The teams wore the same colours, one in red, the other in black-and-white stripes, but between an autumnal evening at St James' Park in October, 1994, and a bitterly cold night in Turin on Wednesday lay the sort of difference which distinguishes graduates from fresh men.
Three years ago, Alex Ferguson decided to take on Kevin Keegan's then rampant Newcastle United side in the third round of the English League Cup with a team liberally laced with youngsters. Gary Neville, Nicky Butt, Paul Scholes and David Beckham were then relatively unknown away from Old Trafford. What chance did these tyros stand against opponents who had won 14 of their first 16 games and drawn the other two?
Predictably, Manchester United lost 2-0, but not before they had outpassed and outmanoeuvered Newcastle with a precociousness that sent shivers through the ranks of Toondom. If the result was hardly a surprise, the losers' performance was heavy with portent.
The extent to which Ferguson's youth policy has blossomed in the succeeding years was clear in the Stadio Delle Alpi on Wednesday. Once more United lost, but this time the maturity of the performance against Juventus was virtually taken for granted. Any pre-match doubts arose not from the presence of Scholes and Butt, but the absence of the pair through flu and a tweaked hamstring, respectively.
For Ferguson and his players, defeat in the Champions' League on this occasion mattered even less than the departure from the League Cup at Newcastle. Manchester United were already assured of a place in next Wednesday's draw for the quarterfinals before the game in Turin kicked off. But now they know what they are likely to be up against as Ferguson seeks to bring the European Cup back to Old Trafford for the second time in 30 years.
Real Madrid appear to be the side most capable of thwarting this ambition, and United would be happy to avoid Raul, Clarence Seedorf, Davor Suker and Roberto Carlos at this stage. They might also prefer Bayer Leverkusen or Borussia Dortmund, last season's semi-final defeat notwithstanding, to Bayern Munich, Dinamo Kiev or Monaco.
Because the winners and runners-up from the same group cannot be drawn together in the quarter-finals, Manchester United will be spared a second successive encounter with Juventus, and Andy Cole will have extra time to consider the possible significance of the chance he missed late in Wednesday's match to score the goal that would almost certainly have put the Italians out of the tournament.
As it was, Filippo Inzaghi headed the only goal of the game two minutes later, leaving a Yugoslav midfielder, Pedrag Djordevic, to help Juventus into the last eight with the late goal for Olympiakos that denied Rosenborg victory in Athens.
Until Inzaghi scored, a combination of exceptional goalkeeping by Peter Schmeichel plus solid defending by Gary Pallister and Henning Berg had promised Turin a night of disappointment.
Afterwards, Ferguson grumbled that his defence had been "too fragmented". In a way this was another measure of the extent to which Manchester United have advanced in the Champions' League over the last season-and-a-half.
After all, it was only three seasons ago that Romario and Hristo Stoichkov sent United away from Nou Camp with a 4-0 defeat by Barcelona which left their defence looking not so much fragmented as ground into dust. Jesper Blomqvist repeated the lesson when United lost 3-1 in Gothenburg three weeks later. Because of the pre-Bosman restrictions on foreign players, Schmeichel missed both games.
Beware of those who declare that footballers are 10 years ahead of their time. Sir Alf Ramsey saddled Martin Peters with this label and, fine player though Peters was, people watching him were apt to glance at their diaries every so often.
So the extravagant assertion of Marcello Lippi, the Juventus coach, after Wednesday's match that "in the next 10 years I believe Manchester United will become one of the best and strongest teams in the world", can be put down to generosity in victory rather than considered thought.
In any case, United supporters are convinced that their team already belong in this category. Wednesday's draw and the events of next spring will show who is right.
