The sound of silence, the roar of the crowd. Tonight, hundreds of millions will remember the 11th hour of the 11th month commemorating the Armistice that ended World War I.
Then, in the evening, Manchester hosts a contest that began 33 years before the war and embraces players drawn from a dozen nations.
City versus United at the Etihad stadium, the 177th Mancunian derby, reflects the global game that lines up friends and foreigners on the same side - yet asks men who shared World Cup duty a few months ago to play against (and maybe kick) their own countrymen.
In some people's minds, the key to the derby is to stop City's playmaker, the delightful David Silva. And if Jose Mourinho has a specific plan to do that, it could well entail Ander Herrera, the dogged man-marker, tracking every run that Silva makes, attempting to deny his fellow Spaniard freedom to run the game.
Good luck with that, senor Herrera. Or, if fit and in the right frame of mind, good luck to Paul Pogba, the giant United midfielder who can either be irrepressible or irresponsible.
The pendulum has swung in the eight years that David Silva has been at the heart of the Abu Dhabi revolution. In his 359 games for the light-blue half of Manchester, he has been the catalyst to culture. And the winner, so far, of three EPL championships.
As he nears his 33rd birthday, and after overcoming the heartache that he played through last season while his baby son Mateo fought for life following a dangerously premature birth, his Papa seems to get even better, more joyous, in pulling City's strings.
But Silva has many accomplices. Not the least of those is Sergio Aguero, 30, also a three-time champion, also a Citizen of breathtaking consistency.
He was dropped at one time by Pep Guardiola, who demanded he runs more for the team. Only Guardiola, probably the most demanding coach on earth, would dare to tamper with a goal machine like Aguero.
But Pep has the resources to oblige every man to do more, or, in Aguero's case, to risk losing his place to the Brazilian Gabriel Jesus.
Aguero could sulk and stay on the bench. Or he could respond, as he did, by adding a kilometre a game to the nine kilometres he covered in matches before his Pep talk. Running for the team, yet still piling on the goals, Aguero's total is now 209 goals in 306 City games - and 333 goals in the 596 games counting his career with Independente and Atletico Madrid before he arrived in Manchester
Silva and Aguero are just two of City's world-class components. Today is the first game for Raheem he after he agreed a new contract worth up to £300,000 (S$536,000) per week. At 23, Sterling is rich for life after signing that deal - but still not assured of a role in the starting XI.
Slacken even momentarily, and he knows that the coach can replace him with Riyad Mahrez or Leroy Sane or Bernardo Silva (the Portuguese, no relation to David).
The City squad have cost a £1 billion to assemble but, despite the Football Leaks claims that the Arab owners keep breaking Uefa pay limits, Guardiola might argue that it isn't what you spend, but it's the way that you spend it.
In one sense, the arbitrary limits - that came in only a few years ago - are a protectionist measure that would prevent only the established rich and powerful to maintain domination. For generations, United enjoyed all the wealth while City were the poor relations struggling to survive 6km down the road.
So City would argue that it took £1 billion to raise their team up to the fiscal level of the Red Devils. And if Pep has done it so much better, so much more attractively than every United manager since Sir Alex Ferguson, is that cause for recrimination or celebration?
The money is astronomical, but if we concentrate on the power and the style, it is hard to see any outcome other than a Blue victory.
Hard, but not impossible. Mourinho's United are becoming the Houdini escapologists of football, as last week's win against Juventus in Turin showed.
City need no reminding. "Last season, we played top for 75 minutes, but United showed they just need 10 or 15 minutes," said Guardiola.
In that spell, Pogba scored twice and Chris Smalling took United from 0-2 down to a 3-2 win at the Etihad.
The Manchester derby should never be taken for granted.
