MANCHESTER (AFP) - A minute's silence in memory of those who died in the 1958 Munich air disaster was fully respected ahead of Sunday's Manchester derby at Old Trafford.
There had been concerns that some City fans, so strong is their dislike of United, would jeer during the silent tribute.
But after the respective managers Sir Alex Ferguson and Sven Goran Eriksson had led out the teams and laid wreaths in centre field, the packed crowd fell silent and there was no disruption inside the ground.
However, as a capacity crowd stood to remenber the dead, what sounded like firecracker-style bangs were heard from outside the Old Trafford.
Sunday's match took place in the week of the 50th anniversary of the air crash that killed 23 people, including eight Manchester United players and former Manchester City and England goalkeeper Frank Swift, who was working as a football reporter.
And yet while for many the prevailing mood was one of wanting to honour the likes of Duncan Edwards, regarded by Munich survivor Sir Bobby Charlton as the best footballer he ever played with or against, there had been an atmosphere of concern ahead of the minute's silence.
"I am just hoping City fans listen to their own club and make it a game for us all to remember," said United manager Sir Alex Ferguson.
So worried were City officials they initially suggested that, instead of a silence, a minute's applause be observed before kick-off so as to drown out any 'boo-boys'.
But this week Charlton, who became a key figure in both the England team that won the 1966 World Cup and the United side that lifted the European Cup two years later, said it would be wrong to honour his late team-mates by using the "lowest common denominator".
Ferguson, seemingly implying City fans couldn't be trusted to behave responsibly, criticised the scheduling of a derby in this week of all weeks.
"When I saw what the fixture was at this time at the beginning of the season I said 'who the hell chose that?'," he told the Sunday Express.
"It puts pressure on the clubs. We could easily have had Middlesbrough at home or something like that."
Back in 1958, the disaster which helped make United a club known around the word, took place when the team was returning from a European Cup match against Red Star Belgrade.
Their airplane had stopped to refuel in Munich when the crash happened after a failed take-off.
United's youthful side of the time were nicknamed the 'Busby Babes' in honour of then manager Sir Matt Busby, who had defied an instruction from the Football Association banning English clubs from playing in Europe.
The Scot's side were back-to-back English champions and well-positioned to make it a hat-trick with many believing they were on course to be United's greatest team.
Sunday's match saw United play in an old-fashioned strip, with no names on the back of their shirts and no sponsors' logos anywhere to be seen on either team's kit, a reminder of a simpler and, for some fans, better age.
Yet in a week where the English Premier League openly disussed plans to play matches as far as field as Asia and the United States, there was no disguising just how much football had changed in the last 50 years.
