C

ast your minds back, if you will, to the 8th of May this year.

Manchester United hosted Chelsea at Old Trafford, a week after the Red Devils had been beaten, somewhat surprisingly, by Arsenal, and eight days after Chelsea had squeaked past Tottenham with two highly controversial goals at Stamford Bridge.

Last season’s title race was thrown wide open, with Chelsea three points behind Manchester United with three games remaining. Both sides, miraculously, were locked together on the same goal difference.

The match at the Theater of Dreams on the 8th of May was billed as the “title decider” — Chelsea would have gone top had they won the game — and so it proved. The 2–1 win for United took them six points clear of Chelsea and delivered the decisive blow to the Blues’ title hopes.

The result, more or less, cost Carlo Ancelotti his job, with Chelsea’s owner, Roman Abramovich, demonstrating once again that he has neither the time nor the patience to indulge managers who emerge from a season empty handed. And after FC Porto lifted the Europa League trophy, no one in the soccer world was convinced that it would be anyone other than Andre Villas-Boas who would be offered one of the hottest seats in the game.

His appointment creates a quite fascinating backdrop to this weekend’s Barclays Premier League clash between Manchester United and Chelsea. It’s a managerial encounter that screams out “Master versus Apprentice” — the contrast between Sir Alexander Chapman Ferguson and Luís André de Pina Cabral e Villas-Boas could hardly be more defined.

Ferguson is the most successful manager in the history of club soccer. There is nothing he hasn’t achieved, and even at the age of 69, his thirst for the game and his hunger for more silverware show few signs of abating.

Villa-Boas’ CV reads: nine months at Académica de Coimbra and a year at FC Porto, although he did have a short stint as coach of the British Virgin Islands team when he was 21 years old. His precocity, it appears, knew no bounds even then.

A.V.B., as he’s come to be known — especially by those too embarrassed to try to pronounce his name correctly — has had top schooling.

At 16 years of age, he found himself living in the same apartment block as Bobby Robson, who was then the manager of FC Porto. Robson was so impressed with the young A.V.B., that he gave him a position at the club, in an “observational” capacity, and guided him through his UEFA C coaching license, which he achieved a year later.

While at Porto, Robson had the services of a certain Jose Mourinho as an interpreter, and it’s not difficult to imagine a young A.V.B. standing close, but to one side, ears cocked, taking in everything he could from two substantial soccer minds.

A.V.B. was then assistant coach to Mourinho at Chelsea and Inter Milan before deciding to forge his own career in management. In the nature versus nurture debate, it is very clear to see that the 33-year-old has had the very best of both worlds as he prepares to pit his individual wits against Sir Alex Ferguson for the very first time.

Good looking and articulate, A.V.B. has already proven that he does “humility” well, and appears to have learnt as many “don’ts” as “dos” from Mourinho. He’s already the media’s dream boy, and his touchline antics (he’s a pretty good mime artist) have already endeared him to the Chelsea faithful and the cameramen whose job it is to track the managers’ every move.

Sunday’s clash sees the first installment of the “Master versus Apprentice” — 2011 version, and with Chelsea’s owner assuring the new incumbent that he will not be sacked after a year, even if the club fails to achieve the requisite measure of success, there should be plenty more to come.

Sir Alex Ferguson’s relationship with Jose Mourinho always had something of the Rhett Butler/Scarlett O’Hara feel to it — a grudging respect predicated on fierce competitiveness.

I’m wondering if, to delve once again into the world of film, that between Sir Alex and Andre Villas-Boas won’t be “the beginning of a beautiful relationship”.

Frankly, I doubt it. It simply doesn’t suit Sir Alex. While the Manchester United boss is happy to “play nice” with the managers of teams who ride into the valley like the Light Brigade and are almost primed to curl up and die (I won’t mention any names — they know who they are) his relationships with genuine competitors has never been anything other than frosty — Arsene Wenger, Jose Mourinho, Kenny Dalglish — spot the common denominator.

Whichever way you look at it, Sir Alex will certainly not want to be upstaged by an “upstart” less than half his age.

Catch Andrew Leci on Monday Night Verdict every Monday at 8 p.m. on ESPN and send in your feedback to theverdict@espnstar.com