COMPARISONS are odious and, in football, supremely irrelevant. In 1998, in the birth of vain glory, Manchester United’s Danish goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel pronounced that his United team would have scored 10 goals against the one which, in 1968, became the first English club to win the European Cup.

Who knows? Who cares? In those 30 intervening years, football in Britain had become far faster and more tactically sophisticated. But teams are of their time. So are players. Yet the longevity of the likes of Stanley Matthews, first capped for England in 1934 and still good enough, 22 years later, to turn the famed Brazilian left-back, Nilton Santos, inside out at Wembley, suggests the truly great footballer would adjust to his era.

By any standards, however, United’s 7-1 win against Roma was a towering performance, arguably the best that even they have produced in the competition. That is no mean feat given that, back in 1956, under the defiant leadership of Matt Busby, they were determined enough to challenge the recalcitrant Football League and become England’s first team to compete for, and then in 1968 win, the trophy.

It must be said that Sir Alex Ferguson got things triumphantly right last Tuesday. Above all in the bold use of Ryan Giggs and Wayne Rooney, Giggs functioning in central midfield, Rooney out on the left wing where in the past, with club and country, he has tended to look unhappy. And how encouraging it was to see an English midfielder in Michael Carrick, excel, with two goals, and a performance of all round virtuosity. Of Cristiano Ronaldo, what more can we say? A proper successor to the refulgent George Best, the complete winger.

Perhaps one must go back as far as the spring of 1966 to find a comparable performance by United in Europe. That was when they went to Lisbon in the second round, second leg and annihilated, 5-1, a formidable Benfica team, Eusebio included, which had won their previous 18 European Cup ties at home. Best destroyed them in the first dozen minutes with two goals. Benfica never got off the canvas.

But perhaps the finest European Cup performance of all was given by Real Madrid when they thrashed Eintracht Frankfurt 7-3 in the final at Hampden Park in 1960; after which the 134,000 Scottish fans stayed to applaud them. This after Frankfurt had taken the lead after 20 minutes.

The illusion soon perished. The incomparable centre- forward Alfredo Di Stefano got to work in tandem with Hungary’s illustrious left-footer Ferenc Puskas and goal after goal ensued. Di Stefano grabbed a hat-trick while his teammate scored four.

Two years later, in the Amsterdam final, the two were in ebullient form in the first half when Puskas scored three. But this was the consecration of the young Eusebio, his right foot as fierce as Puskas’s left. The Benfica goals flew in like bullets. Eusebio got two of them and Benfica won 5-3 in a game of all-out attack, which, even then, seemed liked a glorious anachronism.