificate.
While the United manager's defiant assessment of his team's chances in the second leg of their semi-final with Juventus may be a predictable expression of his personality, the odds-makers' stance indicates respect for several facts that have been largely ignored in the emotional reaction to Wednesday night's happenings at Old Trafford.
The bookies are, admittedly, always careful about their pricing of British clubs in European competitions, simply because the vast bulk of the wagering is liable to have a partisan basis. But the specifics of their calculations in this case, and the discrepancy between their view and the popular assumption that United's journey to northern Italy is a waste of time and money, must be seen as significant and should encourage the dismissive majority to curtail their vehemence. Anybody who declines to budge from the conviction that the tie is irrevocably settled is surely confronted by an irresistible invitation from Mr Victor Chandler.
That famous layer is offering 4-6 Juventus to qualify for the final. Even allowing for betting tax, that is a scale of instant return hardly ever associated with gilt-edged investments. So, can we expect all the people who are clamouring to bury United to be battering down the Chandler portals in their eagerness to pile on to the good thing? Don't bet that they will. Opinions previously untainted by doubt tend to become riddled with the stuff once the readies have to be produced.
Let me say immediately that Chandler's odds of 11-10 against United to reach the final hold no appeal whatsoever. They represent a flattering estimate of the English contenders' prospects, but the whole point about bringing the bookmakers' thinking into the debate is to emphasise the need for a more balanced perspective than was prevalent after Wednesday's action.
Everybody at Old Trafford had a right to be dazzled by the sophisticated dismembering of United in the first half. Failure to recognise that the technical and tactical brilliance of Juventus, and of Zinedine Zidane and Edgar Davids in particular, embarrassingly outclassed the opposition throughout those 45 minutes would be a confession of bias and ignorance. Had the Italian team been three goals up at the interval, instead of one, there would have been no trace of injustice.
Where distortion arose was in the refusal of many to acknowledge that the second half bore no resemblance to the first. United never came within hailing distance of the cerebral control and coherent fluency that gave Juventus such marked early supremacy. They did, however, cope far more efficiently with their opponents' tactics and steadily increased their capacity to apply their own strengths. The widespread suggestion that the home players' improved effectiveness after half-time came from nothing better than breathless desperation is just foolish.
So, too, is the idea that they were lucky to salvage an equaliser through Giggs in injury time. In truth, only misfortune kept them from drawing level sooner. Although their anxious pressing allowed Juventus a couple of openings, the weight of opportunities in the second half was clearly with United and, in the last 20 minutes, winning the match was a real possibility. Such a result would have been a travesty but the fact that it might have happened serves as a reminder of how much fluctuation may be left in the tie.
There is justification for arguing that, at its best, Juventus's football has a scope that United, as presently constituted, cannot equal. The Juve defenders exhibited a sureness of touch at close quarters, and a keen awareness of how their functions should gel, that enabled them to play themselves calmly out of tight predicaments, often with passes which initiated counter-attacks. And in midfield they had, in Zidane and Davids, outstanding players whose strikingly different styles are splendidly complementary.
Davids is the embodiment of creative urgency, with a driving, harrying approach that is rendered devastating by the sharpness of his vision and the richness of his technique. Yet even he had to yield the role of ultimate distinction in midweek to Zidane.
The Frenchman is so gifted that those who wince at the damage he does to their cause are the first to agree that we must be grateful to find the modern game accommodating such a talent. His affinity with the ball is absolute and at times it seems that anyone who means to dispossess him of it had better have a gun.
He repeatedly attracts clusters of challengers, only to thwart them with consummate shielding manoeuvres and determined use of bodily strength before contriving to steer the ball to a teammate. His sense of the changing patterns of the play is unerring and he drifts untracked to the point of maximum deadliness so frequently that it is impossible to believe there is a superior positional player in the world.
With Didier Deschamps constantly demonstrating the advantages of having a highly skilled footballer on duty as a midfield fetcher and carrier for the more exuberant pair ahead of him, Juventus can be frightening. But a comparison of their first-half form on Wednesday with their other performances in the Champions League this season, and with their inconsistency in Serie A, forces upon us the recognition that United contributed substantially to their own ordeal. Ferguson readily admits as much.
One basic source of their problems was the hopelessly inadequate response of his wide players, David Beckham and Ryan Giggs, to the brief they were given. The intention was that when United were seeking to attack along a flank and one of them was involved, the other should withdraw to reinforce the midfield. Instead, time and again before the interval, both were upfield simultaneously, and the consequent outnumbering of United in central areas intensified the torture being endured by Roy Keane and Paul Scholes.
Keane, though the hopelessness of his fire-fighting task sometimes made him appear more frantic than purposeful, performed well in the circumstances. In contrast, Scholes, so recently a hero for England, was too often like an apprentice out of his depth among master craftsmen.
That impression was a cruel exaggeration. Scholes has remarkable abilities but his is essentially a short-range game that flourishes when he has enough allies near at hand to let him exploit his extreme alertness and deftness with the ball. His miseries on Wednesday were so profound that he may well need a rest to recover from them and the signs yesterday were that Nicky Butt would be preferred to him for today's potentially epic FA Cup semi-final with Arsenal.
Ferguson blames himself for permitting the first-half sufferings against Juventus to persist longer than they should have done. The manager feels now that, at least until the interval, he should have pulled Dwight Yorke back from his striker's position (where he was relentlessly ineffectual) to supply an additional body to counter the five men the Italians regularly spread across the midfield.
Any redeployment of Yorke would have been temporary, since he was so disastrously short of his usual thrilling standards that removal from the field was virtually inevitable. There must be a strong suspicion that being embroiled in a sexual escapade which involved Andy Cole, a female companion and, eventually, an acre or two of the News of the World had wreaked havoc on his concentration. How else do we explain a display that made one of the best and most dangerous forwards in the game look like an unco-ordinated novice playing in snowshoes?
Surprisingly, Cole - whose family situation might have been expected to expose him to the greater pressure from the sleazy publicity, and who owes much of the goal-scoring success he has enjoyed in United's colours lately to the promptings of his subtler partner - had a far happier night than Yorke.
Both will have to be at their most threatening if United are to survive in Turin. Should Yorke re-emerge there as the mixture of virtuoso and natural finisher familiar to Premiership audiences, that in itself will be a serious shock to Juve's system, especially as their defence appears sure to be weakened by the absence of Paolo Montero.
Long-term statistics overwhelmingly favour the Italians. Of their past 50 European matches in Turin, they have won 43, drawn four and lost only three (and two of those defeats were irrelevant). But their record in the Champions League this season makes less gloomy reading for Ferguson.
Indeed, Juve's susceptibility to draws, combined with his own team's ability to get goals and maintain equality in such places as Barcelona, Munich and Milan, must persuade him that a passage to the European Cup final by way of a scoring draw is not an outrageous bet. And, unlike many of his critics, he is never slow to put the money down.
