“The great asset I’ve got is that I won’t get carried away with it and tomorrow morning I will be thinking about next season.” So said Sir Alex Ferguson and, in the same spirit of restlessness, let us also turn our thoughts to next season, specifically his assertion, made in the giddy aftermath of victory in Moscow but spoken with sober certainty nevertheless, that Manchester United can retain their Champions League title.

“It is not easy to defend the European Cup, but the young players who have tasted success tonight will want to do it again,” Ferguson said. “Some teams have done, I hope we can do it. I think we are good enough.”

Good enough, truly, to buck the trend of history? No team have defended the European Cup successfully since it became the Champions League in 1992-93. Indeed, you have to go back to the AC Milan of Arrigo Sacchi, the great team of 1989 and 1990 that included Marco van Basten, Franco Baresi and Ruud Gullit, to find a team who have retained what Gullit called “the cup with the big ears”.

Intriguingly, given that it was a true cup competition at that time and more of a lottery, the 1970s were full of winning streaks. Ajax began the decade with three on the bounce, then Bayern Munich took over with three more. Then came Liverpool’s two in a row, followed by Nottingham Forest’s two. But when it comes to successful defences, there has been only Milan in almost three decades since.

Why? They have to play more games these days, United chalked up 13 this season compared with Milan’s nine in 1990, but it is the change of format, the spreading of invitations to four teams in Italy, Spain and England, that has made it so difficult to dominate. Every year there are seven or eight genuine contenders just from the three strongest European leagues.

So the challenge of retaining the cup is no small one, even if Ferguson is entitled to believe that his team can only get better. And the size of the task grows when we consider the fact that United under Ferguson have not been masters of their destiny in this competition. They scaled the peak in 1999, only to be usurped by Real Madrid and AC Milan as the consistent powerhouses. And although the Luzhniki Stadium was not really the place to say it, United’s European record when set against ten league titles under Ferguson remains one of underachievement.

Ferguson knows it, otherwise he might have been tempted to bow out on Wednesday night. Two European Cups is a fulfilling haul for any man, but as he sat at the post-match press conference, looking as exhausted as a 66-year-old is entitled to do in the early hours of a Moscow morning, the marvellous thing about the Scot was his willingness to declare that he will take on that challenge of keeping United on top, of establishing an era rather than serving up these once-a- decade spectaculars. He believes that he can do it. Do we?

His modern-day United are a very good team, but they are still exploring their potential, which is why one hesitates to join the chorus, surely a misguided one, that this is Ferguson’s greatest creation. For all the deserved euphoria in Moscow, let us judge that in a couple of years.

Let us see whether Cristiano Ronaldo can take his individual brilliance and learn to use it, as Zinédine Zidane and Diego Maradona did, to shape and elevate the performances of those around him — assuming, of course, that the Portuguese prancer does not skip off to Madrid. Let us see if Ferguson can coax the best from Wayne Rooney, who is being asked too often to tie up defenders for the benefit of others, rather than to demonstrate his creativity.

There are plenty of areas for improvement, not least in midfield, where, as Ferguson said on Wednesday with the lack of sentimentality that carried him to the top, Paul Scholes will be “phased out”. So impressive when United were in charge, Scholes was overrun, as he tends to be, when the tide turned.

Ferguson knows that he will never find another Roy Keane and he has not tried to, shaping his team around different strengths. Yet he could do with adding more steel to his midfield as well as signing an orthodox goalpoacher. Carlos Tévez must be a pest to mark, but he is not a finisher.

It may seem harsh to ask these questions, to probe for weaknesses in a team who have just become only the fourth in the history of the English game to pull off the league and European Cup double (after Liverpool in 1977 and 1984 and United’s treble winners of 1999). But the impressive thing about Ferguson is that no one will be demanding answers with greater force than him. Wednesday brought his twentieth leading trophy at United (no Community Shields or Super Cups allowed), his 30th if we include his triumphs at Aberdeen, yet he knows that to bask in the glory would be to admit that his race is run.

True to his fiercely competitive nature, Ferguson is plotting how he can be back at the final in Rome next May — and how he can draw level with Bob Paisley as the only manager to have won the European Cup three times.

No one will be complaining. On the evidence of United’s three finals, with their late dramas, they could reach the climax every season and never become boringly routine. But history teaches us that a successful defence is very unlikely.