United's 2-0 defeat by Barcelona in the Champions League final in Rome on Wednesday has merely strengthened manager Alex Ferguson's resolve to take his club back to the heights of the European game and achieve the success he craves.
PHOTOS: Barcelona 2-0 Manchester United
Ferguson had spoken in the weeks leading up to the game how he wanted to secure United's place in the pantheon of Europe's great clubs like Real Madrid, Ajax Amsterdam and Bayern Munich by retaining the European Cup and starting his own cycle of European success.
Ferguson went off into the Roman night devastated by the nature of United's defeat -- but also thinking of how to improve things.
Ferguson's attempts to change the outcome in the second half by bringing on Carlos Tevez, Dimitar Berbatov and Paul Scholes failed and before departing he admitted United were beaten by the better team.
"I think we've done well to get to final. We had to win it to change the pattern of the teams defending the trophy. Losing the first goal was decisive for us, we couldn't recover from that," he told reporters.
"It could be it was an off night, it could be it was too big a mountain to climb after going behind."
More important than that though was the absence, in spirit if not in body, of some of United's usual match-winners like Wayne Rooney, Ryan Giggs, Michael Carrick and even Cristiano Ronaldo, who failed to dominate Barcelona.
There is little fuel left in the 35-year-olds Giggs's engine while Scholes, who replaced his fellow veteran after 75 minutes, also failed to make any impact.
