There had long been an unwritten rule at Old Trafford: if the West Stand erupted in celebration, Manchester United must have won.
For years, countless matches had seemed to prove it.
After today, that assumption would have to be abandoned.
The West Stand was roaring as though victorious soldiers had returned from battle. Yet many of the supporters were crying, tears cutting through the paint on their faces.
Still, they kept singing.
Had Manchester United won?
Far from it.
Ferguson stood outside his technical area, raging at the players on the pitch, looking as though he wanted to drag half of them off himself. In front of him, New Manchester United, wearing white with green-and-gold trim, calmly circulated the ball while the home side in red seemed to have lost whatever fight they had begun the match with.
As Andy Gray put it, Manchester United looked a yard slow everywhere.
They were not merely being outplayed. They could barely get close enough to disrupt their opponents.
The scoreboard above Old Trafford made the humiliation impossible to ignore.
Manchester United 0-4 New Manchester United.
Only a few minutes remained.
The result had long since been decided, and the Red Rebels had noticeably eased off. Beckham, responsible for controlling the tempo, had faced almost no pressure during the final ten minutes. Rather than forcing attacks, he simply kept possession, playing sideways or backwards whenever nothing was available.
Ferguson continued ordering his players forward from the touchline, but almost nobody on the pitch seemed capable of responding.
The one man who might have dragged Manchester United through sheer force of will, Roy Keane, sat injured in the stands.
Nobody had expected the derby to become this one-sided.
For the opening ten minutes, both teams had tested each other cautiously. Then New Manchester United took control.
Against Mourinho's organised, fluid system, Manchester United became increasingly disjointed, particularly in midfield, where they were comprehensively outplayed.
Their lack of intensity made Ferguson's tactical plan even harder to execute.
He had again tried to use aggressive pressing across the pitch, hoping to reproduce some of the success Manchester United had enjoyed against the Red Rebels the previous season.
This time it failed completely.
New Manchester United's personnel had changed relatively little. Palacio had left, with Robben and Messi now competing for greater responsibility on the right, but Mourinho's system itself had continued to evolve.
Three developments in particular had transformed the team.
The first was Kaká's movement from attacking midfield.
Drogba constantly occupied and disturbed the centre-backs, while the two wide attackers stretched the defensive line and created gaps inside. That gave Kaká room to arrive late from deeper positions, often unseen until it was too late.
His ability to carry the ball through central areas made those runs even more dangerous.
It had taken New Manchester United some time at the beginning of the season to refine the pattern, but as their understanding improved, so did Kaká's performances.
The second major change involved the two deeper midfielders.
As Mourinho's attacking press became more effective, Beckham and his partner were no longer required to spend quite as much time sitting in front of the defence.
That created a tactical question.
Mourinho still wanted the security of two deeper midfielders, but if both remained permanently behind the ball, the team was wasting an attacking resource.
The coaching staff had spent considerable time solving that problem.
Now the balance was much clearer.
Beckham had greater freedom to move and dictate play, while whoever partnered him, usually Essien or De Rossi, was encouraged to make delayed forward runs whenever the situation allowed.
Those surges had become one of the Red Rebels' most dangerous secondary weapons.
Against Manchester United, Essien was playing his first match after Ramadan.
He scored twice.
One came from distance.
The other came from a late run into the penalty area and a header.
The numbers underlined how effective Mourinho's approach had become.
Through the first fifteen league matches, New Manchester United had conceded only five goals, the best defensive record in the Premier League.
They had scored forty-three, more than anyone else.
That was the defining feature of the side.
Their attacking power was built on defensive security.
Yet their defence was not based on sitting deep behind the ball.
If anything, New Manchester United had become increasingly aggressive even from centre-back.
Curtis had always been comfortable stepping into midfield. When a game became static, his ability to carry the ball forward at speed could alter the rhythm instantly.
He was strong, quick and explosive enough to break the first line of pressure, and his sudden advances often forced opponents to abandon their defensive shape.
This season Mourinho had begun encouraging Terry to do something similar.
Terry approached it differently.
He was less explosive than Curtis and considerably more conservative, but he chose his moments carefully. His forward movement was measured, controlled and rarely wasteful.
Even so, a centre-back stepping into midfield could instantly create an extra man and change the balance of the entire phase.
Everything still rested on Mourinho's obsession with balance.
If one midfielder advanced, the other stayed.
If one full-back pushed high, the opposite side remained more cautious.
If one centre-back carried the ball forward, the other covered behind him.
New Manchester United never wanted both holding midfielders charging into the penalty area at the same time or both centre-backs abandoning the defensive line.
The structure always had to survive the attack.
For most teams, allowing a centre-back to advance so freely would have been reckless.
For Mourinho's side, the risks were reduced by what happened immediately after possession was lost.
The front players pressed at once.
The nearest midfielders closed passing lanes.
The full-backs narrowed.
The remaining centre-back adjusted his position.
That immediate counter-press made it extremely difficult for opponents to launch clean counterattacks.
Even if an advancing defender lost possession, the rest of the side was already positioned to delay the break long enough for him to recover.
That was why New Manchester United could attack with so many players without becoming vulnerable.
It was also why Ferguson's full-pitch pressing had failed so badly.
The Red Rebels were comfortable against teams that pressed them.
What they disliked far more was an opponent willing to sit deep, surrender possession and leave no space behind.
Manchester United had done the opposite.
And New Manchester United punished them.
Four goals had already cut deeply enough.
What hurt the home players even more was what had happened in the stands.
Old Trafford's famous twelfth man was no longer behaving as expected.
