Most days, after practice is over at Trigoria, Roma’s Brazilians unwind with competitions. Stepovers, bicicletas, keepy-uppy tallies, and every once in a while, a premiere: something none of the others has seen before. Like the trick Rodrigo Taddei reckons he has a share of the patent on, a manoeuvre he rehearsed time and again and introduced to the Champions League one evening last October.

The opposition were Olympia-kos, the venue Athens, the spectators obliged to wonder if they had experienced an optical illusion. Taddei, advancing from an outside-left position into the penalty area, dragged the ball with his right instep behind his leading leg - the left - and in a fluent, startlingly brisk movement then pushed it back in front of his left foot with the outside of his right boot before shooting, right-footed. In real time speed, it leaves the impression of one leg tracing almost a complete figure of eight around the other, with the ball obediently following. Taddei sometimes watches it in slow-motion, or, for fun, on rewind. He has the moment preserved on his laptop, naturally.

Nor does he mind talking you through it. “I picked up a clearance,” he recalls, “came in from the left and thought this would be the way to draw the defender to his right and get a shot in. You conceal the ball behind the front leg for a moment. I was a bit disappointed when he blocked the shot, but we got a corner from it.”

Taddei, meanwhile, sought a trademark. “I like to claim ownership of the trick,” he says, smiling. Or at least he’ll take a lease on it. The device has become known, at least among romanisti, as the “Aurelio”, its name not Taddei’s but that of the club’s assistant coach, Aurelio Andreazzoli, who inspired the idea on the practice pitches at Trigoria. With all this fancy foot-work, it is possible to imagine Roma’s Brazilians being a little indulged in the Italian capital. They seem encouraged to enjoy themselves. Arrangements have been made for Brazilian televi-sion to be picked up at the club’s training site. Taddei, and his compatriots Mancini and goal-keeper Doni, catch up with their soap operas after their sessions of keepy-uppy. Taddei and Mancini have certain licence to indulge their innovative dribbling techniques. Those who missed Taddei’s elastic limbs in the group stage fixture at Olympi-akos are more likely to have glimpsed the images of Mancini’s goal at Olympique Lyon-nais in the first knockout round of the competition. Taddei began the move, Mancini pursued a long ball from just inside the Roma half and three stepovers later - that’s a sustained bicicleta had found himself space for an emphatic left-foot drive into the top of the Lyon net. Roma had won 2-0 in France and were through to the last eight, where they meet Manchester United on Wednesday.

This would qualify as the quarter-final for the aesthete. “I think these are two teams who like to make use of their flanks,” says Taddei, “and you only have to look at Cristiano Ronaldo and the sort of form he is in to be aware of that. At the same time, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be very open all the way through. It may well be decided on a mistake. United break very fast and look like a team who can score goals from anywhere, but I think it will be tactical.”

Sir Alex Ferguson echoes that. “The key for us is their system,” says the United manager, a system that strikes him as unusual. “Roma play without a central striker, with the two wide players, Taddei and Mancini, coming in all the time. It’s a game where we’ll have to be right tactically. If we’re not we’re in trouble and the issue is what we do with our centre-backs, whether we push one on to Francesco Totti, who plays in midfield. We can’t let him control the game. But whether we’ll play a different system or formation, I can’t say.”

Evidently, Ferguson regards Totti as important, but not to the point of distraction. From distance it can be tempting to imagine Roma are Totti, their captain and totem, and 10 others. “That seemed to be what Lyon thought,” remarks Taddei, “and maybe that helped us give them a surprise. They weren’t watching Mancini closely enough.” United have been. “We’ve paid them real attention in terms of video analysis and having had all their games watched since the draw,” says Ferguson.

Beyond Totti, who has had a super season, Taddei and Mancini do provide much of Roma’s attacking verve. In a sense they are both rescued footballers, flourishing in the Italian capital after setbacks in their careers. Alessandro Faiolhe Amantino, to give Mancini his full name, arrived in Serie A five years ago, fresh from Atletico Mineiro in Brazil and acquired by Roma with a view to eventually relieving Mancini’s distinguished compatriot, the Brazil captain, Cafu. In other words, Mancini had come as a full-back, in which capacity he was loaned out to Venezia. At Roma, Cafu was still going strong into his mid-thirties. In Venice, meanwhile, Mancini was impressing very few people. He had speed but little defensive mettle.

So when Mancini returned to Roma and the management of Fabio Capello, he became a midfielder, pushed up the flank. His reputation began to improve, his tricks began to come off, and his place in Roma folklore would be secured with a goal converted off the heel of his boot in the derby against Lazio. It earned him a new nickname, il tacco di Dio, God’s backheel. He became a good friend to the club’s enfant terrible of the time, Antonio Cassano; alas, he later fell out with the most important man in Roman football, God’s Number 10: Totti.

The origins of the froideur between the two are distant now, and the current Roma coach, Luciano Spalletti, is credited with bringing them to a workable peace. Totti and Mancini combine effectively enough on the field. The man signed as a right-back from Brazil is now an outside-left as often as not and finds himself in demand from Italy’s grandees, such as Interna-zionale and Juventus.

Taddei has gained admirers, too, for his work on the opposite wing. He comes from São Paulo, and says that a background in futsal, the popular indoor version of the game, encouraged his dribbling accomplishments. Yet he insists that he understands the distinction between show-boating and the effective application of surprising gestures and feints. Nor should we mistake his laptop tribute to his Aurelio manoeuvre as narcissism. He seems a thoughtful sort. On his mobile phone he has an image of Jesus. “I come from a religious family,” he explains, and his faith has been important to him. Taddei lost his brother three years ago when they were both involved in a car accident. “I’m still learning to live with it,” he says softly, “every day.”