As Manchester United's ominously relaxed players laughed their way through training at Carrington, the club's most fresh-faced legend reflected that one of them out there could make a date with immortality in Moscow next Wednesday, just as he once had in Barcelona.

"Yeah, make sure they're 100 per cent because they could make history," mused Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.

At 35, the Norwegian still looks youthful enough to skip on as sub against Chelsea next week in the Luzhniki Stadium and re-enact the late, late winner against Bayern Munich from the 1999 Champions League Final which, he laughs, still prompts moist-eyed Mancunians to regale him every day with the tribute: "Ole, you gave me the best night of my life - but don't tell the wife!"

Instead, Solskjaer, who finally conceded defeat to his battered knees last August and is now carving out a new Old Trafford career as a strikers' coach, is priming the club's hitmen to make the earth move as he had once done in stoppage time at the Nou Camp. And there's worse news for Chelsea; as if he wasn't dazzling enough already, Cristiano Ronaldo is the one being groomed at Solskjaer's finishing school.

"Of course, he can be our match-winner," said the man who scored 28 of 126 United goals as the ultimate super-sub. "This season has truly been an honour to work with him because when he came here five years, I remember this skinny little lad with loads of tricks and talent but he's now developed into a team player and a leader and that's good for me to see as a coach.

"Because there's not a lot you can teach Cristiano about tricks and ball skills, I can only drip feed him advice about, say, being a little less selfish, a bit more of a leader and he's taken it all on board. He's a very good listener like all the great players, he has the thirst for knowledge and the attention to detail because he wants to be the best."

Maybe he already is the best. Sir Alex Ferguson was adamant yesterday that while, perhaps, Kaka could be ranked alongside him last year, now there could be no contest. Anyone watching Ronaldo record a glorious hat-trick in yesterday's Carrington training game, featuring one thunderbolt strike and another masterpiece where he cut inside two defenders and slotted home, would not have been inclined to argue.

On this form, Chelsea's only faint hope may be that Ronaldo collapses on a non-stop tour of award collecting - last night, he was whisked down to London to collect the Football Writers' Player of the Year gong.

Yet Solskjaer believes the achievements of Ronaldo's remarkable 41-goal season may only be the beginning. "It's almost impossible to compare his season to any I've ever seen here - Ruud van Nistelrooy scored 44 in a season (2002-03) but Cristiano is different, playing and still scoring mostly on the wing - but his attitude is helping him keep improving," he said. Yet will it be United who gain the ultimate benefit in forthcoming years or will it be Ronaldo's suitors at Real Madrid? The Spanish champions' persistence is such that, even though Ronaldo is under contract to 2012, United can only get twitchy when they hear that when asked yesterday about his future, he told one foreign TV channel: "Let us see what happens after the final".

What Solskjaer hopes will happen is that the club's young tyros like Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney will be so intoxicated by the taste of victory next week that they wouldn't dream of wanting to move anywhere else. Even Rooney himself yesterday admitted he loved the idea of the R & R combination flourishing into one of the most exciting partnerships in the game's annals.

"And hopefully it would be the start of something more than we in the '99 team achieved because I believe this team and these players can do a lot more," said Solskjaer.

He won't feel cheated should fans start soon sidling up to Ronaldo and whispering "Don't tell the wife but ..."