Richard Williamsreports that both sides played with the belief that scoring goals is the best way to win a football match.

Two years ago Milan spent 45 minutes giving Liverpool a football lesson before being forced to bow to the power of a superior will. Although it was always too simplistic to expect a repeat of that variation on the story of Beauty and the Beast last night, the 52nd European Cup final came with a subtext concerning Liverpool's ability to give the lie to Jorge Valdano's recent condemnation of their semi-final against Chelsea, and what it represented for the future of football.

The Argentinian World Cup winner saw in that match a vision of football's future in which pragmatism would replace artistry and in which the sort of fantasy represented by generations of the competition's heroes, from Di Stefano and Rivera to Cruyff and Gullit, would become utterly extinct. So last night Europe waited to see if Liverpool could not only uphold the honour of the Premiership but prove that their victory in Istanbul had not been the result of some sort of sublime fluke.

They began as if they wanted to ram Valdano's words down his throat. In the first minute John Arne Riise squeezed an intelligent pass up the left-hand touchline to Boudewijn Zenden, whose quick ball to Dirk Kuyt was knocked back to Steven Gerrard. Arriving on the edge of the penalty area, Gerrard hit a diagonal ball to the far post, where Jermaine Pennant was just too late to make contact.

The DNA of the old Liverpool, of the teams of Shankly and Paisley, was in that move: hard running, quick passing, shrinking the pitch through speed of movement and clarity of thought. And if that was not beautiful football, you might conclude, then what is?

Within five minutes, however, the more functional side of Rafa Benitez's team was on view when they defended a corner from the right and Gerrard, inside his area, was forced to hoof his clearance upfield, despite knowing that every one of his team-mates was massed in defence. So early in the match, that seemed to characterise a side whose dominant thought was of containment.

The struggle between Milan's suave fluency and Liverpool's spikier approach seemed to be symbolised in the contest between Kaka, the new golden boy of the Italian club, and Javier Mascherano, the midfield gate-keeper who arrived at Anfield in January after an unhappy few months at Upton Park. Much pre-match speculation concerned the possibility that Benitez would attempt to shackle Kaka's flowing runs by detailing Mascherano to man-mark the Brazilian.

Mascherano's previous appearance in Athens' magnificent stadium was in the Olympic final two and a half years ago, when he won a gold medal as a member of an Argentina team that beat Ecuador 1-0 in the final. He played a similar role on that occasion, doing his work effectively as Carlos Tevez, soon to be his team-mate first at Corinthians and then at West Ham, scored the only goal.

Still only 22, and thus two years younger than Kaka, he has the air of a much more experienced player and his capture in the January transfer window was perhaps the shrewdest deal of the season. Only Benitez appeared to see beyond his plight in east London and remember the performances he put in during Argentina's World Cup campaign last summer.

He took time to make his presence felt last night as Liverpool set out to take the initiative, spreading the ball wide for Zenden and Pennant to produce crosses for Kuyt and Gerrard.

Mascherano did his bit in that respect, oiling the midfield machinery, but he came into his own after 25 minutes when Kaka performed a Zidane-style, 360-degree spin in midfield to confound Riise and accelerated into space down the right, only to find the Argentinian easing alongside and dispossessing him.

Liverpool had succeeded in disrupting Milan's flow, but at a cost to the spectacle. They committed 17 fouls in the first 45 minutes to half a dozen by the Italian club, but created the best chance from open play in the first half when Kuyt met Pennant's pass with a shot that hit Massimo Oddo. Despite a statistic giving Milan 58 per cent of the possession before the interval, Liverpool had done most of the pressing.

They had the best chance of the third quarter, too, when Gerrard beat Nesta down the left but failed to beat the goalkeeper Dida with his attempted cross-shot.

No one who sat through last Saturday's FA Cup final, however, could have been anything but grateful last night for the exertions of sides who appeared to be operating in the belief that scoring goals is the best way to win a football match.