Via Veneto, it was necessary to remember here yesterday, is not the kind of street which comes so easily to a standstill. It did once, it is true, when a lorry driver crashed his airbrakes when he spotted Sophia Loren (but not the cameras) as she acted out her role as a lady of the night — and then returned to his cab sheepishly after failed negotiations.

But then Loren is Loren and who would have thought that a rather plain little fellow who only rose to 5ft 7ins with the help of growth hormones might one day have a similar impact. It happened, though, yesterday when Lionel Messi, surrounded by carabinieri, checked into the Grand Hotel.

It just went to show that after all the years of being worldly wise the old thoroughfare is still susceptible to an injection of high-grade glamour.

Messi's kind may never be transferred to celluloid but it was real enough when his name swept down the pavement cafes. The resulting crowd spilled into the sun-lit street and put the police and security guards under considerable pressure.

What kind of glamour precisely? It is that which comes with astonishing accomplishment and the promise of unforgettable deeds and if you don't happen to be utterly committed to the cause of Manchester United it is impossible not to grasp the sense that the great anticipation of the Eternal City is of a performance from the little man to transcend the normal expectations placed on a single player in a single game.

For a parallel you probably need to go back 25 years to that time when Messi's latest mentor, Diego Maradona, strode with the demeanour of a fighting cock down the smartest streets of Mexico City on the eve of Argentina's World Cup final with West Germany.

Maradona revelled in the attention of the world — and he delivered and, now a quarter century on, the same question is being asked of another diminutive Argentine. Can Messi indeed prove exceptional to a degree that will be indelible down the years? Can he deliver as Maradona did, can he make the best efforts of Manchester United seem as futile as those of Lother Matthaus, the German master craftsman who was assigned to shadow genius in the Azteca Stadium and found it as elusive as a gust of wind.

A little bit of every football fan, whatever his allegiance, wants it be so.

He wants to see the ransacking brilliance of the little man on a flood tide at in the Stadio Olimpico, however underwhelmed he might have been by the statement from Messi that he and his Barca team-mates have already established their right to put their hands on the greatest trophy in the club game.

But then who will store up indignation if Messi proves as good as his word, if he outstrips the Adonis, Ronaldo, if he does with wit and mesmerising acuity what his Portuguese rival to the title of the world's greatest footballer does with an imperious surge and ball-striking which can render feeble so much of happens around him?

The suspicion here is that United will sooner or later rejoice in their new casting as the hard and practical men. To reach this conclusion you do not have to draw out some elaborate form line. You just have to recall how perilously Barca lived at Stamford Bridge a few weeks ago, how seriously they were arrested by the power and the application organised by Guus Hiddink, a work of stifling so complete that not only was Messi reduced to the rag ends of his brilliance Iniesta was directing the team's first shot at goal in stoppage time when he conjured the goal that carried him here.

Of course the magic lingers. Iniesta extended its shelf life for at least a few weeks and, who knows, it may be that the returning Thierry Henry, who this season has proved more than once that he is not altogether spent up in the alchemy deparment, may seize the chance to banish the horrors that came to him in the Stade de France three years ago. If ever a player of great talent had the stage, and the moment, to fulfil himself it was surely Henry against Barcelona, Henry slipping clear of the cover and with the goal at this mercy, and Henry doing the unthinkable, snatching at an opportunity made for his silky assassin's hand.

Henry may restore himself tonight as a Champions League final performer, he may put away the memory of how his time of all times was ravaged by the brilliant intervention of another veteran, the knowing Henrik Larsson.

Messi may take back for himself the distinction that was wrestled, sometimes literally so, away from him at Stamford Bridge, he may announce that the people who kicked over the cafe chairs in the Via Veneto yesterday were right to see more than a time-expired messiah of football.

It is, no doubt, the most intoxicating possibility of the Roman night. But there are other images and they will not go away. They have a Rooney or a Ronaldo or maybe that other Argentine, Carlos Tevez, burrowing beyond the weakest point of Barcelona, the defence which buckled so hazardously at Stamford Bridge. It is of Manchester United, of all people, saying, enough of the beautiful game and the beautiful Barcelona, this is the time for strength and for a little of that cold and cutting steel which in the end generally separates the winners from the merely romantic.

The wider football may well yearn for Barca tonight. But the gut instinct says United, maybe by as much as 3-1.