Not everyone in Manchester supports United, as Owen Hargreaves discovers when he offers a cup of coffee to a man in a waiting room at the Christie Hospital.
"No thank you," he mutters. "I'm a City fan." Others are more excited. Mary Eileen Swift shuffles across the ward in her dressing gown to grab an autograph and then disappears down the corridor with a spring in her step.
For a moment she forgets her gruelling battle against bre
ast cancer; forgets that she has lost her hair to the traumatic effects of chemotherapy.
Much of the community work footballers do goes unnoticed in this modern era of the millionaire superstar. Take Roy Keane.
It was only on this visit to Europe's leading cancer hospital that United's director of communications revealed how the Irishman would take academy players to a young offenders' institution.
"He did it off his own bat and he saw it as something he could do as club captain," says Phil Townsend. "He'd borrow a minibus and drive them all down there."
Hargreaves is at The Christie as part of a joint venture between United and the Premier League.
The hospital has become one of United's official charity partners, while the Premier League have just launched their "Creating Chances" initiative.
In Hargreaves, they have the perfect ambassador. An intelligent, articulate, sensitive young man who is as natural with the patients as he is in that midfield holding role for club and country.
He brings a brief smile to grief-stricken faces. To the faces of a family who are watching a loved one die.