Until the penalty shoot-out, Portsmouth were doing OK at Wembley yesterday. They kept Manchester United at bay for 90 minutes; did not roll over; looked a fair match for many of the teams in the Barclays Premier League. Only one problem, though: it meant nothing.

No one looked at the goalless score-line and thought that Harry Redknapp and the lads could be contenders this year. Few would even have been tempted to put a sneaky fiver on them breaking into the top four. The last step is too great now. The price of joining the elite four is too high. A club can climb the Premier League ladder until they stand on a rung five from the top, at which point they notice that the two supporting poles stretch into the sky, while the fourth step is barely visible in the clouds. That is why Everton have not kicked on from their flirtations with the Champions League qualifying stage and why Redknapp’s victory at Wembley in May has failed to deliver the transfer market bounty he expected.

It cost Sunderland £50 million to turn a Football League squad into one capable of surviving in the top division and the same investment again may get them to a final or at least a scrap for a Uefa Cup place – but the Champions League? To reach that level and sustain it requires investment on a scale that is beyond the grasp of all but the super-rich, or the super-marketable. When Portsmouth lifted the FA Cup in May after defeating Cardiff City, the trophy struck a glass ceiling. Redknapp’s employer, Alexandre Gaydamak, cannot countenance spending £100 million this summer, yet that is the difference between joining the elite and merely coveting it.

Time was, yesterday’s prelude to the season was a contest of significance. It was a chance to see how the champions, representing the established order, measured up against the emerging force of a Cup-winning team. Indeed, an FA Cup success was one of the signs of a team on the march. Everton won the FA Cup in 1984 and the title a year later. The arrival of modern-era Manchester United was signalled by victory over Crystal Palace at Wembley in 1990. Chelsea’s elevation to the upper echelon began with two appearances in the final in four years.

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Yet when Bill Kenwright, the Everton chairman, spoke of needing the wealth of a billionaire to make his team truly competitive, he nailed the truth about the Premier League. What clubs such as Tottenham Hotspur and Aston Villa aspire to costs more than just about any owner is prepared to gamble. It took Roman Abramovich’s wealth to make Chelsea a fixture at the top and even if Arsenal, or Liverpool, look vulnerable to some eyes, what hope is there that a team eyeing their status can maintain the level of investment needed to avoid being a flash in the plan, like Everton, in fourth? Tottenham, for all their ambition, still lose their best players – Michael Carrick, Robbie Keane and maybe Dimitar Berbatov – to the bigger clubs. Villa would be without Gareth Barry now if Liverpool could get their act together.

As for Portsmouth, yesterday’s Wembley appearance disguises a club who are suffering strife financially and could travel in either direction this season, depending on random factors such as injury. When Kenwright spoke wistfully of an Everton-mad billionaire to take his team on, it was not the chatter of a coward or a loser but of a man who has helped his club to climb the ladder successfully, only to discover that at the end of the board all that lies in wait is a very big snake.

Retaining the European Cup would make United more than just great, Rio

Sometimes footballers are so busy playing that the details pass them by. Take Rio Ferdinand. Outstanding defender, probably the long-term captaincy choice for England and Manchester United, but not so hot on football history.

Ferdinand said that if this Manchester United team are to be regarded as great they must retain the European Cup. A tall order, that. Ferdinand, understandably, is too busy starring in record books to read them.

Keeping club football’s greatest prize in its modern incarnation would not mark United as great, but as the greatest. No team have managed it since the Champions League format was introduced in 1993 and the last team to win the competition in consecutive seasons was AC Milan in 1989 and 1990. Real Madrid won three Champions League titles in five seasons between 1998 and 2002, but none was retained, while Milan, Ajax and Juventus returned to the final a year after winning the trophy, without success.

The previous four defending champions (Milan, Barcelona, Liverpool and FC Porto), far from conquering all, were each knocked out in the last 16. There is nothing wrong in Ferdinand reaching for the stars, but unifying the European and domestic titles in one season already puts United among the greats; to do so again would afford them a unique place in sport’s firmament.

