Whichever team you supported last night, Rome was indisputably a good venue for the Champions League football final between Barcelona and Manchester United. In fact, the choice of Rome was better than good. Two thousand years after Emperor Augustus, the idea that all roads in Europe lead ultimately to the Eternal City still has powerful symbolic resonance. Rome may no longer be the political - let alone artistic or spiritual - capital of Europe. Italy may not live up to the rose-tinted image in which too many insist on seeing it. Yet Italy's capital city retains a pan-European glamour and vibrancy that few cities - and certainly not the continent's dull political capital, Brussels - can rival. All of this made Rome the best possible venue for a contest which, pitting the pre-eminent football team of northern Europe against the pre-eminent team of the south, united and engaged the people of this continent in ways that next month's European elections cannot rival. The contrast with the 2008 final, played in Moscow and finishing at nearly 1am local time, was wholly to Rome's advantage. All of which raises the obvious question: why not make Rome's Stadio Olympico the permanent home of Europe's football cup final? In England, the FA Cup is always (after a brief exile in Cardiff) played at Wembley. In Scotland, a similar role is played by Hampden Park. A Champions League final played each May in Rome would soon have a similarly inevitable and irresistible aura.
