The Mirror:
David Beckham and Sir Alex Ferguson will publicly end their four-year feud at Old Trafford tonight in front of 76,000 fans and millions more watching on television.
Beckham is a guest of honour at the exhibition match between Manchester United and an All-Star Europe XI to mark the club's 50-year involvement in the European Cup.
And although Beckham and Fergie have hardly spoken since their highly-publicised fallout which led to the former England skipper's move to Real Madrid, the pair will put their differences behind them for tonight's charity game.
"I wouldn't be the player and the person I am today without the manager," said Becks. "It's been well documented that we had our ups and downs, but I owe almost everything to him.
"Obviously I had strong parents and a strong family behind me but, without him giving me the opportunity to get into the United team, I wouldn't be the player I am today and wouldn't have won and achieved a lot of the things I have."
The one thing I've looked forward to for years since I left United is going back there and saying goodbye to the fans, because I never really had the chance to do that," said Beckham.
"I always feel that Old Trafford is my home, my rightful home. I'm obviously from London but I spent so many years there and it's my club.
"It's the club I've always supported and the club I will always support. It's the best stadium in the world for me. The Bernabeu is incredible, but United is the club where I feel I grew up."
Telegraph:
Manchester United's charity friendly game against a European XI at Old Trafford tonight will offer arguably the club's most revered alumnus an occasion for much reminiscence and nostalgia.
A 72,000 crowd will be on hand as the club mark the 50th anniversary of their initial participation in European competition by taking on an all-star team managed by Marcello Lippi. United director Sir Bobby Charlton is uniquely positioned to look back upon that half-century, having been with the club from the start.
United's first competitive European encounter took them to Anderlecht in September 1956, a first-round first-leg European Cup tie which the English club won 2-0, a month before Charlton made his first-team debut.
By the end of that campaign, in April 1957, a 19-year-old Charlton had forced his way into the first team and made his European bow, scoring in a 2-2 draw in the semi-final second leg against Real Madrid at Old Trafford which saw United go out 5-3 on aggregate.
Charlton would go on to score 22 goals in 45 European ties for United, in the Cup Winners' Cup, Inter-Cities Fairs Cup (the forerunner of the Uefa Cup) and, most famously, four more European Cup campaigns, which included winning the trophy in 1968 with a 4-1 victory over Benfica in the final at Wembley.
It was a great adventure back then," said Charlton of the club's first tentative steps into Europe. "For example, you couldn't see matches on television.
''You could maybe get a few crackly pictures from a Real Madrid game but they weren't good pictures. So you didn't know what a team like Borussia Dortmund was going to be like.So it was an exciting time. Having to go to places you had never been before, having to alter the food you took, the medical side, everything. Nothing was available as it is now but that didn't matter because, from a playing point of view, it was all a great adventure.
''The games were never dull and there were some great highlights.
"People forget, we played our first few 'home' matches at Maine Road and, you ask anybody who was there, the floodlights weren't great. We had to play in silky shirts so that what little light there was would reflect off them.
"It was still a great, great time and if you are a big club, like we always assumed we were, the place you had to be was in Europe and beating those teams.
''We all thought the English game was good but you can't measure yourself properly until you have played the very best."
Charlton, in keeping with Sir Alex Ferguson, concedes that United should have won more than the one European Cup they have to show since that night at Wembley in 1968, but he remains optimistic about the team's chances of rectifying that in this season's campaign.
Reuters:
When Manchester United mark their 50 years in European competition with a celebration match against a select European XI on Tuesday, the occasion will mix images of an historic past and a likely glittering future.
Unlike some exhibition games, this one has captured the imagination of the public with the match likely to attract a 72,000 sellout crowd to Old Trafford.
United became the first English team to play in the European Cup in 1956 and since then the competition has left an indelible mark on the club, through triumph and tragedy.
Both are indelibly woven into the fabric of the club, and the fabric of European soccer.
Tragedy preceded triumph with the 1958 Munich Air disaster costing the lives of 23 players and officials including eight members of the Busby Babes, the young team created by manager Matt Busby which had won the English title in 1956 and 1957 and seemed destined for greatness.
The disaster, on Feb. 6 1958, happened when United's plane crashed on takeoff after a refuelling stop at Munich on the way back from a European Cup quarter-final in Belgrade.
Ten years later, Busby saw his dreams of European glory fulfilled when a side containing Munich survivors Bobby Charlton and Bill Foulkes and the mercurial George Best, beat Benfica 4-1 after extra time at Wembley to lift the European Cup for the first time.
Only one more European Cup has followed, in 1999, but United are now established as a giant of the world and European game, a lasting testament to Busby's vision.
Charlton says Busby defied the English FA, unlike Chelsea a year earlier, to take United into Europe because he knew they had to prove themselves among the best.
"I think Matt Busby thought he had a good enough team to win it and he was keen as a hell to get into the competition," Charlton told reporters.
"And he was keen to get in it because it was the place to be. It wasn't that we had done as much as you could do in the English League, but why not go a stage further into Europe ?"
Possible squads (from the Telegraph)
Manchester United: Van der Sar, Kuszczak, Neville, Heinze, O'Shea, Vidic, Ferdinand, Brown, Carrick, Scholes, Richardson, Eagles, Ronaldo, Giggs, Park, Smith, Dong, Rooney.
Europe XI: Kahn (Bayern Munich), Coupet (Lyons), Casillas (Real Madrid), Maldini (AC Milan), Carragher (Liverpool), Abidal (Lyons), Thuram (Barcelona), Puyol (Barcelona), Materazzi (Inter Milan), Grosso (Inter Milan), Zambrotta (Barcelona), Gerrard (Liverpool), Juninho (Lyons), Malouda (Lyons), Miguel (Valencia), Gattuso (AC Milan), Pirlo (AC Milan), Ronaldinho (Barcelona), Ronaldo (AC Milan), Mancini (Roma), Ibrahimovic (Inter Milan), Larsson (Helsingborgs).
Clayton Blackmore:
"I used to love playing in Europe.
"You always seemed to get more time on the ball, which made the whole game that much more enjoyable.
"I was so focused the night we beat Barcelona it didn't even register it was raining, when in fact, it had been throwing it down throughout the game.
"The thing I will never forget was the sheer number of fans we had at the game.
"You didn't really notice it while the match was going on but once we had won, the Barcelona supporters left and the stadium was still three-quarters full."