Tonight's Europa League final sees sport's irrelevent symbolism burn bright in the darkness

There is piece of graffiti art splashed across a wall in Mayfield, in the centre of Manchester, which poetically sums up the city.

It is a line taken from a poem by Dave Scott, who goes by the pen name Argh Kid, which goes on to suggest:

That’s the place anyone who was brought up in Manchester knows: it is gutsy, grimy often grim for sure, but fundamentally open, optimistic and warm of heart. This is a place of drive and determination. A place not to be cowed by the depraved misconceptions of fundamentalism.

In the sickening, gut-churning aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing, when children were targeted by some despicable moron in the deranged attempt to make perverted political capital, the challenge was to know how best to respond. As it was after the IRA bomb which tore the heart out of the city in 1996, the over-riding urge locally was to carry on undeterred, to prove that such murderous assaults on our way of life will not succeed, that tolerance and liberality would not be undermined.

And for Manchester that means carrying on with the football, the game that identifies it more than anything else, the game with which the city is renowned across the globe.

Ask anyone in Kuala Lumpur, Kampala and Khartoum what they know of Manchester and they will answer with the single word: football.

Of course, in the grander scheme of things, football like all sport is essentially irrelevant, what happens in leagues or cups meaningless compared to the lives of young people, taken away with such cruel dispatch. Sport can never be anything other than symbolic. But the point is there is no better time for that symbol to be flourished.

An appropriate memorial for the 22 who died in the Arena outrage is for Manchester United’s match against Ajax in the Europa League final to go ahead as planned on Wednesday in Stockholm. Albeit under a gathering cloud, this is the opportunity for the city to demonstrate its solidarity, its meaning. It is not a case of carrying on with your own concerns blind to the feelings of others. It is a case of boldly sticking two fingers up to the perpetrators of this evil.

Not that it will be easy for those concerned.

Particularly not for Marcus Rashford and Jesse Lingard, the local lads in the United team who have undoubtedly been to concerts at the Arena themselves, who will probably know people who were there on Monday night. Rashford, who has long given the impression of particular thoughtfulness, tweeted out a simple message the morning after the bombing. It was of a heart above a picture of Albert Square. He was clearly hurting.

Playing a normal game with what happened on the mind will be no easy challenge. But it will help both of the youngsters that they will share a dressing room with a colleague like Wayne Rooney.

In truth it is highly unlikely Rooney will play any part in the match tomorrow beyond a late ceremonial substitute appearance if things are going well. His contribution to the United cause has been growing increasingly fitful. Even as he has started their last four league games of the season, he has looked irrelevant, a passenger, his eyes clouded with confusion at the rapid diminishing of his once formidable physical powers. He has looked spent. That incident at the casino, the forlorn chasing of huge losses, money chucked at a lost cause, was an apt metaphor for his football career: this is a player who is fighting a forlorn rear guard against decline.

But in the dressing room, he remains a huge influence. He is a team player, he has never been an individualist. You could tell that in his send-off at Old Trafford on Sunday. Although there has been no official confirmation that he is leaving, it has long been understood in and around the club that this is his last season.

Since the middle of the autumn, Jose Mourinho has made it clear with his team selection that the future will not be built around the club’s leading goal scorer. There was a sense at Old Trafford when he went off the pitch that he would not be seen again, one shared between the often critical crowd who stood as one to acclaim him and the player himself who looked as if he knew this was the last occasion he would walk from the home turf a United player. Not for him, however, the contrived choreography of a guard of honour and a substitution at the minute tallying with his shirt number. Instead, the ultimate team player, he went off at his manager’s discretion, making way for the young striker Angel Gomes, passing the baton on to the next generation.

Which is why his presence will be of such a help to Rashford and Lingard. He will help them focus, he will help them target their emotion, his very presence will ensure they keep their heads.

He knows what the two of them represent: the future. Because he was the future once. As the Agh Kid poem concludes: