COMMENT: On Tuesday night, Manchester United were out-thought and out-played. From the pitch. To the dugout. Right up the executive box. This United. The one of the Glazer family and Ed Woodward. They were given a clinic by a proper, proper football club.
On the pitch, Juventus were ruthless. Clinical. A game plan managed and played out by a team of experienced winners. The brief was: do the job and get home. The Juve Way? Well, that's easy - it's about winning. Just winning.
There's no debate about style. No mention of buzzwords like identity. This club. This Juve team. It's been built and rebuilt with one thing in mind: to win. Seven consecutive Scudetti spanning two coaches - Antonio Conte and Massimiliano Allegri. Two men likened more to artisans than artists. And this club. This leadership. They would not have it anyother way.
Going into the game, Italian TV was full of sound bites from Allegri's support crew. No, not his own coaching staff. But the higher ups. The former Ballon d'Or, now director, Pavel Nedved was happy to discuss their hopes for the game. The recently promoted Fabio Paratici, as prime sporting director, another to speak openly about the team, Allegri and their approach for the night. There was even an appearance by the president, Andrea Agnelli, who was spotted in conversation with Paul Pogba before kickoff. They were all there. Showing their face. Available to talk. The actions of a proper, proper football club.
In contrast, there was nothing from Woodward. No-one from the Glazer camp piped up. Indeed, there was nothing from United until Jose Mourinho reached one of Old Trafford's backdoors undetected after walking from the team hotel. Again the manager, with his pre-match routine thrown out of whack by local road works, was left to carry the burden.
Just as an aside, help could be on it's way. There is some buzz from Carrington, though not from the decision makers, that Patrice Evra could be making a return. The chatter is that Evra could be hired as a team manager - to act as a liaison between Mourinho and the board. The proposition would be welcomed by Mourinho, who appreciated Lele Oriali's work while they were together at Inter Milan. And it helps he regards Evra highly.
On the pitch, it wasn't spectacular. This was no thriller. Such Champions League games rarely are. Juve, via Paulo Dybala, took an early lead and kept it. Just as they did the ball.
Mourinho laid it all out in the post-match briefing, "They have a different level of quality and stability and experience. Lose the ball? No problem, we (Juve players) are here. Lose the ball? No problem, we are here."
Juve away fans 4,000-plus strong
Like United, Allegri's team did boast youth, but critically he had five 30-somethings on the pitch from the start.
There was never any doubts from Agnelli about bringing Leonardo Bonucci back from AC Milan last summer. No questions of Juan Cuadrado's sell-on value when buying him outright last season. And as for Cristiano Ronaldo... it's no secret a return to United was a long shot given their attitude towards players of his age.
But proper football clubs aren't concerned about sell-on value. Nor the value of long-term contracts for players over 30. For Juve, the football men running things know - a happy player is a winning player.
Again, Mourinho: "At the base of the team, they have Bonucci and (Giorgio) Chiellini. That's the base that allows them to play with the freedom that they play in attack."
It's why Agnelli didn't blink when meeting Ronaldo's €31m salary demands. Shift one great striker out in Gonzalo Higuain. And bring in another - three years the Argentine's senior. A deal which earned Paratici, the football director United so lack, greater powers following Beppe Marotta's resignation.
United's ex's, now paid to pull the club apart on a weekly basis, bemoaned the gap between their old team and the performance Juve produced on the night. But this runs deeper than what was produced over the 90 minutes. This is about a club's culture. It's about it's direction. It's about what Manchester United actually exist for.
Our long-time reporter, Ian Ferris, was at Old Trafford and the first from the English speaking media to correctly grab Mourinho's quotes about Chiellini and Bonucci in the post-match presser.
The United manager declared "we could have changed things around in the second half" but "we didn't because of Mr Bonucci and Mr Chiellini, who must have gone to Harvard University for central defenders".
But Mourinho could've been talking about the entire institution they had just encountered. From top to bottom, Juve showed United fans what a proper, proper football club looks like.