Roma annihilated by a team 'even more Italian' than themselves

The final whistle was one of those moments when the desolation over what has happened pitches itself against a higher, nobler call, and loses. For five painful minutes before Manchester United effectively sealed Roma's - and thereby Italy's - fate in the Champions League, the Curva Sud - which can capriciously turn against the home team almost as rabidly as it has supported it - had sung, chanted and saluted the losers at such effervescent volume that the visitors' celebrations in the far corner looked like a silent movie.

Most, but not all, of the Roma players came to applaud their fans - in gratitude, but more in celebration of having got this far and of the victory they had the cheek to clinch at the Bernabéu in order to play this game at all. As for the violence - the knives and ambushes outside, kicks and punches within - that scarred the last encounter between these two teams that seem unable to avoid each another, there was none. Its absence was especially welcome after the death of a travelling fan at a motorway service station on Sunday, and because of the increasingly streamlined organisation of the Ultras - markedly on Roma's Curva Sud, where the hegemony of left-wing crews 15 years ago when I was a season-ticket holder here and banners carried portraits of Che Guevara has given way to less original squads from the neo-fascist right.

So although the auspices were bad, the city maintained a restrained state of siege on a day of honeyed sunshine as helicopters throbbed overhead, and few noticed the 3,500 fans who made the journey from England. The away section of the Stadio Olimpico was only two-thirds full - either out of timidity after last time, or because United's core of both lager-swillers and Roy Keane's smoked salmon nibblers is diminishing. Despite the wasted seats, the crowd was a record sell-out of 80,000 (including Spike Lee, with an Italian flag on his jacket), which was good to see, as more and more Italians prefer to watch their football in the comfort of home.

The flares and smoke bombs that gave Italian games a singular thrill are banned these days, but that only partly affected the Curva Sud last night. Where there's a will there's a way, and last night's drama was duly accompanied by smoke, purple flames and the occasional explosion of a smoke bomb directed at the security forces. The widely-reported alcohol ban may have affected the United fans, but had little impact on the ubiquitous sale outside the ground at the home end of Borghetti - shots of highly-charged coffee liqueur which fans buy by the dozen to get the cardiac system into gear.

But the heart failure came from the football itself. There was a black hole in Roma's game called Francesco Totti, not just as a goalscorer but as captain and inspiration - just as Sir Alex Ferguson had predicted in Corriere dello Sport yesterday morning. At times, a tactically outclassed Roma afforded United a degree of space that was, frankly, embarrassing. All the Roma fans could do was boo - but it wasn't quite clear who they were booing. And when Cristiano Ronaldo was fouled after an enchanting piece of piss-taking, even the rabid home crowd had the professionalism and love of good football to howl its disapproval. "Beast!" yelled the man behind me, "he's fantastic!" Roma's David Pizarro, however, disagreed in today's press: "He's a champion, but also a big head. He has no respect for his adversaries. You'll see that we have something to tell him in the second leg."

Italy has three daily newspapers devoted almost entirely to football. Unlike xenophobic British coverage, where European results are reduced to footnotes beneath Yeovil's and fans have little idea what happens on the continent, they carry detailed reports on events in England, Spain, France and Germany, so Italian supporters know their stuff, and every particle of United's game was analysed in advance.

Corriere dello Sport this morning felt obliged to emphasise a slither of a silver lining behind the dark cloud, opening its 12-page coverage of the game with the headline: "Roma, it doesn't end here" - a wishful reference to next week's second leg and the pursuit of Inter in the Scudetto. "Qualification will be very hard. But we have scored two goals in an away leg before now," said the Roma coach Luciano Spalletti.

The more critical eye of Gazzetta dello Sport, published in Milan and therefore without a debt to the Roma crowd, simply said: "Troppo Ronaldo" - too much Ronaldo. And Spalletti paid United the ultimate compliment: "They were strong and clinical - even more Italian than we are." Tutto Sport is published in Turin and, serving a specific constituency, lead with a report that Arsenal's French international Mathieu Flamini has signed for Juventus, before moving on to coverage of Roma's "annihilation", with the merciless headline: "Ferguson teaches Spalletti another lesson."

But the real lesson of the night was reported in Gazzetta's front-page article describing the evening as "a night of lambs, not of she-wolves. The best team won, but also the crowd, which this time bungled nothing, and applauded our sad farewell to the Champions League". As we trudged our way through the glare of the lights and over the Ponte Milvio to the bus stops, past battalions of riot police and their vehicles with United fans inside, there were scarves for sale, proclaiming: "Odio Manchester" - I hate Manchester - and others simply saying: "Odio Tutti" - I hate everyone.