A S he settles down to watch the Europa League final on Wednesday, Neil Lennon will wonder if failure might sometimes be more rewarding than success.

When the Champions League group stage concluded in December, Celtic enthusiastically celebrated finishing in one of the qualification places to reach the last 16. Chelsea and Benfica's (the latter had been in Celtic's group) faces were tripping them, having limped in third in their sections and fallen through the trapdoor into the Europa League.

Well, who's smiling now? There's no disputing the Europa League's position as the Champions League's uglier wee brother, a distant second in prestige and recognition. But it won't look or feel like small beer to those participating or watching. The natural competitor in Lennon surely will feel some frustration that Chelsea and Benfica get the enormous thrill of contesting a major European final while his team's achievements, as sensational as the home win over Barcelona was at the time, are now only small footnotes in Uefa's season.

Celtic received £2.9m from Uefa for their participation in the Champions League last 16, where they ran into a brick wall in the shape of Juventus. Whoever loses the Europa League final will take home £5.5m from the governing body (plus gate receipts and match-day corporate income from four home knock-out ties). The winners will receive £8.8m (plus that same match-day income). Compared to reaching the last 16 of the Champions League and being eliminated from it, a prolonged run to a Europa League final would generate more money and give a club such as Celtic – and an ambitious manager such as Lennon – the potential to create a far bigger international stir by actually winning a European trophy.

It does not follow that Celtic or any other team simply gatecrash the Europa League and are given a police escort all the way through to the final, of course. Teams drop into it every season and are eliminated. But it won't have escaped Celtic's notice that in the ties Chelsea played to reach the final in Amsterdam, they beat Sparta Prague, Steaua Bucharest, Rubin Kazan and Basle. Benfica saw off Bayer Leverkusen, Bordeaux, Newcastle United and Fenerbache. None of those eight would be regarded as worrying, let alone insurmountable, for a team which drew 3-3 on aggregate with Barcelona. A week tomorrow it will be the 10th anniversary of Celtic's only European final in Lennon's lifetime. A decade since Seville. Few of the 80,000 who followed their team to Spain could have foreseen that as well as being one of the highlights of their lives as supporters, the final would amount to the launchpad for one of the game's great managers and personalities. Jose Mourinho often reflects on winning that Uefa Cup with Porto as the result which infused him and his players with belief and ambition, not that the man himself had been prone to questioning his own wonderfulness.

Celtic and Rangers have reached Uefa Cup finals in the past decade without ever being truly relevant at the business end of the Champions League. The way Celtic were dealt with by Juventus, suffering their heaviest aggregate defeat in Europe, confirmed that the last 16 remains an impervious glass ceiling for the Scottish champions.

Clubs are driven by a relentless desire for advancement and usually are appropriately rewarded for it, but Celtic are in a strange no-man's land. They can't do anything but crave Champions League survival and the exhilaration of trying to go further in it than ever, yet the reality is that there would be more in it for them to finish third in a group rather than second. Lennon would be only human if he watches on Wednesday night with the thought: "That could have been us".

Only Sir Alex Ferguson holds such unquestioned authority that he could deliver a three-line whip to 75,000 people. The Manchester United manager's on-field address to supporters after his final match at Old Trafford yesterday amounted to a comprehensive expression of gratitude for all those who had been with him for the past 26 years. But, typically, he not only had thanks for the crowd but an instruction too: "I had bad times here and the club stood by me, the players and fans did, too. Your job now is to stand by our new manager."

That was an acknowledgment that regardless of the belief he has in the man anointed as his successor, David Moyes, United have begun a period of uncertainty and vulnerability after their first managerial change in more than a quarter of a century.

Sir Matt Busby was only in his late fifties when he resigned as manager in 1969. His continuing involvement as the club's general manager (and obvious capacity to return to a dug-out) then unintentionally haunted his ill-equipped, 31-year-old successor Wilf McGuinness, who lasted only 18 months. There are significant similarities between Busby and Ferguson as men, as managers, and as iconic figures at their club, but none at all in relation to the circumstances of their retirements. Ferguson will not manage United again. Crucially, for Moyes, he will become the most influential cheerleader the new manager could possibly want.