The price of success

Lord Triesman, the chairman of the FA, wants the new captain of England to be a role model as well as a leader. “He must be capable of understanding the sense of proportion that is needed, and that it is not about winning at all costs,” Triesman said.

Winning at all costs? Perish the thought, even if Triesman’s organisation has set aside a minimum of £6 million each year for the next five years to pay the wages of an England manager, who is not English, while allowing him to import almost his entire backroom staff from Italy. God knows what it would have paid if it were just about winning.

Ronaldo’s Real mistake

The Cristiano Ronaldo saga is not over, merely in abeyance. It will return next summer, like a nasty patch of couchgrass, because the player has had his head turned and the damage is done. It happened at Arsenal with Patrick Vieira and Thierry Henry, who were distracted by the prospect of a move abroad and ended up losing their focus and their form. In the end, there were no winners. Vieira was not the same player for Arsenal after that first flirtation with Real Madrid, but he missed his chance and was underwhelming when sold to Juventus. And Henry has not had a happy time at Barcelona.

Sir Alex Ferguson has a mighty task ahead to bring out the best in Ronaldo again, not least because the attitude of the fans will much depend on the winger’s early performances when returning from injury. All club football works on the dynamic of them and us. The club, their supporters and players are us, the rest of the world is them. Ronaldo was never going to be in trouble after the incident with Wayne Rooney at the 2004 European Championship because the more hatred from rival supporters around the country (them), the more United fans identified him as part of their gang (us). Now they do not know where he stands.

By making his love of Real so obvious he has a foot in an enemy camp. If he recaptures his form from last season he will be forgiven, if not, shortcomings that could simply be a result of a missed preseason may be interpreted as lack of interest or treacherous disloyalty.

“People have to understand one thing,” Ronaldo said. “At the age of 18 I arrived at a dream club, Manchester United, but even at that moment, after some years, I was thinking about playing in England for some years and then going to Spain. I said what I thought: I have a dream of playing at Madrid. People can’t be upset about me fulfilling a childhood dream.”

If that is how Ronaldo felt, he should not have signed a five-year contract, then we would all have understood.

Financial indiscretion

Mark Clattenburg, the referee removed from duty at yesterday’s Community Shield over a financial disagreement with a business partner, is said to have upset the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) and the FA by remaining silent about the claim that he owes nearly £60,000. “He should have told us what was happening,” a PGMOB spokesman said. Clattenburg is not under suspicion over football-related matters, but if the PGMOB is looking to set a precedent, more significant, surely, is the possibility that a referee who is experiencing financial difficulty could become vulnerable and a target for unscrupulous third parties. On this occasion it would appear that the right decision has been made, but for the wrong reason.

We should stay at home

Any proposal for a midwinter break allowing Barclays Premier League clubs to compete in mini-tournaments dotted around the globe is as flawed a proposal as the 39th game. This notion that the competition must expand internationally to remain healthy is becoming a dangerous breeding ground for hare-brained schemes. An English league is about English teams playing each other in England and, while this plan may lack a global vision, or the opportunity to contract malaria and be bitten by spiders as big as your head, our resident rocket scientists at the Premier League will just have to get used to it.

Relegated in preseason

Mick Harford, the Luton Town manager, signed 11 players in 24 hours but it did no good: his team lost 3-1 at home to Port Vale on Saturday. This left them 14 points adrift at the bottom of Coca-Cola League Two, which seems harsh after one match, but this is Mawhinneyworld, where relegation issues are decided not at Easter, but midway through the close season when the Football League announces its latest round of draconian punishments for the crime of being unable to cope with football at the sharp end.

Luton are bottom on minus 30, looking up at Bournemouth on minus 16 and Rotherham on minus 14. Chester City lost 6-0 to Dagenham & Redbridge but could turn in that result for roughly the next six weeks without altering their league position.

Brian Mawhinney, the chairman of the Football League, wished to deter clubs from financial mismanagement but risks condemning them to extinction, while refusing to admit that his way is doing more harm than good.

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