“Football – bloody hell,” Sir Alex Ferguson memorably said after his Manchester United team had come back from the dead to beat Bayern Munich in the 1999 Champions League final. Ten years on, the only possible response to Super Bowl XLIII is: “American Football – bloody hell.”

Santonio Holmes of the Pittsburgh Steelers caught a touchdown pass 35 seconds from time here last night to decide one of the greatest Super Bowls in the 43-year history of the event. The Steelers seemed to have the game won when they led 20-7 at the end of the third quarter, but the Arizona Cardinals, the surprise team of the season, had one more last surprise in store.

Inspired by Kurt Warner, their veteran quarterback, they turned the game on its head, scoring 16 points in five minutes to lead 23-20, and apparently overcoming the biggest deficit ever to win - only for Pittsburgh to come back themselves and take the Vince Lombardi trophy by a score of 27-23 with Holmes’ score from a pass by Ben Roethlisberger, the quarterback.

Holmes was voted Most Valuable Player, but Roethlisberger, 26, deserved as much credit for overcoming bitter memories of Super Bowl XL three years ago, when he was a winner but recorded the lowest passer rating of any Super Bowl-winning quarterback. This time, although he threw for that solitary touchdown, he was central to all his team’s best moments, and finally earned redemption with his direction of the winning drive and his pass to Holmes when nothing less than perfection would suffice. “I told the guys, ‘It’s now or never,’ and they responded,” he said.

The Steelers have now won more Super Bowls (six) than any other team, moving ahead of the Dallas Cowboys and San Francisco 49ers, who have five each. Mike Tomlin, 36, became the youngest head coach to lead a team to Super Bowl success, two seasons after succeeding Bill Cowher, rewarding the decision of the Rooney family, the Steelers’ owners, to put their faith in a largely unknown first-time head coach.

It was the Steelers’ second Super Bowl victory in four seasons, making them the nearest challengers to the New England Patriots as the team of the new century – the Patriots have won three times since 2002. Moreover, it came after they had been handed the toughest regular-season schedule in NFL history.

However, it was achieved in unexpected fashion, with their unheralded offense bailing out their vaunted defense after uncharacteristic late lapses had given the Cardinals a way back through a door that is usually locked firmly shut.

If the game itself defied description, then at least the victory of the pre-game favourites restored some semblance of logic at the climax of a season of surprises in which division titles were won by underdogs, top seeds were eliminated on their own fields by wild-card teams, and the hapless Detroit Lions lost every single match.

The Cards were hoping to end the second-longest run without a championship in American professional sports, 61 years since their 1947 NFL title win. Only the Chicago Cubs of Major League baseball, who last won the World Series 100 years ago, have waited longer. But although they lost, they have written their names indelibly in Super Bowl lore.

Warner, 37, failed in his attempt to win a second Super Bowl ring, but in the end it was a glorious failure. He had led the St Louis Rams to victory in their first appearance in 1999 but was unable to repeat the feat with Arizona and has twice been a loser, despite finishing with over 300 yards’ passing in each of his three Super Bowl appearances – the three highest passing yardage totals in Super Bowl history.

Last night, an intercepted pass that was returned the length of the field for a touchdown on the stroke of half time threatened to condemn him as the villain, but he found late inspiration, throwing for over 200 yards in the fourth quarter, including the second and third of his three touchdown passes. He was only seconds from what would have been a deserved victory before Roethlisberger struck.

Larry Fitzgerald, the in-form Cardinals’wide receiver whose 419 receiving yards in the three previous play-off games had eclipsed by 10 yards the previous record held by the legendary Jerry Rice, had been expected to be the key target for Warner’s passes. In front of his father, a renowned sportswriter, he was barely a factor until the Cardinals’ fourth-quarter explosion, when he wrote his own headlines by scoring two memorable touchdowns that looked as if they would win the game.