Manchester United are going to win the Champions League final. It is preordained. It is their destiny. That is the way it has been written. How can anyone ignore the facts? It is the 50th anniversary of the Munich air disaster, the devastating crash that defines the club. Obviously, United will win the prize that eluded the doomed and beautiful Babes. How could it be otherwise?

If — perish the thought — more evidence is required, you have only to recall the goal that got them there: a venomous strike from Paul Scholes. Scholes, heartbeat of the United team, was unable to take part in the great United final of 1999 because he was suspended, so this time he is to get what he deserves. The world is going to set things aright. Who could argue with that?

It is also 40 years since Bobby Charlton’s United team won the European Cup at Wembley, an obvious added indication of destiny. It always works out the way it should. How else could you account for the fact that when United won in 1999 it was the 90th anniversary of the birth of Matt Busby, midwife to the Babes, architect of the triumph of 1968?

So it is hardly worth Chelsea turning up, is it? Well, if the players of United sincerely hold to this belief in destiny, perhaps it is not. If Scholes and Co have complete faith in their destiny, they are going to go into the match with a certain force behind them.

I am reminded of Jonathan Edwards, the triple jumper, the Magic Christian who lost his faith when he finished competing. He said: “I now realise that my belief in God was sports psychology in all but name.” In other words, belief in something beyond yourself is a handy source of inspiration.

All athletes in all disciplines know this. Many seek refuge in it: life and sport and the match will all be all right, as long as you put your right boot on first and walk out of the tunnel last but one. Many carry a lucky talisman; a gift from a parent or a lover, or some other object that has acquired significance.

Edwards said: “Believing in something beyond the self can have a hugely beneficial psychological impact, even if the belief is fallacious.” Edwards believed that the result was in God’s hands, and that belief gave him wings. It is harder to do it all by yourself, harder to be an instrument not of God’s, but of your own will.

Perhaps what matters is not what you can do but what you believe you can do. Certainly, if you genuinely believe that the Almighty is on your side, you have a genuine advantage. If you can believe in something nameless, such as fate or the forces of destiny, that is almost as good.

We all love the idea of destiny, that the gods decide a thing, that forces beyond us decide the way our lives operate. We love to feel that such and such an outcome is “meant”. That’s why our two greatest forms of narrative have evolved: tragedy, in which we know that everything is going to turn out badly right from the very first moment, and comedy, in which everything was always going to turn out well, even though the chances seem a million to one against.

As Hamlet’s father dies, the inevitable process is set in motion by which eight lives are taken for his father’s one. Was it destiny? Fate? God? Occult forces from the underworld? The character of Hamlet? The characters of them all? No matter, the point is that, once started, there was nowhere for the story to end but in bloodshed.

Is it true that there is nowhere for this sporting story to end but in United’s triumph? All I can say is that if everyone believes that — and especially if that belief can be imposed on the Chelsea players as well — it is a hell of lot more likely.

In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry knows that he is not a good enough wizard to fight off the Dementors with a suitably massive Patronus charm, a charm that comes from the most powerful inner belief a wizard can summon. But because of a reversal of time, he knows that such a charm is cast. At the turning-point of the book, he realises that the person he saw summon that charm was in fact himself, therefore — brilliant twist — he knows that he can do it because he has already done it. It is belief amounting to certainty that brings Harry victory and that is the sort of belief that can at least change the result of a small thing such as a football match.

But sometimes the best — the very best of all — prefer to take the high and lonely road, the one without gimmicks, a talisman, a higher power. They do without destiny, they do without God, they are alone. I remember watching the NBA Finals in Chicago in 1993. We told Michael Jordan that Charles Barkley, his opposite number, had claimed that the Phoenix Suns were going to win: “It is our destiny.”

“Charles giving you that s***?”

Jordan led the Chicago Bulls to a withering victory, in which he scored an astonishing 55 points, and ultimately the championship.