Flanked by his two most bitter adversaries in football, Arsene Wenger could have been forgiven for questioning what exactly was in the box.
We were moments from kick-off and the outgoing Arsenal manager had been plucked from his place in the dugout by Jose Mourinho to meet Sir Alex Ferguson on the touchline.
Ferguson greeted Wenger with a kind embrace and invited a reluctant Mourinho to join them as he gave the Frenchman his leaving gift and warm applause broke out from all four corners of Old Trafford.
It was an engraved silver vase in a presentation case, but Wenger must have been tempted to double check.
After all, no other managers have been quite as critical, even cruel, about Wenger over his 22 years in English football as Ferguson and Mourinho. Here, on his 28th and final visit to Old Trafford as Arsenal manager, they were queuing up to pay their respects. It’s funny how people change towards you when you’re on the way out.
Ferguson experienced the adulation and acclaim of his peers when he departed the stage here five years ago with another Premier League title under his belt.
Wenger, on the other hand, leaves on a rather different note, eased out by his employers in a move that has hardly caused uproar among supporters.
Ferguson, for one, believes the moment is right for his old adversary to bid farewell.
‘I think he knows himself that it’s time,’ he said.
‘He did 22 years: it’ll not be done again. It’s not easy in the modern world to manage a club for that length of time and it takes an exceptional person to do that.’
In the build-up to the game, Mourinho had said he regretted some of his more vitriolic attacks on Wenger and Ferguson, too, was at pains to put their enmity into perspective.
It was always said about the Scot that the more he feared a rival manager, the more he would target him.
No-one was targeted more than Wenger as United and Arsenal locked horns in the greatest rivalry of the Premier League era.
‘In my time we had a few arguments but I did always really respect the man because he did a fantastic job at his club,’ added Ferguson.
‘We have dinner every year now at the coaching meetings in Switzerland and we go to the same little restaurant. We enjoy the company. You get older and you forget all the battles in the sense of what they meant at the time.
-Dailymail