Across the West Stand, banners condemned the Glazer family and the proposed takeover. Others declared that if the acquisition succeeded, supporters would stop attending matches, cancel memberships and refuse to buy Manchester United merchandise.
One banner summed up the mood:
"NOT ONE PENNY FOR THE GLAZERS."
From a distance, the stand still looked predominantly red.
Look closer, however, and green and gold appeared everywhere.
Scarves.
Stripes.
Shirts.
Colours associated with rebellion against what many supporters believed Manchester United was becoming.
Some had even worn New Manchester United colours into Old Trafford.
The symbolism was unmistakable.
At their own ground, during a derby, some of Manchester United's most loyal supporters were using the colours of their local rivals to protest against the people trying to buy their club.
Andy Gray addressed it directly during the broadcast.
"When even supporters in the West Stand are willing to do this, the people running Manchester United have to ask themselves a serious question. Is this still a football club to them, or merely an asset on a balance sheet?"
Whether anyone in the boardroom cared was another matter.
The final ten minutes were painful to watch.
New Manchester United, perhaps out of sympathy as much as professionalism, stopped hunting for a fifth.
Manchester United still could not respond.
They barely managed to work the ball into the opposition penalty area.
The players looked exhausted emotionally rather than physically, trapped inside a match they knew was already over.
They were simply waiting for the referee to end it.
Beckham found it increasingly difficult to watch.
Old Trafford had once represented everything he wanted from football.
He had dreamed of spending his entire career there.
He remembered the great midfield of Giggs, Scholes, Keane and himself, with Yorke and Cole ahead of them, a Manchester United side that attacked England and Europe with relentless belief.
There had been arrogance in that team.
But also courage.
And above all, life.
Beckham looked across at Gary Neville.
His old friend's expression was almost vacant.
The determination that had once defined Manchester United seemed absent. What remained was professionalism, enough to keep running until the whistle, but little more.
The memories hurt.
When the referee finally ended the match, Beckham could no longer hold back his tears.
He tried to swallow them, but they kept coming.
Around Old Trafford, applause began in scattered pockets.
Some supporters were still singing against the Glazers.
Others simply stood in silence.
The stadium seemed to be mourning.
There were no real winners that afternoon.
New Manchester United had won 4-0 and strengthened their position at the top of the Premier League. They might even gain more supporters from those becoming disillusioned with Manchester United.
Yet for many inside the Red Rebels, the victory carried none of the usual joy.
Something more important than three points had been damaged.
The Glazers might eventually win their takeover battle.
But if so, they were doing it while losing the trust of a significant part of the support they hoped to inherit.
Manchester United's supporters had suffered most of all.
They had lost the match.
Worse, many felt as though they were losing the club itself.
Some might eventually transfer their affection elsewhere.
Some would remain loyal regardless of ownership.
Some might simply stop going to football altogether.
Whatever choices they made, they were the people with the least control over what was happening and the most to lose.
After the match, Beckham remained sitting on the pitch.
Gary Neville, Giggs and several others did the same.
These were men whose careers had been shaped by Manchester United. For them, this had never been an ordinary derby.
Inside the tunnel, Ethan encountered Roy Keane.
For a moment, both men looked as though they had a great deal to say.
Keane wanted to vent his anger and helplessness over what was happening to the club.
Ethan wanted to tell him not to destroy his relationship with Ferguson or the board over something neither of them could control.
In the end, neither said anything.
Some conversations changed nothing.
Keane would still do what he believed was right.
So would Ethan.
And events would continue moving whether either man liked them or not.
The two walked out of the tunnel together.
There were few cameras left focused on them now.
They passed Neville, Giggs and Scholes, and Ethan offered each of them a quiet pat on the shoulder before continuing towards Beckham.
"I'm all right," Beckham said before Ethan could speak.
His voice betrayed him.
Old Trafford had been the place where Beckham once imagined spending his entire career. When Manchester United sold him, he had felt anger, disappointment and resentment.
Now, looking around the stadium, he found that anger impossible to summon.
The attachment was still too deep.
Ethan rested a hand on his shoulder.
Beckham eventually got to his feet, and the two began walking towards the tunnel.
Several former teammates approached along the way.
One after another, they embraced him.
Gary Neville held him especially tightly.
"I hope you get it, David," he said quietly.
Before the derby, France Football had confirmed that voting for the year's Ballon d'Or had closed and the count had been completed.
Only a tiny number of senior figures at the magazine knew the winner.
The result was being guarded carefully to prevent a leak.
The next step was traditional.
A senior France Football representative would travel to meet the winner, conduct the official photo shoot and carry out an exclusive interview ahead of the public announcement.
The award would be revealed during the televised ceremony on December 13, with the magazine publishing its full feature the following day.
Across Europe, journalists were now watching every movement made by France Football.
Any flight booking, hotel reservation or unexplained journey might reveal the winner before the announcement.
The previous day, La Gazzetta dello Sport had reported that a senior France Football delegation was travelling to England.
If the report was accurate, the new Ballon d'Or winner was almost certainly playing in the Premier League.
There was no shortage of candidates.
Beckham.
Andriy Shevchenko.
Thierry Henry.
Kaká.
Deco.
Ruud van Nistelrooy.
Wayne Rooney.
Milan Baroš.
Ronaldo.
Drogba.
Of those, Beckham, Shevchenko and Henry were generally regarded as the strongest Premier League contenders.
Elsewhere in Europe, Ronaldinho and Adriano remained serious candidates.
But if La Gazzetta dello Sport was right about the destination, the English press increasingly believed the award would go to one of three men.
David Beckham.
Andriy Shevchenko.
Thierry Henry.
The only question was which one.
(To be continued.)
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