The mere mention of the place is enough to make Manchester United supporters smile. Whether they were there or not — and the chances are that they will claim they were — their minds will drift back to the Nou Camp on May 26, 1999, the balmy evening when their team clambered their way back to the pinnacle of European football in the space of two unforgettable, surreal minutes, leaving a breathless Alex Ferguson to utter that immortal line: “Football, bloody hell.”

The next morning, at the team’s hotel next to the city’s port, Ferguson, his voice hoarse with elation as he struggled to make himself heard above an adjacent fountain, confessed to feeling “a sense of fulfilment that I did not feel before”. As he put the finishing touches to his autobiography a few months later, he wrote of “arriving at a peak of aspiration that had sometimes seemed unreachable”. He was 57, three years away from taking a well-earned retirement, and was a supremely contented man.

Had someone suggested to him that morning that he might be back in Barcelona almost nine years later to contest a Champions League semi-final, he would have laughed them out of town.

There were things he planned to do with his life: to spend more time with his ever-expanding family, to pursue his growing interest in horse racing and above all to travel, to Australia, to South America, to China. “In football we travel the world,” he said, “but we don’t get chance to see these places.”

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Certainly, without Ronaldo, United are nowhere near as potent, but that could be said of any team shorn of their most influential player

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Background

• Ronaldo: I'll take next penalty

• Ferguson gives Messi licence to thrill

• Ferguson to analyse lack of 'penetration’

• Barcelona off the hook as Ronaldo misses penalty

Background

• Barcelona v Manchester United: how they rated

• United thankful for a second chance

• Chances sure to come at Old Trafford

• United left to rue Ronaldo penalty miss

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It is crazy to think that Ferguson, had he stuck to his original plan, would be almost six years into retirement now, perhaps serving United in some kind of ambassadorial role while some lesser man (Sven-Göran Eriksson? Ottmar Hitzfeld?) tried to build on the foundations that the Scot had left. Would United be on their second or third manager post-Ferguson by now — José Mourinho, perhaps, Fabio Capello or even — dare one say it — Arsène Wenger? Or would they, perhaps most realistically of all, have turned back to Ferguson once he and they had realised that he and the club need each other in order to flourish?

It is often said that it is the challenge of winning the Champions League for a second time that drives Ferguson, but he puts a different slant on it.

At some point this afternoon, he is certain to mention the discrepancy, as he sees it, that United, like Barcelona, have only two European Cups to their name. It is a record that he has described as “ridiculous” and, having presided over all but four of the club’s 16 unsuccessful campaigns in the competition, it has become a personal crusade to put it right in the time he has left (one more season? two more seasons?) before he retires.

“My issue is now more of a club thing than a personal goal,” he said last week, “trying to improve our record on all fronts.” He talks of an ambition to equal Liverpool’s record of 18 League championships and, with United closing in on No 17, he might soon reflect that he has indeed knocked the Merseyside club “off their f***ing perch”, as he once quaintly put it. He will struggle to do that on the European front, where Liverpool have five European Cups to United’s two, but he can at least redress the balance to the extent that his club’s tally is not dwarfed when set against Real Madrid’s nine or AC Milan’s seven.

“Like Nottingham Forest,” Liverpool’s supporters sing, “you’ve won it two times.” Push Ferguson on this theme and he will take you back to 1997 and a Champions League semi-final against Borussia Dortmund. United lost both legs 1-0, but the second leg, at Old Trafford, is one of those games that haunts Ferguson. He claims to this day that “no fewer than 15 times we had only their goalkeeper to beat” and this is not one of those myths that have gained force with the passing of time. He is similarly rueful about the semi-final defeats in 2002, when they lost to an inferior Bayer Leverkusen team, and last season, when key players were either injured or exhausted when they went down 3-0 to AC Milan in the semi-final, second leg at the San Siro. He does not want any such regrets this time.

The warning signs are there, though. United’s performance level has dipped in recent weeks as the rigours of an impressive campaign have begun to take their toll. With the exception of a three-match sequence encompassing marvellous wins over Liverpool, Aston Villa and AS Roma, they have not been at their best since February. In marathon-running parlance, they could be said to have hit the wall. Yet, through sheer will at times, they are breaking through that wall, just like they did in 1999.

Those are the signs from which Ferguson will draw encouragement as he prepares to head back to Barcelona. Now, as then, they are making heavy work of every last step towards their goal. It is the Manchester United way. And Ferguson will miss it like crazy when the day finally comes to head into the sunset. Football, bloody hell.