The Guardian's Richard Williams is just one of the national reporters dazzled by the brilliance of Wayne Rooney after his injury-time goal took Manchester United to the final of the Carling Cup at the expense of rivals Manchester City.

After Real Madrid director Jorge Valdano suggested the striker may struggle to acclimatise to life in Spain, not that United have any intention of selling him, Williams feels Rooney produced a stunning riposte on a night when opposition to the Glazer family continued. He writes:

Two hours before last night's kick-off a schoolboy was walking through the tunnel under the main stand and past the memorial to the victims of the Munich disaster, wearing a T-shirt evoking an earlier period of Manchester United's history. First revived almost 20 years ago by the club itself in order to flog a few more away strips, the green and gold colours of Newton Heath FC, United's forebears, formed in 1878 as the works team of a railway depot, have recently been restored to prominence as an emblem of resistance against the consequences of the leveraged takeover engineered by the Glazer family of Florida in the summer of 2005.

The boy was not alone. Thousands of other spectators were making their way into the ground with shirts and scarves in the colours first worn by the men of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway. When the boy turned round, it could be seen that the back of his T-shirt, bought that afternoon for a fiver, carried a message intended to resonate across the Atlantic: "United's soul is never sold / So proudly wear the Green and Gold / We'll never wear our famous Red / Til Glazer's gone or even dead / So raise that ancient standard high / By Green and Gold we'll live or die / That day will come again for sure / When we can wear our Red once more."

If any red-shirted player on the pitch last night embodied that boy's defiance, if perhaps not precisely his objection to the effects of global capitalism, it was surely Wayne Rooney, combining finesse and defiance in a match-turning performance that reached its climax with a decisive strike in the 92nd minute. As the roar from the throats of 65,000 United fans split the sky, it was tempting to conclude that, when it comes to football clubs and their sticky moments with controversial owners, there is not much that a sequence of satisfying results and the promise of trophies cannot overcome.

The Mail's Martin Samuel, never one to miss the chance to comment on a big game, focuses on the figure of Carlos Tevez who scored again against his former club but was denied a trip to Wembley.

At the final whistle, Carlos Tevez was dazed, twisting in the middle. His team-mates were heading for the tunnel, crushed, the celebrating reds were oblivious to him.

He stumbled around, aimlessly, looking for a friendly face, a hand to shake. It seemed a painful age until his old colleagues spotted him and offered the standard commiserations.

Tevez scored three times in this tie, but it was not sufficient. He may not regret leaving United but he will know the calibre of the team he has left behind.