It was more than an hour after Manchester United had won the Champions League to complete the treble before the players began to stumble out of their dressing room in the bowels of the vast, and now virtually empty, Camp Nou in Barcelona. They were all dressed in grey Versace suits bearing the club crest, and their enormous and bewildered smiles captured a mood that veered between elation, relief and utter bemusement. Each player had a Champions League winners medal swinging from their necks, which David Beckham has since admitted he didn’t remove, and slept with for several days afterward.



A swarm of media thrust microphones and television cameras at them, with requests to describe how they were feeling, and explain what had just happened.



Gary Neville, who had been at the club since he was 11 years old, paused for the right words. “It was supernatural,” he stammered, shaking his head. “It certainly wasn’t skill and ability...